To think 70% of people shouldn’t be in A&E

[PrettyPleaseXo]

Recently I was admitted in excruciating pain to A&E due to kidney stones. Over the time I was there it got progressively busier as expected and there was corridor care (I was stuck in a corridor without pain relief and crying in pain for two hours) and ambulances backed up out the door.

When I was discharged and went back out through the A&E reception/wait room I couldn’t help but notice
that 80% of the people sat there looked perfectly fine, chatting etc and didn’t appear to be in either an accident or emergency.

AIBU to think that unless you’re seriously unwell, in acute pain or have an injury that needs immediately addressing you should be turned away from A&E and told to go
to the GP instead?

Kidney stones...should you have been there??

I dare say my NEED to be there was greater than yours, even though I was talking & not in great pain.

🙄🙄🙄

I think it's fair to say you just didn't think. Other people weren't crying in pain, like you, so you didn't think they needed help, unlike you who did 🙄🙄

Cried apparently.

My DD looked fine when we were sitting in children’s A&E two years ago. To look at her, you wouldn’t know we’d just been phoned by the lab doctor asking us to come in urgently because DD’s blood glucose had shown up above normal range. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and admitted, still feeling fine (I caught it early).

I don’t disagree that GP and other services need to be improved so that people can be seen. At my GP I can make an appointment for a week or two on, or I can see a GP/have a phone consultation on the day if it’s something that can’t wait. My DD’s blood test took place two days after I called the surgery with concerns about her tiredness.

We have no way of making GP appointments after they shut down the online booking facility which closes not long after opening. None no online booking or phone system.This seems to be widespread with online booking making it harder to book appointments than the old system for many. For those of us that work and are thus pushed out of getting GP appointments A&E is likely to be an even more increasingly used option.

Governments need to take the flack not patients .

It's not @CassandraWebb who must have a 'sad little life'.

I am SO sorry to hear about you Mum, I'm sorry she didn't get the care & treatment she should have had 🌷

That last bit will be me very shortly. I've done myself a serious sports injury, I've been told (by two different medical professionals) that I need to go to A&E for a scan, for logistical reasons my family will need to wait with me until we know what's going on, and yes we may well talk to each other while we're there and we still need to eat. If I'm sat still I'm in very little pain so I'm sure I would seem to have 'no ostensible issues', but I may well end up being immobile - or at least on crutches - for months. If you like I can do a bit of performative groaning every now and again in case a judgy ignorant Mumsnetter happens to walk past.

It's much easier to blame patients for being at the wrong place for medical care rather than begin to imagine how you would go about fixing the system which is not working....

I'm sure there are lots of people in A&E who don't need to be there but are there because they can't get the help they need from their GP.

Nail on the head. The entire NHS needs reform starting with GP surgeries which aren’t fit for purpose anymore.

Did you know that the Scottish and England& Wales NHS systems are completely separate? So when we raced up to Scotland when my dad was admitted to hospital in Dec and then got stuck there for several weeks, and my daughter was going to run out of her epilepsy medication, and I was told no, our GP couldn't send a prescription to a pharmacy in Scotland, and we would have to go to A& E (it's a controlled drug and has to be signed off by two consultants). There was a 12 hour wait in A& E so we drove home and went back up a few days later! And people may say "that's incorrect you should/could have..." but this is the advice we were given by the NHS. And it was to go to A&e.

They absolutely are not and all need to be under one dep instead of autonomous, doing the same thing whilst being held to account if they’re not. Then we will all know where we stand, what service we should be getting and the I’m all right Jack brigade can experience what others are. The government would also be less able to get away with hiding the shit service that is going on in many GP practices.

It is really concerning how many people think illness is a visible, performative thing.

It's such a dangerous and ignorant assumption.

Just take anaphylaxis for instance, I just had to completely amend the draft first aid plan my daughter's new school sent me, because it said you would know someone had anaphylaxis as there would be "very visible swelling and hives". That's not necessarily the case at all. My son has had his airway closing but no outward symptoms at all (other than a very slight pallor).
(It also said to take the child to the first aid room, which made me very cross as it is well known you don't move a person who is having a suspected allergic reaction)

Maybe waited until I got toxic shock and would be deemed worthy of A&E attendance.

My son passed out in the shower and slipped and banged his head. No blood but a bump, and as it turns out, concussion. He was laughing and joking with me in the waiting room. We were told to go to A&E. You’re not really qualified to make an assessment on someone’s health.

