5hr Wait to see a Dr with sick child - how are we at this point

[IAmADancer]

Just that really. Called 111 as my DD is poorly, very high temp, vomiting, lethargic, can’t put chin to her neck as it hurts. Was told she had to attend A&E.

She is currently sat on a plastic chair, looking horrendously pale and feeling so unwell. Seen the nurse and been told it’s a 5 hr wait for a dr.

Why do we accept this as the norm, it’s awful. I feel so frustrated that this is the best we can expect and that a small child who is obviously poorly is left to wait this long

Sorry to see your update OP. I usually defend the NHS but they messed up here big time. I hope your DD begins to recover very soon. Take care of yourself too x

Probably because it's not the NHS itself at fault. I am not sure that you understand how underfunded and on a knife edge it is at the moment. I am NHS, I won't say which Trust but they face a HUGE financial deficit. There are constant cuts which yes means less staff available. Our Trust seems to be constantly at critical incident level at the moment, can you imagine what that is like for the staff?
Also I am not taking aim but just to clarify OP took her daughter home in the night. She would have been seen sooner had she not done this.

@IAmADancer i am so sorry to hear this and hope your DD is ok. My DS had meningitis last year and was triaged quickly thanks to a quick thinking nurse. I'm sorry you haven't had the same experience.

I know how scary this all is. Feel free to DM me if you want to chat about meningitis.

I'm sorry you've had to fight to be seen. It's not right at all and you were correct to keep persisting.

How can you blame lack of staff on utter incompetence? Absolute beggars belief.

A medical professional has wrongly diagnosed a child with a sore throat when they had a non blanching rash, fever and other worrying symptoms which suggest meningitis or sepsis. At the very least, OP DD should have had her bloods taken last night.

She had a sick kid lying on plastic chairs having already waited hours to then be told it would be another 6 hours at least before her child was seen.

This is appalling.

Despite working for the NHS you should be able to acknowledge that this is unacceptable without putting the burden of responsibility back on the mother.

I'm not blaming the NHS. This sorry state of affairs is predominately due to underfunding by successive Governments with a dash of ineptitude from Trust Managers.

The state of the NHS is awful. I have had similar experiences in A and E as well. It is not just funding though. There's a lot of money wasted.

Our local hospital whick serves a population over about 160,000 is currently advertising for a culture and people manager- basically a bit of a non job designed to stop staff leaving in droves and a bit of EDI stuff. The salary offered is £170k! That's 4 band 6 nurses or a consultant and a nurse.

I know there is a need for management but they are bloated and the money wasted on excessive non clinical staff is criminal!

As I have said previously I had the same situation myself over Christmas. We took our child in approx 5pm and would not have been seen until midnight, so yes I have lived it and agreed it is horrendous. My post is merely saying there is no point raging at the NHS, do you really think the Drs and Nurses want to be in this position?

Hope she improves quickly.
It's really infuriating when nobody listens to you. I hope there are no long lasting effects.

Gosh I’m so sorry OP I hope she recovers soon.

Just wanted to say some children may not look unwell or you may wonder why they are there but sometimes children can look normal when they are quite unwell.

My son gets croup 6-8 times a year and every time is an ambulance call or rush to hospital as he can’t breathe, once he has steroids he calms and looks almost normal. You wouldn’t look at him and think he’s unwell.

Good luck x sorry about your experience

@WimbyAce i took her home because to be honest with you the nurses didn’t seem to give a shit. I got a lot of shoulder shrugging and it’s probably just a virus. I told them all of the symptoms she was having, showed them the weird marks that had come up, explained her odd and out of character behaviour and everything else that had happened.

If I, as a non trained medical professional, can see the serious red flags that raises then why on earth didn’t the nurses. I understand that it’s winter and there are viruses but you can’t dismiss and gaslight every parent that comes In to A&E as otherwise they doubt themselves and feel stupid. I was made to feel as if I was wasting peoples time as it was ‘just a virus’. I nearly didn’t go to the GP this morning as I thought I was probably being silly (especially if you read some of the responses on here) but thank god I did.

Just because you work in the NHS and it’s underfunded , doesn’t absolve you of being crap at your job and not listening to parents.

Sadly I’m not surprised, we previously waited 5 hours for and x-ray to be requested on my son’s obviously broken arm. The whole system is backed up because of shortages of community care staff. Then there is delays in transfers to other services like mental health. I worked for the NHS for 25 years.
hope you’re child is improving and home soon.

This is rubbish. I went on Saturday night with a poorly baby and was seen within 1 hour. Childrens A&E. Went to with a different DC a few years back and see amazingly quickly twice

No I agree they should have done more lastnight when she was triaged and they did ignore the red flags. As others have said you need to follow this up later as this is unacceptable.
I think I was just trying to clarify the timeline as some people hadn't read all posts so didn't appreciate you had gone home, seen GP and then returned to hospital.

