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

How is your dd now op? I hope you have seen the dr?

afew years ago DS had a nasty accident at school that meant he had bent loose (adult) teeth and a large gash to his chin and lip. It looked like blood was pouring from his mouth (obviously mixed with salvia) we wait ed in a&e 6 hours , ds couldn’t eat and struggled to drink. There was no doctor, they had to pop down from adult a&e sporadically. The doctor we eventually saw did not know what to do , he rang a children’s hospital (45 min away) for advise. Couldn’t stitch /tape it by then so he basically told us to purée food and got us an appointment at the children’s hospital the next day. The children’s hospital were fantastic and saved his teeth, they were appalled the cuts weren’t treated at all and DS has significant scarring to his chin now.
Our local hospital is a 5 minute drive from our house, I will drive 30 min to minor injuries or 45 min to children’s or 35 min to a different towns a&e now rather than go there (based on several negative experiences) Never waited more than 1 hour at the other 3 hospitals.

@IAmADancer , how is your DD?

But this misses the point. There should be capacity to see genuinely urgent cases more quickly than currently - the underfunding since 2010 has reduced capacity so the public are now all at risk.

The child has a red flag symptom for meningitis which should be seen much more quickly. The absolute target used to be 4 hours which was for everything including e.g. needing an x-ray to check if a wrist is sprained or broken.

5 hours to check possible meningitis is too long.

Absolutely. The plan all along was to defund public services to the point they don't work, then use the fact that they don't work as an excuse to privatise the whole thing.

OP I really hope you got some answers and some sleep, and crossing my fingers it wasn't as serious as it was looking.

I hope you've been seen by now but if you haven't, keep monitoring her and if your gut is that she's deteriorating, keep making a fuss. Mum's instinct is very powerful and too often ignored in my personal experience - you know when something's not right

What were average A&E wait times in 2010, 2011, 2012?
What were average A&E wait times in 2023, 2024, 2025?

It’s not an agile service and it has lots of inefficiency - including ‘triaging’ which doesn’t always triage effectively. Attended a drop in with a small child at the weekend- ‘triage’ saw us and we had a 3.5 hour wait to be told at the appointment that we then needed Childrens A+E. Which, given the age of the child, this should have meant we were not waiting 3.5 hours. Once at A+E we were admitted to assessment and finally a ward. This took 9 hours. Assessment unit was not busy and at one point we even heard them casually inquiring if we had been seen. It then took 5 hours to be discharged yesterday after doctor on the morning round said we didn’t need to be there. We had to push for discharge. In the end we were discharged with the very minor and cheap medication that we had gone to drop in for in the first place - it’s a medication that has to be prescribed that our region won’t prescribe through the pharmacy scheme for under 2s. Condition had worsened after the first course was complete.

So sorting some of this out would help. There is some evidence that you triage via the higher trained clinical staff and not the HCA, as the clinical staff more effectively triage. But the NHS don’t do this

@Soubriquet hope you’re feeling better very soon 💐💐💐

14 years of the Tories and a media which has brainwashed people to think tax = bad.

@QuickPeachPoetdid you miss where op stated she is worried about meningitis? Which is in actual fact a medical emergency !

How is your DD now ? I hope things stabilised overnight

I don't know how Nigel Farage dares show his face these days, the destruction caused by Brexit (with lies on buses) and then he just changes the name of the party and continues to push destruction, blaming others while plotting an NHS that would bankrupt the sick with fees.

The NHS has been in a bad way for years but his 'work' has certainly caused structural problems that has prevented improvement.

I hope your little one has been seen now and is doing well.

🙄

9 years ago I was able to take dd1 to a walk in clinic by my parents home. We were visiting. She was triaged,nurse was particularly concerned and she was pushed to next in line and saw the Dr within 10 minutes. An ambulance arrived in 5 minutes and she was blue lighted to hospital. That walk in centre has gone from having 3 doctors and 2 nurse practitioners to 1 doctor and 2 nurse practitioners. As a result waiting times are much higher and when my sister has needed to use the service has been told to take her children straight to A and e. The idea of the walk in centre was initially for people who couldn't see their own gp for whatever reason getting to see a hcp and taking away some pressure on a and e.It was a fab system which has been chronically underfunded and the service has eroded.

I hope your dd has been seen and is doing better. x

Hope your DD is feeling better OP. Agree. 5 hour wait is not acceptable. Unfortunately it, and even longer is the norm. As is people passing away in ambulances outside the hospital doors or corridors which is also appalling. Our healthcare system is broken and feel for the staff trying their very best often in impossible circumstances. Wards often no better. One Consultant on a Sunday in our local hospital a couple of years ago was said to be only Dr in charge of over 100 patients… how do they begin to give them all care in a shift!? Let alone good care.

I hope she has been seen and getting treatment. I was in our walk in centre for 3hrs yesterday, I broke my tibia. Went at 4pm it was really busy and people just kept coming. They had to start turning people away well before the closing time as they just wouldn’t be seen. There just isn’t enough funding/staff. Unfortunately the US system so lauded by NF etc seems to be utterly rubbish too.