Possibly something to do with the gate-keeping of doctors? Few years ago DH had a bad cold, and then started vomiting. It went on for days with no improvement, until even water made him vomit. Since his under-eyes were black and his piss was brown and he could barely get up to go to the toilet I rang the GP. Predictably, a receptionist offered me the option to ring back in another week if no improvement. Following day was a weekend, he’d visibly deteriorated and 111 told me to bring him to OOH. We waited two hours and saw a nurse who gave him a row for coming into a waiting room when he might be infectious (?) She administered an anti-emetic and told him he HAD to drink and would be fine.

Next day but one, DH went down like a sack of spuds grabbing his chest. I phoned the GP and said it was an emergency and he needed a doctor right now. They said if it was that bad phone an ambulance. I said okay, then they made me hold and then came on and said ‘doctor says bring him in’ - despite the fact that at this point DH was struggling to breathe and couldn’t walk without me taking his weight. GP said as soon as DH fell through the door ‘looks like pneumonia, son.’ Ambulance came to the surgery to get him. Not only pneumonia, but his lung had collapsed; cue a week and a half in hospital.

Now, we shoulda gone to A&E, right? But when? Before his lung collapsed, ideally, I guess. But the OOH nurse treated him like a malingering nuisance, and the prevailing opinion is, as we see often on here, even with people who turn out to have sepsis, stay away from A&E unless your head is hanging off.

Kinda feels like it would be handy to be able to access a GP before it gets to the nee-naw stage, what do we think.

Bit of a positive story about how brilliant A&E can be . A friend of mine had an 18 month old baby fitting and not coming out of the fit. Baby had been unwell for a day or two before. She ran into A&E carrying Baby and screaming for help. A nurse dumped the patient she was about to take through and ran over, grabbed the baby, and ran straight through to resus. Within seconds of arriving at A&E six people were working to save her baby. This was before they even knew his name. Turned out he had meningitis. He is now a fit and health teen. Mum is convinced if she had been ten minutes longer he would have been dead.

It is true that many people in A&E probably don’t ‘need’ to be there but many of them think they do and so attending is not unreasonable. It is also the case that there are tests that can be and need to be done in hospital in a timely manner .Patients can look well eg the pp with a tendency to blood clots but where a missed diagnosis has potentially catastrophic outcomes .Better education around health would be very helpful to give us confidence as to how to use services and what constitutes an emergency.

What a brilliant idea!! X

Not everyone sitting in A&E will be a patient, some will be relatives and friends supporting the patient, so will be chatting. I’ve only seen one person in A&E who physically didn’t need to be there, and he told me that. He was convinced he was going to suddenly die and would rather sit in the A&E entrance all night than at home, just in case his heart suddenly stopped. I actually felt really sorry for him.
I do think 111 advise people to go to A&E when they might not need to, but there’d be an outcry if someone died after 111 told them to have a cup of tea and stay at home. 111 told me to take my adult DS to A&E when he was violently vomiting after swallowing river water. I didn’t and DS was perfectly fine by the next morning. I’d just wanted some advice on how to best treat DS at home. (MN were no help with advice and I was nastily accused of trolling for not taking DS to A&E )

It’s a valid point but it completely depends on the reason for the GP appointment. If you she. An infection fair enough, but you can wait to see the doctor two weeks of you need to have an annual checkup for a chronic condition for example.

The compounded problem is people running to the doctor over every little thing and then the number who miss appointments.

This is absolutely a big contributing factor. In our area it’s 4-6 weeks for a routine GP appointment or telephone queuing for an emergency on the day appointment, which are hideously scarce. So you’re kinda stuck in a limbo where you don’t feel like you qualify for A & E but also might struggle to potentially wait days/weeks to see someone. More GP cover could reduce A & E visits substantially.

Although I do agree that there will be a number of people there who really don’t need to be, as someone else said, this has been drastically cut down by the sheer Hell of the current reality of A & E wait times etc.

Are they running to the doctor over everything though? It’s a battle to even get on the system in some areas. Why are people in their droves going to be choosing to go to the doctor over every little thing when juggling appointments with work is often extremely difficult and stressful?

I wonder if AI could be useful? I had a black mark under a nail a couple of years ago. Apparently this is typically what cancer looks like. I did an online consultation with my GP including a picture. They fast track refered to hospital appointment. I went, doctor there had a good look at it, took a picture on her phone and expanded it to have a better look. Told me it was nothing to worry about. I can't help thinking my GP could have just sent my original picture to the skin cancer consultant or even got AI to look at it, very quickly, no cause for concern, no appointments needed. I don't know, maybe the skin doctor needed to physically see me, see my overall condition, to aid diagnosis?