To think this is a fucking joke - A@E wait?

[CanNeverThinkOfAName]

So our local hospital serves 350,000 residents from a large area.

Arrived at A&E at 11pm. Expected it to be packed and to have a long wait. There were around 15 patients waiting. At 3am there were 4 still in the waiting area plus us.

From that time only one person has been called to see a doctor and at least 10 people have gone out after being seen.

Ambulance staff check patients in near where we are sitting and only 3 have checked in since we got here.

Obviously not a busy night.

AIBU to think this is totally piss take and the staff must be on a bloody go slow or something?

You won't know if there are emergency admissions.
each patient takes at least an hour of doctor time. My DC is working three 12 1/2 night shifts this weekend. When they got on the tube to go home they saw an advert for cleaners with a higher hourly rate than them.

Nobody works on a ‘go slow’ in A&E.

Inhumane. We wouldn’t leave a dog with a broken wrist for 7+ hours unattended. I hope you’re not still there now.

It is shocking but you don't know what else is going on with the doctors. The government are to blame.

My daughter is a carer and her client had serious breathing issues, and part of his disability were his lungs.

12 hours in A and E, as someone who is fully disabled and needs pads changing etc. Awful

The doctors in A&E overnight also have to sort prescriptions for people who have come in with nothing. I've been there myself with DD. As well as getting called out to emergencies on the wards declare deaths etc. There's a lot you don't see behind the scenes. The only 3 ambulance's you saw come in might have been a serious collision.

I would be lobbying my MP after that. Unreal.

Op, Hope your daughter has been seen. They’ve been triaged and assessed by competent staff who have decided they are not an immediate priority and will be seen when someone is available. This may be a specialist doctor who is currently undertaking emergency surgery on another patient.

The issue we have in the UK is we have a rapidly aging population who pay little or no money into the NHS and social system. They have more complex need, over much longer periods and this costs a lot more to deal with. Add to this the increased consumption of ultra processed foods and increase in dietary based diseases and the costs spiral even more.

Thankfully, we don’t knock off our elderly citizens but there does need to be a massive change with respect for them paying into the health system. Just because they’ve paid into the system for 40 years (some a lot less!), we need to introduce NI for pensions and income. I think it’s Germany where everyone pays 10% of their income into the health system.

At my hospital we have separate adult & paediatric ED, but the separation is for the children to have a child-friendly space with toys and away from adults that are violent/drunk/unwell/just horrible to children. And also staffed by paediatric nurses who are able to better spot a deteriorating child as their vitals are completely opposite to an adults. Patients are usually observed by the nursing staff but you will be waiting to see a doctor. A doctor will have examined multiple patients that are still in the department and has to keep going back and checking on results/scans/chasing other doctors.

Overall on the system it's still one department and the doctors see both adults and children in time order. So there may be 5 children but they could have 10 adults waiting to be seen.

Also depending on your child you may have been seen by a doctor but you still need to be observed- this should be communicated to you. Eg a head injury would need to be observed for a minimum of 4 hours even if they seemed fine. Say you got to 3.5 hrs and your child suddenly seemed to be getting worse then they would be sent for a CT scan and then wait for that scan to be assessed by a radiographer. We wouldn't just do a scan if the child appeared fine as soon as you walk in due to exposure and cost and the added length of time. Most kids will have a mild concussion but around 2% would have a bleed or fracture that's not immediately obvious. Hence the watch and wait.

As previous posters have stated, a lot of time is waiting for specialist doctors to come down and assess a patient. Children's A&E don't necessarily have a paediatric doctor, usually a general A&E doctor.

A slightly poorly child will not take priority over an crashing adult, and vice versa.

No you wouldn’t, but you’d also pay through the nose for the privilege to do so

If that were the case, you need to be seeing your GP.

Agree about the cost of vet insurance for a cat vs money paid for health.

There has peobably been a cardian arrest or 2. I work in a and e and we do not stop. Sorry your wait is too long. Moan at reception.

There’s no way a hospital serving 350,000 population only had 3 ambulances in a 5 hour period! This doesn’t happen. I imagine there’s a resus entrance away from the front door that you’re not seeing.

You've surely heard of the 4 hour wait target that every single trust is missing at the moment yet you’re surprised to wait over that time? I’m pretty sure the staff aren’t playing cards and eating dominoes; they’ll be chasing tests, figuring out where to put a patient who needs a bed on a ward but there’s no space, writing up notes etc.

Hope you’re feeling better soon op but unrealistic expectations aren’t helpful.

We need to accept the system is so broken that it’s inevitable we need to pay more, either via taxes at source, by means testing or something else.
Most of us have pet insurance and expert good care.
Experts say it’s very inefficient too so let’s tackle that. We also need some serious public health campaigns.
We may be the 5th or 6th richest country in the world but falling down the healthcare league tables all the time. That is a disgrace.

Last week I spent a night in A&E with my elderly father. A few things stood out:

Someone in A&E who can't easily speak for themselves and doesn't have anyone to stand up for them is likely to be neglected no matter the level of pain.

There are too many staff whose entire job seems to be admin, and too few actively caring for patients.

There is a high level of incompetence, with mistakes being made all the time.

