To think the current A&E wait times are mad

[Iamunsure]

I live in west Midlands and the current wait times in our area's A&E is currently 9 hours to be seen for general and 6-7 hours for children A&E. We took our DC to A&E as asked by 111 triage. It's absolutely mad with people sitting on floor for hours to be seen.
How are the waiting times in your area and how's your experience been. I think it's absolutely mad and gone massively downhill for NHS.

Come to Ireland. I’ve waited 26 hours in the waiting room and another day and a half on a trolley in the corridor before being admitted for a severe infection.

🙄There are already a million threads about this, do we really need another one?

I think it’s because many people go to A & E when they really should be seeing their GP. It’s madness what people go there for these days. I was watching Ambulance the other day and someone called them because he had athletes foot!!! The trouble is that as doctors appointments are so hard to get in a lot of places, people go to hospital instead.

They're not just mad, they're barbaric. I fell down some stairs, shattering my shoulder. Thankfully I'm in Sweden so was seen and given morphine within half an hour an hour. The thought of being left on the floor, in agony, for hours on end absolutely horrifies me.

It's a big issue right across the country so it will get a high number of threads.

Maybe we do.... I haven't seen a thread on this

Soz, got a life, can't be here 24/7

I'll preface this by saying that my local hospital rating was recently upgraded to needs improvement from inadequate.

My partner called 111 due to my severe abdominal pain and vomiting. 111 said no ambulance availability for 4+ hours (early Sunday morning), but advised him to get me to A&E as soon as possible.

Arrived and booked in, waited approx 20 mins to be seen by triage nurse. Bloods taken.

Called straight back through and given a bed in resus. Next few hours were a bit of a blur....two different scans, arterial line put in. I started passing blood. Lactate 5.5 and rising.

Arrived at A&E at 10.20am, I was in surgery by 4.30pm. My bowel was ischemic (dying), I didn’t have long left.

My partner told me the next day that when he was dropping off some personal items for me at 11.30pm, he recognised some faces in the waiting room that he'd seen when we'd arrived (10.20am).

Obviously I have no way of knowing why these people were in A&E, but I do know that the processes my local hospital have in place for prioritising patients according to medical need worked (in my case).

My G.P. practice is excellent, but I know others in my local area are not. I think what's missing nationally are equally good G.P. services and local urgent care/minor injuries units. IMVHO the latter need to be open 24/7, like A&E. While good, our local minor injuries unit is only open between 10am-7pm. The population density in my area is too great for these hours to be effective.

My local A&E actually has a G.P. available within A&E, so the options after triage are G.P, minors, majors or resus. I believe the wait time for the G.P. is the longest.

Too many people go who should be seeing a pharmacist/GP/Walk-in-centre.

I’ve just been on the phone for 90 mins to my gp - finally got through to be told that they have no on the day appointments left (didn’t have any yesterday either). I rang 111 as directed (online 111 directed me to an urgent treatment centre 50 miles away that I can’t get to). 50 mins later, 111 said that they’ve allocated a call from my gp this afternoon. Apparently necessary before I go to a&e which is likely to happen as I may well need an X-ray, which I’ll wait for anyway. Last time (major infection to do with auto immune disease) I was there 10 hours before being seen by anyone and had to care for a disabled guy who’d hurt himself falling over as they ordered all of the relatives out as people had no chairs and lying on the floor was the next option. I am not looking forward to this.

Maybe @Iamunsure 14 years of a Conservative government, determined to privatise the NHS by stealth (although increasingly more overtly) might have something to do with it? Don't vote Tory at the next election.

One of the causes of this is that people who come to be admitted are often sent via A&E. Let me give you an example - a relative of mine has Crohn's disease. She suffered a major flare-up - vomiting, not eating for days, watery diarrhoea, in pain etc and was very dehydrated. Contacted specialist nurse who spoke to consultant who said admit straight away. Bag packed, arrives at hospital to be told that all unplanned admissions go via A&E - where they waited 12 hours with no rehydration. How stupid is that? - her urgently needed treatment was delayed, and she clogged up A&E. I understand this happens in many hospitals.

I work in A&E. It’s shit for the staff too. No one wants elderly people spending all night on a trolley in the corridors but it happens every single day. Every shift I see excellent experienced staff (nursing and medical) in tears as they cannot provide the care that patients need, and to the standard that they want to be providing. Staff are broken, the moral injury is real. There’s a constant fear of missing serious illness in the large cohort of patients who have been triaged as ok to sit and wait 8 hours to be seen.

Despite working in a teaching hospital which is a major trauma centre we are chronically understaffed. The case mix has changed too over the years, we are seeing more elderly and more unwell patients. I’m not sure where some posters have the idea that it’s people with minor issues who are waiting all these hours to be seen? There’s always been a minority who don’t understand the system / can’t see their GP / aren’t registered with a GP, and attend A&E inappropriately, but the main cause of all this is the chronic underfunding of the NHS and social care.

This too.

This chart - from the NHS strategy unit shows how the 4hr wait time target (introduced by the Labour government in the early 2000s) has been achieved -or not. The data here only goes up to 2018, but I'd imagine, especially with Covid, that things haven't improved.

The Tories came into power in 2010, which is exactly the point at which wait times started to exceed that target.