The service from the NHS was much better under the last Labour government, it just was. So much so that Private healthcare providers were complaining, as people weren’t using their services anymore.

The NHS now, still does incredible work .. if you have a terrible accident, you will be looked after by highly skilled professionals. You can call an ambulance, and nobody is charging you for it. We don’t have people dying from easily managed conditions, such as Diabetes, because they can’t afford the meds. The NHS is free at point of service, that’s fantastic. I have been on thr cancer diagnosis pathway twice in the last 18 months, I have been referred, scanned, biposied, and diagnosed (all ok), within a couple of weeks … and nobody asked me once if I could pay.

i think A&E are struggling for a few reasons; too much “Dr Google”; people going to hospital for symptoms that could be managed at home; forums like this one saying “A&E now” when it’s just not necessary; lack of access to GPs (much of this is how practices set themselves up): Increasingly older population; People who like to go to A&E to put it on their socials; under-investment in Mental Health Services; under-investment in Social Care; increasingly litigious society .. so 111/ambulance service send people to A&E “just in case”

It’s not an easy fix … and I would much sooner know it’s there, than throw myself at the mercy of the American system

You're right OP, 5 hours is an absolute joke. Having sat in a crowded A&E dept with a very poorly child with croup for 6 hours before, I totally sympathize.

The NHS is no longer fit for purpose. I wish there were a private A&E - I'd pay for that in a heartbeat!

It's not because it's misused. We need to start looking after ourselves, using services correctly and not misusing ambulances and A&E so that when kids like this are in, they can actually be seen.

This is true. In 2010 the Economist did a comparison of the world’s national health services, assessing outcomes but also access and the UK won. The figures in 2010-12 were the best they ever were. You often hear the Conservatives talking about the NHS in 2012, because that’s as far into their tenure as they got before the results of austerity started to show in the statistics.

The NHS is like a tanker. It takes a while for the results of reforms - for good or ill - to take effect. It’s already the case that widespread 20 hour waits are a thing of the past. But that’s scant comfort to the OP, who is rightfully furious.

I sincerely hope the OP’s child has been seen by a doctors now and it’s good news. I think the only thing you can do in a situation like this is to keep saying “I believe this is meningitis” - because staff are well aware they are always at risk of losing someone while things are this stretched and that if so there will be an investigation. Hard to claim there was no suggestion of meningitis (or sepsis in another case) if you’re constantly using the word

In 2001 I waited 11 hours for the call back from a doctor with symptoms that could have been meningitis from 111 with a 9 month old. Phoned middle of the night on a Wednesday.
I knew it wasn't iyswim but the symptoms I'd given could have been. By the time they'd called back I'd been to the GP and got antibiotics for tonsillitis for her.

Between 2004 and 2010 I had a number of A&E trips with various children. Wait times to see a doctor at their worst was over 12 hours (potentially broken ankle that one- there was a very long wait for an x-ray, I think, which held it up)
A number of these trips were ds who had a bit of a tendency to get non-fading rashes when even minorly unwell.

Last time I went for a DC was in 2023 and ds was whisked straight in, didn't even get to sit down after triage. He was on a drip withing half an hour of arriving.

So wait times have always varied. It depends on who else was in first, what they'd seen at triage and how busy they were overall.

I'd agree that it would be interesting to see the genuine comparative wait times for a number of years.
We get people frequently saying " I waited this long-the NHS is broken" but I'm not convinced it is worse.

In around 2018 I called 999 to get an automatic message saying to hang up and try later as all their lines were full (Wednesday lunch time).
In 2010 I waited 90 minutes for an ambulance with a gentleman who'd been in a car accident and couldn't stand.
In 2008 I waited in A&E for 8 hours before we were seen with dd2, sent by the GP with suspected appendicitis.
In 2000 when I gave birth to dd1 some ladies in labour were told to go to another hospital ( would have been 20-30 minutes drive) because they were full ...

I agree with you OP! It’s awful for a child to have to wait that long when they’re unwell.

I now have a DS who point blank refuses to go to A and E because of the wait times - he has ADHD so just can’t cope. Recently told by a dr to go for an x ray when he had an injury and couldn’t get him there - so we were lucky it turned out not to be broken and healed on its own.

They also make the chairs in children’s A and E rock hard and as uncomfortable as possible - whilst at my local hospital adult a and e has lovely reclining chairs, just to make sure some parents don’t get too comfy and neglect looking after their kids (I reckon that’s why!). Which is a shame for teens and their parents who don’t need to be kept on constant high alert entertaining bored little ones.

It’s terrible. A few years ago I took Dd to a&e screaming with chest pain. I get it’s unusual for someone young to have cardiac issues but she was high risk for cardiac issues due to being diagnosed a few days previously with multiple blood clots in her lungs. I honestly thought she was about to have a cardiac arrest and told the nurse on reception (and it is a nurse) this. Still had to wait 20 mins.

I took ds14 once it was a 19 hour wait!! ds10 goes and is seen always immediately but has type one diabetes so they have to see him straight away as it’s life or death situation.