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

It's on the news every day because certain people in politics are determined to see it fail. I'm not blind to the challenges, and waiting times are too long. But they aren't the average experience.

And if people get up and leave, then the likelihood then they don't sound in need to urgent medical care. What we need to sort is the GP system, and 111. My area has a good A&E not because it's magical, or because it's better funded, but because we have out of hour GP access every evening.

We need to look for the pockets of excellent practise, and try and implement those on a wider scale.

I have been to one (not local) A&E which was terrible, so I think there's a lot of variation. Though it could have just been a snapshot and we were there on a particularly bad day. If that's normal for that area (Barnstaple!) then I could see why people might feel the NHS in crisis.

There are many of us who are quietly content with the service we receive, for the most part anyway. Good reviews never get as much publicity as bad ones, and people are less likely to praise good practise than they are complain about poor practise.

Yes, the data shows that the average wait is longer for those that end up being admitted then those who end up being treated and discharged. You're still talking about the 25% not the 75% though.

And the figures have started to show the NHS times getting better, not worse, so I'm not sure why you were assuming that it's a one-way decline. Tories have underinvested in the NHS for a very long time, it's going to take a while to turn this ship around, but we're starting to see the first indications of this.

In some district general hospitals I’ve done agency in, the nurses from the children’s ward have to cover the paediatric A&E. Leaving their own workload on the ward. Waiting times are generally shorter in larger children’s hospitals.

Because your situation is different to the vast majority. I was in correctly discharged on Sunday so that stat will be recorded incorrectly. Poor Op DD was incorrectly diagnosed and Op left when quite clearly she wasn’t listened to and not given the correct care. This is the norm for the majority of people.

I agree - patients who are admitted tend to wait longer than those who are treated and discharged — that’s exactly the point. The longer waits are concentrated among the sickest patients, which matters more clinically than averages.

Meeting the 4-hour standard for 75% of patients still means the NHS is failing its own standard in 1 out of every 4 patients!

Performance remains far below pre-covid levels and well short of targets, and long admission waits (including 12-hour waits) are still too high. A small improvement from a very low base doesn’t mean the NHS is in a positive position. It’s dire.

I dont disagree there is more to be done overall, you'll see me banging away on countless threads about housing etc, not just this labour government but Blairs as well, but in 18 months, with a dearth of workers, with a rising population, with higher expectations, to undo the damage simply takes much much longer.

Worth noting that the figures can be (and IME are being) fudged. They'll 'admit' patients within the 4 hour target but leave them sitting in a ward corridor rather than an A&E corridor so they're not being cared for within the 4 hour target.

And I say that as a Labour supporter and a fan of the NHS ideology.

I also noticed that we had a long wait to even be checked in at reception which presumably is another way of massaging the figures because until that point there's no record of us being there so that must also help reduce the " waiting times" shown in statistics

Probably because literally any time the idea of raising taxes comes up everybody shrieks with horror.

Sadly my local trust hit the news just yesterday, the waiting times have got worse in A&E and also waiting for outpatient treatment. By 10%. We are in the bottom 10 of the league.

My own experience of outpatients at the mo..
ENT diagnosed incorrectly, waited 17 months for 1st apt of which was also discharged from instantly. After 1st refusal for a second opinion, I paid £200 for a private apt, just so I could get a letter as to what he thought it was (not what ENT said which was bleeding obvious to me and to anyone). ENT have refused 2nd opinion again, found out yesterday. In the mean time, 2 years of pain. Why?

Waiting 11 months for cardiology, not had a single apt yet, no date given.
Waiting 3 years for a smear (so far) while knocked out - I have a medical condition that stops me having them awake as white hot pain. Last one was 5 years ago which they did while doing something else, they lost the sample/no record which I found out about a year ago.

My next door neighbour has heart failure. Sent to A&E twice by her doc, 12hr waiting first time then admitted for one night. 2nd time 18hr wait, despite heart rate at 160 bpm. Admitted again, one night. Sent home and was told she needed an emergency apt with cardiologist, emergency apt was a 4 month wait, which was then cancelled, no reason given. She now has another date, but is 6 months after her hospital stay. WTF?

The NHS is absolutely ruined. Yes, it will take a long time to get things up and running at the moment, but personally I've seen it continue in a downward spiral. I have yet to see any real improvement from Labour. They traditionally are better at sorting out the NHS at point of use for us folk, but I think the massive changes they want to make should be done later, at the moment we just need lives saved and people have treatment so they can go back to work/get on with their lives.

Yep. 100%. Taxes in this country have been demonised. People are also predominantly selfish.

This happened to us. Into A&E at 9pm, didn't see a doctor until 7am. Because? On paper we were only in A&E for 8 minutes! Unknowingly we were in a "clinic" inside the hospital which we later found out: 1)Wasn't part of A&E, 2)An "accident" children's doctor was on shift but not an "illness" doctor. 111 should also have fixed the problem, the doctor who came in in the morning was astonished he hadn't. We'd been kicking off all night and got nowhere, but it was the security guard who explained the problem to us in the end in the early hours. Our child needed antibiotics and was under two years old. Never going to that hospital again, no matter what.

