AIBU to question my husband's treatment in a hospital waiting room?

[SadlyNotATroll]

Posting here for traffic sorry. DH had a routine blood test on Thursday and was sent straight to hospital after some concerning numbers relating to his kidneys I think. He was there all day Thursday having tests and sent home. Was called at 10:30 on Thursday evening saying he had to go back in the next morning. I don’t want to over share his personal details on the internet but he is being treated with IV antibiotics but isn’t actually being told what for. Last night they had no beds and he slept in a chair in the clinic waiting room. I say slept but he didn’t sleep at all. Today he’s still there and being told he will be needing to stay in over the weekend but they have no beds. He has no privacy and is sat upright in a chair.

I get that the NHS is in dire straits, I really do. But how can he be treated in a waiting room chair and be expected to sleep and recover there? Do we have any recourse at all? Please don’t think this is a nurse/NHS bashing thread. The staff have been wonderful and it’s not their fault at all.

OP it’s fine to ask questions and escalate things. That’s not ‘kicking off’ or being difficult. It’s trying to find some answers. I don’t know what unit you are in at the moment, but it is perfectly acceptable to ask to speak to the matron or nurse in charge about a plan. They should be able to access the electronic records where a differential diagnosis and treatment plan will be recorded. At the very least they should communicate that to you. You could also involve PALS.

As a hospital consultant of many years, I urge people to alert staff to concerns politely. I don’t defend poor practice. I don’t know what the solutions are, but I do know that escalating things can actually lead to action. There is no harm in trying.

The most vulnerable people in hospital right now are the ones without advocates. I know that there are people out there who are not being fed or are being fed inadequately, often the elderly or those with special needs. I try not to think about it at times. I would advise anybody, if you have a loved one in hospital, do try and visit if you can, and make sure that their basic needs are being met. Be that squeaky (but polite) wheel.

I doubt that’s true given the hotel costs and nursing costs of housing them all. Hospital beds are well over £500 a night aren’t they? Vs patients bring themselves to community hubs for their IVs and their own food and drink. To my mind it’s crazy having people who are actually fairly fit and well anf just having investigations blocking up beds a lot of the time just waiting for said tests. It’s really stupid and happens all the time.

Of course it is! You can manage and plan the throughput which is often woeful.

My mum was in Aand E for 3 nights waiting for a bed,it was horrendous. A recent hospital visit was corridor care which was dire as the patients had no access to buzzers to call for help. Husband was in a few months ago and we spent 10 hours in A and E, it was 5 before he was triaged and the waited another 4 to go up onto a ward. They were concerned his BP was high and he was dehydrated - hardly surprising. It's really dire.

Honestly I’d ask them when the next antibiotics are due and go home for a few hours kip and return just before they’re due. Even if the abx were being given through a drip rather than a bolus.

And yes to the coeliacs not getting fed in hospital. I had to take food in for Dd when she was in for over a week. Apart from jacket potato they couldn’t cater for her and you can’t eat jacket potato 3x a day for nearly 2 weeks. It worries me what would happen now she lives the other side of the country if she got admitted. They did offer gf toast but when I asked them what toaster they would use it was the same as the gluten bread went in. No, thanks she’d be projectile vomiting for days!

Community care is generally cheaper, yes.

My Father in law spent years in and out of hospital. He had heart failure, type one diabetes, kidney failure and COPD. He never tried to improve his health and all the above were caused by his lifestyle. His partner then made him homeless during one of his stays, so the NHS housing team got involved. Then they operated on his kidneys, despite being in such bad health.
My husband had been abandoned by his father, in favour of his new partner and family, but he tried to help. It was obvious he needed a nursing home, but they kept trying to find an unfurnished flat for him. By this stage he was in a wheelchair, with an oxygen cylinder and could not control his diabetes.
He died after a lengthy stay on a medical ward. So he was blocking that bed.
6 weeks after he died, the housing team rang to say they were still trying to get him into a flat and had visited him on the ward the week before.
When they were told he had died 6 weeks before, so they had not visited him, they just didn’t say anything.
complete and utter shambles.

This is what mum wanted to do, but they told her if she did she'd be discharged back to GP and the whole process would start again. She'd alreasy aaited weeks for the scan which apparently required urgent attention.

