To say stop moaning about A&E

[Darkcarpark]

My son (21) dislocated his shoulder and I took him to A&E. They were absolutely fabulous with him, because it was an emergency! He had bloods taken, X-rays, two doctors and a nurse manipulate his shoulder back into place with morphine and a further X-ray, all in under 3 hours. So I just want to say to all the people moaning about A&E waiting times to think about whether you were a genuine accident or emergency and for anyone what has had good experiences of A&E to put a shout to the staff that are there for us in our time of need.

I'm so sorry to hear that

That is absolutely bleak. I'm so sorry she experienced that.

You're one of those people who thinks that because of the experience you had, every other experience must be the same.
You can't possibly apply critical thinking to the matter to understand that some people genuinely do have awful experiences. And those awful experiences are for a variety of reasons including the NHS is on its knees or working in the NHS doesn't make somebody a good person. Some of them are arseholes, just like in every other walk of life.

So maybe just try and understand that not everybody has the experience you did, and their opinion on the NHS is just as valid as yours.

So sorry.

Glad it was a positive experience for you.

Good for you.

Here we have 12 hour waiting times sometimes- we live in a tourist area so as well as dealing with everyone who lives in the area, it's packed with holidaymakers too and can't cope with the numbers.

When I’ve been in A+E as a cancer patient on chemotherapy with neutropenic sepsis - which is life threatening - I’ve spent hours with no treatment listening to patients with pancreatitis who have said they have a single small sherry at Christmas and eventually, after about 8 hours, admitted they were drinking a litre of rum per day, so it’s a lottery.

How are you defining what a “real emergency” is? Are you basing this on your own judgment of how people look or do you actually know what’s wrong with everyone in the department? A lot of very unwell/injured people don’t necessarily exhibit obvious signs. You don’t have to have lost consciousness or be bleeding out to warrant A&E.

When I read “real emergency” I think of heart attack, stroke, serious allergic reaction, appendicitis etc. A broken bone or dislocation can be seen in minor injuries…

@heroinechic our minor injuries can’t X-ray as I’ve said, so any and all suspected breaks has to be seen in A&E. I agree it should be able to be seen in minor injuries if it’s a walking wounded suspected wrist fracture or something (as opposed to half a femur sticking out of a leg which is definitely fully an emergency), but reality is it can’t. I think minor injuries here is like going to the school nurse for a cold compress.

@Darkcarpark, well the next time we’re in A and E, I’ll remember your story and make sure I keep my thoughts to myself.

When you get off your high horse, maybe consider visiting A and E majors or resus, I think you may change your tune.

Minors - like your son had, should be straight forward, X-ray and treat, job done. Unfortunately, for people like my 22 year old with complex health conditions, it’s very different.

The last visit he had, he was on a trolley for 48 hours waiting for a surgeon to replace his blocked feeding tube. His medication had to go through an IV and couldn’t have nutrition as he’s nil by mouth. Following the operation, he spent a week in hospital due to the infection caused by the delay.

The previous visit, was pneumonia and sepsis, where he was too frail for ICU so the long wait was due to finding a bed on a general ward.

We know he would have died both times had we not nursed him ourselves.

Be careful what you wish for, in a blink of an eye your future could change drastically.

So no, I won’t stop moaning when the NHS isn’t fit for purpose for anything other than minor ailments.

Our minor injuries is only 9-5. Others are short hours. Xray is only part time.

Minor injuries closes at 3. They deal with minors 8n A&E after that by having a quick and efficient triage system at which the nurse fixes a minor injury and you are in your way. About an hour for me this Friday. For what it’s worth I rang 111 for advice about my injury, expecting to be told what to do with it until minor injuries was next open but they told me to go to A&E so I did. Unless you arrive in an ambulance you have to be referred by 111 or another medical team, so nobody is there that medics don’t think needs attention.

I'm so sorry.

Was recently sent to "ambulatory care" (which is a clinic within A&E that GP's can refer you to) for suspected DVT.

Had my bloods taken within the hour, was then told to go off and have a coffee and return for results in another hour. Unfortunately blood test didn't clear me so I was given injectable blood thinners, and shown how to administrator the jab so I could do the second one at home. All within 3 hours.

All the while the staff apologised for the wait and said how busy they were.

