Bringing your whole fucking family to A&E

[changedlife]

Waiting to be seen at A&E. sent here by GP because DH has had an adverse blood result that needs to be dealt with.

A&E packed as usual. To be expected. However one family is here with one woman. There are 5 grown adults with the patient who is in her 30s... I don't know her issue but laughing a joking with the family. Just to add to the joy their phones go off constantly whereupon they give a blow by blow run down of her current medical state (she's hurt her foot it seems - from the latest phone update. )

DH is disabled. There is nowhere to sit In A&E. Foot-family are settled in and have actually just had a KFC delivery. I swear it's like an evening out for them.

DH can't stand. So have sent him back to wait in the car - which as he has a blue badge - is quite close. I'll call him when his turn comes. As I can stand.. However .. AIBU to think you don't need FIVE adults accompanying you to A&E. ? Especially with some really poorly older people have had to resort to sitting on the floor ? (And no one has volunteered their seat for them. )

My aunts family are like this including cousin’s daughter’s half sister (not blood related at all to aunt).

DF says thank goodness there is the M1 between them

The Boswells

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0090402/

They went everywhere together. Sorry you missed the reference.

Yes, DD spent 6 years rotating through A&E in a big city hospital. Said the same about bank holidays, no one comes in on bank holidays when they’re off work anyway. They will until the next working day to visit A&E

I detest people who do this - utterly selfish, self-centred and basically, thick.

I wish hospital staff had the same authority to deal with them as they once had. But it's not the 1950s/60s and I get it that such people can be intimidating.

Similarly with horrible, anti-social 'visitors' to wards - when whole families turn up complete with take-aways who talk loudly or play their devices. And God help anyone else, patient or staff, who suggests they consider the other patients.

I think it's part and parcel of our modern horror of seeming 'judgmental'. No-one is prepared to criticise anyone's behaviour any more - but I do understand that it's difficult for hospital staff to deal with these anti-social people.

It could be worse.
At least they don’t allow dogs yet.

I had to take DS to A+E a few weeks ago and ours was the same. Our hospital has a Greggs inside. Me and DS had been there since 5pm, we'd been triaged, sent for x Ray and was back in the waiting area at 8pm waiting for the results. At this point a family of 7 (2 adults and 5 kids) walk in with a huge greggs paper bag of food and start dishing it out amongst themselves. This was a school night with the eldest child maybe 10, why weren't the other 4 children at home with one of the parents? It can't have been urgent as by the time we had the results and were discharged they hadn't been called through. We'd been there for 4 hours (which I'm not complaining at) and arrived at a quieter time, at 8pm it was heaving so presume they'd be there longer than 4 hours so the children would be up half the night. It is mind boggling.

You can. I assure you. I’ve been subjected to the same while I was in A&E with heavy bleeding in my second trimester (incidentally, a woman came in with a ‘sore finger’, which she could move, and yelled at me when the nurse guided me out after I’d been triaged, seen, seen again by gynae, given a hug by the nurse and sent home, because finger faker hadn’t even been triaged yet), and in postnatal wards… uberEats will go anywhere, the scumbags just pick it up from outside the building. Someone also ordered a particularly potent curry when I was in the postnatal ward.

It’s selfish and shouldn’t be happening. I had to visit A+E last year over a period of 2 weeks. Being constantly sick and even the smell of food made me sick,(I had a bowel tumor) I know people need to eat, but McDonald’s and so on shouldn’t be allowed.
I saw it all, whole families, taking up 6 + seats for one patient, treating it as a day out.
People there who didn’t need to be there.
2 parents plus an aunty and grandparents there for there unwell child, plus the 3 other kids brothers and sisters, children all running about the room screaming and shouting. Not a word said. Why didn’t just the parents stay with the sick kid and the grandparents take the other kids home? I don’t know what planet some folk live on, I really don’t

Ugh. I've experienced this kind of thing too.

I get why over-worked NHS staff may not be able to exert the same authority over these nasty people as they once did (when society was more respectful in general) but surely they could bring in an official policy and a publicity campaign - with posters and notices, so at least people could point to these in support of requests to be more considerate?

Something like: just one other person in A & E, and only, say, a max of 3 visitors in wards, no food to be brought in (surely a horrible infection risk, apart from the smells etc?) and no devices - just quiet talking.

I understand why it may be difficult to enforce these rules with feral people, but I don't get why there can't be some clear rules in place.

on my order app it says can’t deliver to schools or hospitals
also I spent a month in Bristol children’s hospital and I had to walk into the centre to get a macdonalds 😞just my experience

This topic is one factor in what's wrong in the NHS. There's a lot wrong, but not all of it is to do with money - I think a lot of people realise that.

Changes in society (the cult of non-judgmentalism in particular) have caused so many problems. I had to spend time in hospital with pre-eclampsia, and the pregnant woman across from me routinely racially abused the staff and shouted insults at any black or Asian nurse/doctor who passed in the corridor. Yet no-one did anything, not even told her off! I just don't get it.