I how she starts to recover with the antibiotics. Sorry she’s going through this it is not good enough.

I would mention that you are worried she has meningitis as quick treatment is essential . I assume that's what you're thinking ? Hope she gets seen soon .

It really isn't good enough. You're absolutely right OP. I know people think the only alternative is the US model - which is shit- but it's not.

I've lived in U.K., US and Switzerland. The Swiss ha e the best model which most European countries have a version of. Requirement to buy health insurance with minimum coverage which is very good. State pays if you can't afford it. By the way the top rate of income tax in Switzerland was around 25% if my memory is correct.

I'll start by saying that I hope your daughter is okay, and that I agree the healthcare situation is bad. But if your daughter had serious red flag symptoms she would (or should) have been triaged as more serious, and seen quicker. It's obviously impossible for me to say from your posts whether they messed up or not, but given that you felt safe to leave A&E and take her home, I'm going to say they were right that she wasn't in imminent danger and could have waited the 5 hours to see the doctor. If you had waited, she'd have been admitted to the ward and started on antibiotics sooner. I don't really know what you wanted them to do, they didn't turn you away, just didn't move you ahead of other patients. And you have no way of knowing who was more or less sick.

Could not agree with you more OP, best wishes for a quick recovery for your girl x

Yet how many billions to Ukraine?

@IAmADancersorry your daughter is so unwell
sometimes you’ve to trust your gut - similar to you I went home the first time from a&e but saw a GO the next day who sent me straight to a children’s ward - my child looked outwardly well other than a strange loss of balance and incontinence. Over the course of a week and multiple a&e visits I was told she had constipation and regularly fobbed off - by day 7 she was paralysed with a neurological disorder and in ICU

@owlpassport her daughter DID have serious red flag symptoms and it should be flagged and complained about to get better triage systems in place because she should have been seen much earlier with the symptoms she had.

When DS had a spreading non blanching rash (alongside high temp and lethargy) the triage nurse told me initially to sit down and wait and it would be at least 2 hours (I also had a letter from a GP) a friend has lost her child to a rare strain of meningitis 3 months previously and had been held up by the same A&E (the outcome would have been the same it was an incredibly rare strain) and they should have had new procedures in place. A fact I told her - we were then seen quickly and IV drugs given which worked v fast from memory

i live in switzerland now and the medical care is incredible, but not cheap and yes, everyone has to pay into it (as long ad they have an income). had to take my 3 month old to a and e due to high temp - was seen by a consultant in less than 30 mins even if that was the only symptom she had. had a host of checks and tests done and were home in 3 h.. this was on a saturday night. it seems to me that ppl in the uk believe the choice is between nhs style and us in terms of healthcare.. none of the best performing health systems in europe employ either system.

wishing all the best for your daughter op, hope she makes a smooth recovery

As I said, it's impossible for me to say if they messed up. We weren't there, we don't know exactly what symptoms she had and OP says her temperature was down when they assessed her. But as the daughter made it to the GP, the triage assessment that she could wait a few hours seems to have been accurate. Would it have been better if she'd been seen immediately? Of course, but we don't have the resource.

I’m so terribly sorry OP. I really hope your DD gets better soon. I can only imagine how traumatic it was also knowing that your friend lost their child to meningitis.

I just wanted to add that I took my friend who is 50 and a cancer survivor to an A&E in London on Friday with a kidney infection, she was confused and shaking (fobbed off by GP who insisted she couldn’t have a kidney infection and refused to give her any more antibiotics despite her deteriorating despite taking a three day course for a UTI).

I was so worried she may have sepsis - there are 10,000 avoidable deaths a year in the NHS (of a total of 42,000 sepsis deats) due to sepsis per this guardian article from last year https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/26/patients-dying-of-sepsis-because-medics-too-slow-to-spot-it-warns-nhs-watchdog . And another friend of mine had sepsis and spent a week in hospital due to a kidney infection. Another friend of my sister’s died in hospital from sepsis while being treated for a lung infection.

A similar utterly mental situation at the A&E - also told after waiting 2 hours it would be another 5 hour wait at 2am and she couldn’t stay on the chair all night. So we went home. She saw a different GP in the morning who insisted she needed to go to hospital immediately, was sent back and is now in hospital being treated for sepsis.

The lack of care is an outrage and it’s terrifying, I don’t know how this can be what counts as emergency care in a first world country. Somethings got to change. Another guardian article from last year said there are 320 deaths a WEEK as a direct result of delays in accessing emergency care https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/15/nhs-corridor-care-torture-patient-deaths-staff-nightmares

A 24 hour turn around for labs for your DD (let alone the nightmare to get her admitted) is just unacceptable. I really hope she’s ok