But also: there is a strong adherence to processes, and treatment can be thorough once it gets going, although not very personalised.

My father was kept in hospital for more than a week against his will while a care package was arranged. He wasn't given any treatment for his injury. He was told that an ambulance would finally take him home, and then it was cancelled. When he made it home, we quickly found out that the hospital had misinformed the care team and the level of care wasn't enough. The care organiser then delayed until it was too late to do anything about it. As a family member said, the whole thing is a 'shitshow'.

I can see good intentions there. I can see money has gone in (shiny new equipment etc). But there is too much neglect and too many mistakes made. My feeling from our experience is that there's too much bureaucracy and not enough practical care.

The trouble in the uk is

We don't pay that much as a share of gdp
into the nhs and the people who could pay more don't want too

We have a very unhealthy population with soaring rates of self inflicted problems - diabetes , joint problems ,many cancers. We can't talk about this as it's seen as blaming and many people can't understand probability- yes sone people would get that cancer / diabetes etc anyway but half ( fraction depends on the illness ) the people with it would not have if they had taken better care of themselves

Population is aging - and we don't want to use immigration to rebalance the population . It's easy to blame old people though because as a society agism is acceptable whilst fat shaming isn't . Yet only one of them is really inevitable

I have only read the first three pages but I have to say OP you criticise the NHS at your peril on MN.
The NHS unions have done a fantastic job of positioning all staff as downtrodden angels surviving on poverty wages and never, ever putting a foot out if place. Any issues are always the patient's or governent's fault on MN.
I have has several really poor experiences with the NHS in my family I have previously posted but I am always torn to shreds.
All I will say is thar I can think of no other circumstances when it would be accepted that where end users are treated so poorly and inefficiently than in the NHS but as we are not allowed to criticise the staff, complaining always ends up in a bunfight.

I’m not sure why people are so surprised. Do you read or watch news? The government have deliberately destroyed the NHS so their cronies can swoop in and privatise it. Only Covid got in the way of that plan and hopefully we will have a new government by end of the year.

I work as a nurse in A and E in a city. It’s hellish. Sometimes you won’t see what the doctor (s) on duty are doing because they are being dragged onto emergency situations from wards.

I recently worked a shift where we had no doctors available all night. None. Managers were trying to get someone in and they arrived around 5.15.

I am so sorry OP that you and your DC went through this ordeal. It’s awful but not unusual. The only way to change things is to get rid of this government.

I have been a frequent visitor to A & E over the years with my late husband, always by ambulance as he was severly disabled. The delays seem to be about waiting for a cubicle, unless you come in on a blue light and go straight to a trauma room. Often there is a queue of ambulance trollies or ambulances outside. Our last visit at Christmas he unfortunately had to go to end of life care. Staff spent quite a bit of time with me and ringing around sorting all the medications so he could go back to the nursing home to die. I really hope your daughter is seen and sorted quickly but I am sure staff are working hard behind the scenes.

For those saying they’d want to see what’s going on behind the scenes, imagine 40 beds, possibly one bed free in majors in case one of the patients in minors deteriorates, or an emergency comes in.

Patients are in all the other beds and they’re not well. The staff are looking after them. Until beds are free in the hospital, there’s no room for anyone else. You’ll have a couple of bed blockers in there as well, waiting for appropriate social care in the community.

Then there’s the staff. They are normally one of the best teams to work in, and they work hard. If you’re having to wait longer than you’d like, it’s not because they don’t want to help you, it’s because they’re dealing with sicker people who need their care more.

Not enough doctors or allied staff and therefore not enough appointments for patients to be seen in general practice. The NHS is severely rationed and health for much of the nation is poor, cardiovascular deaths are increasing for the first time in years. This is planned by the government who could fund a proper health service but think their quest for an extra yacht is more important than the health of the country. The NHS is sadly finished and is not functioning. Don't blame the staff though, not even the medical receptionist. This is all the government's fault and I have no faith Labour will do any better.

Hi OP

Just regarding your comment that the ambulance crew have to check in with the front desk, every hospital I have worked in also have facilities for ambulance crews who bring patients into resus/majors. These patients may be more unwell, and they don't get wheeled through the main entrance, but a separate one.

I agree with PP that there is almost certainly something going on where you can't see that is influencing your wait. the other possibility is that you have been referred by an out-of-hours service directly to a specialty (if they thought that she had gastrointestinal bleeding, this would usually be medicine) and you are waiting for that specialty to get round to seeing you. This is nothing to do with A&E staff, and they won't be seeing you, as you have already been referred to a specialty, but the night medical team may start their shift with 25+ patients already waiting to be seen, so your daughter hasn't got to the top of the list yet (and may be pushed further down if more unwell patient are referred).

Hopefully your daughter has been seen by now.

They should just be told to go home and see their GP.

You are right. Doctors and especially nurses are renowned for being lazy slackers, which is why they end up working 16 hour days as they can’t be arsed to work hard when they are at work.
Or not.

Good idea in paper, but it would never be done in practice because pensioners are the main turnout to general elections and no politician (Tory, Labour etc) would date go anywhere there.

what needs to happen is more younger people voting.