(Didn't have DVT thankfully, had a full leg doppler scan the next day at 10am with an appointment at 11am in back in ambulatory care to discuss the results. Was on the bus home 10:45am with the all clear!!)

I realise this isn't A&E proper but only difference is it's for GP patients and not walk-ins. It was still very busy / no seats in waiting room etc but I cannot fault the care, the speed, the coordination of the various things I needed etc. Sent an email to head of the clinic to that effect.

I am expressing gratitude.

Cobblers, you are trying to express moral superiority.

And why do you need to express gratitude anyway?
Are people grateful when you do your job?
Hospital workers are paid to be there you know.

Actually yes, I am grateful when people help me, even if they are paid to. Aren’t you?

When you spend 16 hours in A & E with ‘suspected’ appendicitis and then get put into a temporary ward (bed with no pillow or blanket) for a further 24 until they finally take you seriously and remove your gangrenous appendix please come back and reaffirm that we should all be grateful and stop moaning.

I had a heart attack in January waited 3 hours to be triaged was given my folded ecg to give to another hospital in an hours time for an ooh appointment and sent away it wasn't until I unfolded the ecg and Google the terminology printed on the ecg that I knew it was a heart attack, luckily when I got to my ooh the doctor had received my blood results and ecg and had an ambulance in 10 minutes taking me back to the original hospital, emergencies do get overlooked sometimes but that doesn't mean my experience would happen everywhere and neither would yours.

My Dad was admitted after collapsing at home - paramedics thought he was in early heart failure and he was blue lit in. He sat on a hard chair in tears in A & E for 26 hours before being found a bed and then moving around 5 wards in 3 days. No one was co-ordinating his tests and the last ward he was on had a C Diff outbreak so visitors were banned. He was told alone that he was terminally ill with liver cancer and that yes, his heart was failing too. He died 4 months later.

I've never come across such apathetic uncaring staff in my life as we did in that hospital. It's a disgrace, and needs calling out on. Those staff are employed, and employed to care.

On this occasion although I realize the staff are massively overstretched one look at my ecg would have told her in writing I was having a heart attack so I do feel massively let down :/

I’m glad you had a good experience, and of course it’s wonderful to feed that back to staff. This has not been my/DP’s experience. He had 4 heart attacks within 3 years; not once was he taken seriously, despite his medical history. For the 4th one they tried to send him home to “follow up” with his gp, despite his history. They only did a blood test for troponin because we both insisted we would not be leaving until it was done.

DP is dead now. He had an aneurysm (caused by another doctor, ironically) which A&E staff kept insisting was musculoskeletal pain. He went to A&E one last time, in appalling pain. They realised too late the aneurysm was leaking and didn’t even call me to tell me DP was dying (I couldn’t go in the ambulance as had to stay home w DC until someone could come to watch them).

Like a twat, I stopped off at the hospital M&S to get us some snacks on my way to him, which was our tradition. By the time I arrived, he had already lost consciousness and I had to infer from the fact he wasn’t being monitored any more and was hooked up to a syringe driver that he was dying. No one told me this at any point—after 2 hours I flagged down a doctor and asked. He was in pain and they did very little for pain relief despite repeated requests (syringe driver was morphine, which was on record as being ineffective in his case;I repeatedly raised this with staff) until 6 hours later when the (wonderful) palliative care consultant arrived and took over.

DP was my world; he was kind and good and was treated as though he was an unimportant, subhuman inconvenience by the majority of A&E staff he encountered, despite never once attending for anything less than a life-threatening condition. Across 3 different trusts, btw, so not a “local” problem. So yeah, I will “moan” about it.

I’m so glad when people tell me they’ve had a positive experience, but be aware that that doesn’t in any way disprove or cancel out the awful ones.

My 80-year old mum was kept on an ambulance for six hours, then on a bay in A&E for 72 hours before being moved to a ward. At one point she was on that bay right next to an extremely aggressive man who was threatening all sorts. I was terrified, and I wasn’t an elderly bed-bound woman. It was like a war zone.

So, no, I’m not going to be grateful for the inhumane, substandard health service that we have in this country.

A&E was extremely busy when I went with my newborn a few nights ago, so yes a lot of people would have been waiting a long time - but they triage based on who needs help as soon as possible. As I was with a newborn, I was zoomed through much quicker.

They were absolutely fantastic and I have no complaints, I also haven’t had an issue the other 3 times I’ve been over the last few years.