I have a 19 year old with chronic health issues and our wait was 27 hours in a&e last week while he was wracked with pain
Its out of control . Despite him having a fever high blood cell count pain and inflamed spleen as well as a respiratory infection and bowel issues they asked him "what do you want us to do"

Disgraceful. Make sure you complain to the hospital PALS team. May not help but it registers on the hospital data, which can trigger investigation.

A south west London A&E killed my dad 18 months ago. 111 sent an ambulance which arrived within 20 minutes but A&E didn’t look for sepsis & then didn’t give him antibiotics when they did suspect it - until it was too late. Dozens of mostly old people on trolleys stacked 2-3 deep in the corridors. DH was with him (he’s a surgeon) but was ignored, blanked & lied to. The nurse on the ward which Dad was finally moved to for end of life care was evil - Dad screamed from pain for at least 4 hours before he died. We begged for drugs for him again & again. It fell to me to nurse him & try to hold him. DH removed Dad’s oxygen tube & closed his eyes (she just said ‘Yep, he’s gone’ & left again after DH told her that Dad had died). I still have flashbacks & nightmares.
We complained to PALS at the suggestion of the medical examiner & have an ongoing complaint but the trauma of that day makes it difficult to deal with (we don’t want money from the NHS). They have admitted some errors but say that the outcome would have been the same. Apparently ‘reflection’ is what staff have to do if they’ve messed up (although the nurse on the ward has no memory of anything unusual that night!).
We have decided that no one should ever be left alone in A&E, take full notes of everything & be seen to be doing so (including names & job titles), do not allow yourself to be ignored or silenced as you advocate & prepare to be very unpopular. And, yes, raise Martha’s Law. Try to do the above anyway.

@NiftyMauvePeer

Am so so sorry, this is just awful and nobody should have had to endure that. x

I keep hearing now that hospitals are not responding to PALS.

No update at the moment as to what is causing the infection, she will have a second round of antibiotics today and we should hopefully get some more detailed test results.

My heart goes out to everyone who has recounted their stories on here. It’s not good enough. I have also lived abroad where there was a health insurance system and it was excellent with minimal cost. As other posters have said those on lower incomes are still safeguarded and those that can afford to pay do. I think we have to move to this type of system. For 2024/25 the NHS paid out £3.1billion in negligence claims. I don’t think anyone can defend the NHS if we are spending that sort of money every year alongside how much obesity, lifestyle choices leading to higher cancer rates and mental health.
People have a choice over obesity and lifestyle, not mental health issues. We as a population need to take greater responsibility for the choices we make and understand that it’s not the NHS’s responsibility to fix it for them.

I will say that the dr’s and nurses on the ward have been excellent and incredibly helpful but I did have to push for the blood tests as they also said it’s probably a nasty virus. The dr seemed quite surprised with the blood tests results and asked my DH and I if either of us were medically trained. Fingers crossed we get some answers today

@SoIMO are you being deliberately obtuse. I have already explained they have said it’s bacterial not viral. You seem absolutely desperate to prove me wrong rather than accept the fact that the hospital got it wrong.

Why can’t you accept that I have a very poorly DD that should have had better treatment than what she received. I’m not entirely sure what point you are trying to prove but I am assuming you just have nothing better to do with your day than be argumentative. Quite frankly it’s bizarre

Please don’t say you're a ‘medical professional’.

They can tell from the wbc and inflammatory levels if it’s bacterial or viral.

I hope she improves quickly and glad you are getting decent care.

I always wonder why they can’t train more nurses to take bloods at triage so they can see if there are any concerns and send home. I don’t understand the need to wait for a doctor when they seem to be in such a short supply.

It seems like in pediatrics the ward doctor is also often the a&e doctor, it happened to us when my child was on the ward and suddenly needed to alot of intervention to keep her sats up , the doctor came up from a&e and had to stay with her all night, putting her on different types of machines in Hdu etc so then there was no doctor in a&e. In the morning they transferred her to picu but I remember thinking it was crazy there was not a doctor on the ward, and a different doctor in a&e!!!

Her consultant was “on call” all night at home (asleep) and they didn’t phone her as they didn’t want to disturb her…also seemed wrong. That consultant was also angry the next day when she hadn’t been informed of what was happening. If they had called her in, the registrar could have gone back to a&e.

It was a total mess, they seem scared to call the consultant I have noticed even when they are just in the office! We spent many years in and out of different hospitals.

@Hazelmaybe I always wonder why they can’t train more nurses to take bloods at triage so they can see if there are any concerns and send home. I don’t understand the need to wait for a doctor when they seem to be in such a short supply.

Who's going to interpret the blood results? It's not about taking the bloods, a junior member of staff can do that (support worker or phleb, not nurse).

@Sophiablue95 They can give an indication, but they're not diagnostic.

OP hasn't actually said before that they're sure it's bacterial.