Ours was 13 hours the other day.

Also the Royal College of Emergency Medicine have calculated that patients waiting more than 8 hours in A&E experience harm to the point of 1 excess death for every 72 patients. I don’t know why this isn’t headline news. It’s appalling.

@barleycorn I have a lot of sympathy with the staff having been worked at the NHS.
Every staff I have ever met in A&E has been lovely and helpful.
My main concern is that the waiting times to be seen by a doctor in A&E have been getting longer and longer which leaves people concerned and worried as I have a young DC who was struggling with breathing due to viral infection and our only option was to be seen at A&E at late hours in the night when nothing was open.

You can always spot the Tories on threads like these. Blaming the astronomical wait times on people using the service unnecessarily when the reality is that they are a small number.

The truth is that GP services are so stretched that people are often getting to crisis point before they can be seen. This is coupled with an ageing population that has increasingly complex care needs, a collapse in social care and mental health services that also lead more people to crisis point, resulting in the perfect storm.

If you want better wait times at A&E, stop focusing on the odd person who turns up at the wrong place, and start demanding accountability from our leaders. Ask why central funding for local government has been decimated, leading to massive cuts in social care which has a knock on effect. Ask why immigration is in the 100000s with no real plan to increase public services accordingly. And ask why once again MPs are getting an above inflation pay rise whilst NHS staff have to beg to be recognised.

Sorry OP, I wasn’t trying to create a staff against patients divide, just venting my own frustrations!

There’s nothing more worrying than when your little one is poorly, and to be left waiting for hours to see a dr is really distressing. I hope they’re on the mend now x

Ours currently says 9h 11m wait on the app. Last time I took my Dad it was a 15 hr wait. It’s appalling.

I don’t blame the staff at all and never get arsey as it’s awful for them too. I hate seeing people giving the staff grief.

Yep my parents went to A&E recently, my Dad was instructed to go there by his GP for suddenly severe neck pain. They sat in a waiting room for 12 hours to be seen, 9am to 9pm. They said there was a man next to them who'd been waiting since 3am.

I’ve never needed to go to A&E (touch wood!) but last I heard the average wait was about 15 hours in my local
hospital.

They're strangely committed malingerers to sit on the hard floor of A&E for most of a day 😑

I have friends nurses who work for nhs and the stories they tell are really sad. They usually work over their shifts, often not having a drink so have one at station that they can pick up and are glared at by pts and relatives about who think they are standing there drinking coffee when they are actually having a drink on shop floor and not going for break as so understaffed.
One of my friends who trained in 80s said pts used to respect nhs staff but now there is a lot of verbal abuse, filming with phones which is illegal in hospitals and complaining about trivia so time is taken up dealing with for example sammy who didn't get their cup of tea (big deal) but had a jug of water because staff were dealing with a heart attack or something else more serious. Selfish and think they are the only ones who are ill.
Also the public have become very selfish and demanding but don't look at the whole picture of the wards/accident service. If they have to wait for their tablets to take home they have no patience and forget that there are many other pts drugs inpt and outpatient to sort out.
Some pts also refuse to go home as their family can't pick up till next day so bed block. My friends say some pts demand ambulance booked which costs nhs a lot because no family when they could have got a taxi. My friends have seen family visiting previously.
Another problem is when doctors visit ward the patients don't ask everything or complain after or want a sick certificate and the nurses then have to call dr back from another area so this is all very time consuming.
A lot of patients and relatives make comments to my friends or at them about when they are on the computer. They see this as not proper nursing and make comments like they're just sitting at the desk doing nothing. My friends hear this all the time.
My best mate is a ward sister and she said admission
Assessments
Discharge planning
Blood results
X-rays
District nurse
Etc etc etc etc loads more things literally everything they do has to go on computer so if they did not sit there to look at blood results or write district nurse letter or request room clean for next pt these things would not get done and pts wouldn't have a clean room to go into.
Also my friends were saying how one pt to feed and wash, log roll can take an hour so think of all the pts they are dealing with, dressings, complicated dressings, intravenous antibiotics, pain relief, setting up pumps, doctors rounds, physio rounds, obtaining drugs, talking to relatives, phone calls, very sick patients who can take up all nurse time as all hands on deck, documentation that if is not done they can in serious trouble, audits.
Most people who complain don't understand any of this and as others have said come in as inappropriate admissions.
A lot of time is spent dealing with pts who will ask you if they can have a cup of tea when nurse doing drug round, or when nurses washing soiled dying pt next door.
So please support your NHS.
The staff overall work very hard and are highly qualified, unappreciated, underpaid and undervalued.
Some of my friends said they are done after many years as just subject to verbal and physical abuse on a daily basis.
Also my friends say when doctors to ward rounds patients are so respectful and smiling and happy to see the big boss but then moan when doctors not there so nurse advocate for everyone but get treated the worst and it's not right.

9 hours is not bad for my area. I've been there for 12 with my mum who had a life threatening condition. Even with a severe trauma, you get to resus quickly but then after x-ray you're left for 15 hours without a word, any meds, peeing in a cup..(this was a guy)
Yeah, it sucks really bad. There are some people who clearly are not suffering either an accident or an emergency. This is frustrating to say the least but when someone can't see a GP that's where they try and go.