A siimple 'Do you want to be treated in this hospital, or not? If we hear any more abusive remarks you will be asked to leave' would be a start.

I would've done the same

I would have told one of them to move for your husband who's actually poorly & would have stood there making them feel awkward till they moved.

It should be one support person/vistor per patient. Half of the time these families turning up in a&e and it's not even serious they could be sat waiting at home till they got home!

It must be different for different areas ours just comes up schools

Yanbu. I should probably start my own thread for this because I'm going off on a bit of a tangent but, our a&e now has a bouncer on the door and a doctor triaging patients coming in. Possibly a good idea in theory (without the nightclub bouncer)

Obvious drug addict outside with weeping infected ulcers on each leg asking to please be let in because he was freezing his arse off after sleeping rough, and in immense pain. Doctor completely ignoring him for half an hour to have the craic with the bouncer. When doc finally comes out he could not be more obnoxious and belittling to the man, who could not have been more polite to him. Told him not to expect to just be given a bed and scalded him for discharging himself a few weeks ago - loud enough for everyone to hear.
Man now crying and saying it's because he felt so ill (needed to score) and couldn't take it anymore. He promises he will stay because he can now barely walk, pulls his bloody bandages off to plead to the doctors 'caring' side and load of dead skin comes off with them. Doc looks at him with contempt and walks back to the warm inside.

Doc sits back down for another almost half an hour, triaging walk ins who weren't half as sick as this man was, then finally lets him in after I'm assuming he had decided he had taught the dirty junkie a good lesson.

I suppose all of this is to say, id rather have an a&e that lets you bring the whole extended family than the "service" I saw last week. It was the most devastating thing I've ever witnessed, moved me to tears, and left me feeling utterly hopeless with the state of the NHS.

In school hols a lot of people treat it as a day out .Both parents and their kids plus various other relatives all arrive at AE..comandering a bank of seats..shouting in phones.
DH is having chemo and has had chemo induced pneumonia 3 times and had to visit AE.
I went with him but dd who works there rushed from her office to be with us. We got him on a wheelchair but willingly gave up any seat we might have to anyone who needed it
There are some mannerless turds out there

Being constantly sick and even the smell of food made me sick,(I had a bowel tumor) I know people need to eat, but McDonald’s and so on shouldn’t be allowed.

So, what do you suggest people get to eat, after the hospital restaurant and cafe are closed? They may have missed dinner due to the emergency, and probably face a 12 hour wait? I don’t know why people complain about eating, when it’s a biological need? Some people need to eat regularly for medical reasons?

We were there a few years ago. We’d waited 8 hours. Another woman said she’d been there since 9 am; it was 5.30 pm and she had diabetes. She had had nothing to eat, as she was on her own. Why should she suffer the consequences, because other people don’t like her eating?

My clinic when I was pregnant had signs that the men had to stand if needed.
I was there often because of GD and the among of blokes on their phones on a thursday morning was amazing!

and me trying to perch a laptop on my bump so i could do some work in the waiting room

I adore dogs however even I would draw a line at them in A&E except for assistance dogs that is - I did once see a beautiful guide dog in there. My dog would LOVE A&E from what everyone's saying - imagine all the Macdonalds and Greggs to be snaffled. However, she's not going anywhere close!!

Yes unless you have met people like this, people don't understand. They think it's exaggeration when it's really not 😂

It’s not hard to believe that a&e is probably a nicer environment than home for some of these people - warm, dry, clean - and they get some kind of misplaced excitement from the whole experience.

Similarly with horrible, anti-social 'visitors' to wards - when whole families turn up complete with take-aways who talk loudly or play their devices. And God help anyone else, patient or staff, who suggests they consider the other patients.

God, yes. When I was in hospital recovering from an emergency hysterectomy and severe blood loss, the woman in the next bed to me would have her useless partner and 4 kids there for what felt like the entire day, every day. She and partner would ignore the kids and so they'd rampage about, go and stand and stare at everyone in their beds, ask "WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS LADY MUM? MUMMMM? MUUUUUM WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE LADY!!!", then start fighting and rolling about on the floor screeching at the top of their lungs.

Nursing staff tried to stop it but they just started effing and blinding at them and that was that.

I cried with happiness when she got discharged.

YANBU - It isn't just a&e, clinic appointments have became a family day out also !

This is one of the upshots of everyone terrified to judge and desperate to 'be kind'. The bottom line is that these people live shitty, chaotic, feral lives but their behaviour used to be kept in check by society's censure.

Very rarely there might be a bona fide reason why seven family members rock up with the 'patient' and proceed to loudly scoff a McDonalds. But let's face it, 95% of the time they do it because they're ignorant, thick as shit and know no better.

So they need re-educating. They need to be judged and admonished accordingly. There needs to be security on the door of the A&E and a doctor triaging everyone before they even set foot in the place. They're about to receive first class medical treatment that is already pre-paid for them - so they should be damned grateful and respectful.

And if that means that occasionally the bona fide 5% are unfairly treated, then so be it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.