My Dad was in A&E for 48 hours waiting for a bed, he had terminal cancer.

Bloody liars

Because bed blockers are likely to be very vulnerable people who can't care for themselves and have nobody to help them.

In which case you choose your poison. I would sit in a chair if I thought it would get me a scan sooner and I deemed it worthwhile but I will not sit in a chair just because someone tells me to and it appears to be a waste of my time and due to crappy systems and processes waiting for results or to see a Dr who will never come.

A lot of people are very obedient it seems
I don’t think I’ve ever had a hospital admission for myself that didn’t end with self discharge. I don’t do waiting for a discharge notification or meds I can get myself or from the GP.

I also would not take any medication without it being adequately explained to me what the purpose was and my agreeing. Informed consent is still a thing I believe.

I really feel for him, and you.

I was sent to A&E on Wednesday night, got there at 9.30 pm and eventually got home 2.30pm yesterday - no bed at any point.

My back is agony today, sitting in those chairs the whole time is no joke (I did get up and move when and where I could)

I have to go back tomorrow for further tests, there’s a possibility I’ll be admitted and I hadn’t actually considered the possibility that there might not be a bed if that happens. Fingers crossed tests say I can come home.

I was quite shocked by what I saw honestly, my case wasn’t the worst and no lasting harm done but it was definitely eye opening.

Of course he needs to “lie down medically” if he is on an IV for hours! No beds? Of course but the clinic should either bring in stretchers or arrange for him to be diverted and treated in another clinic. The NHS needs more money, of course, but if patients (ie citizens and taxpayers) don’t demand rational and medically appropriate treatment you won’t get it.

And if he knew that then why go to A&E (more understandable if he didn’t know)?

I strongly advised my mum never ever to go to A&E when she was dying of cancer. All that ever happens is you die a worse death in a shitty place. We moved heaven and earth to keep her at home until the hospice place came up. Acute hospitals are a horrible horrible place for the dying.

I know that’s a challenging opinion and I don’t mean to upset anyone just to make the point that we urgently need to change our mindset on what acute hospitals are for. In many cases of chronic frailty being admitted to hospital is harmful and unhelpful.

People have outpatient chemo and dialysis for hours with no beds and no lying down. Granted the chairs are more comfy but indeed not everyone in hospital has a medical need to lie down and many would be better off lying down less as it makes rehab harder if someone has prolonged immobility. Many people think ‘I am ill I should go to bed’ and it’s not necessarily true in fact.

They should go and buy a job lot of recliner chairs.

Same with my telative

Or they could have more nurses, more doctors and more beds??

We have one of the lowest number of hospital beds per 10.000 person in the EU.
The issue here isn’t that ‘not everyone needs a bed’, let alone someone treated for severe infection. Let alone during the whole night, sat in a chair. It’s that we simply dint have enough beds!

Why are people so keen on making out it is a normal situation?

I work for the NHS in a clinical role and this is the state of the NHS now and yes agree it’s totally unacceptable. You are within your rights to complain maybe to your MP more than the chief Exec as very limited what can be done. It’s pretty much a shambles tbh and I am sorry your DH is unwell and having to deal with this too.

Where would you put the recliners, you'd still need a separate ward with curtains, bathrooms, sluice, treatment area, emergency squipment, oxygen etc. In emergency situations you could use the bedside armchairs in an empty area but that's no privacy and runs the risk of becoming the norm. I nursed back in the day when they had 2 extra beds on each ward, often just planted by the fire exit or in the middle of the wards but it got stopped as a major privacy, dignity and safety issue.

This. And the fact that they are bed blocking is through no fault of their own. I thought that was an awful post - no critical thinking at all.

@SummerDive agree we should not be normalising this. If you need an admission to hospital for treatment the least you should expect is a bed to rest in. This is not that same as day case patients who often are in a recliner.

This is so terrible. As a GP I was thinking the same thing as you, I’m pretty sure people aren’t allowed to bring in stuff to lie on the floor in hospital in the UK. Probably less about homeless people and more about fire hazards and fall hazards. And fair enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to make very sick people sit on chairs for hours on end. That was never the intended outcome of such health and safety rules, it was more about getting people into a bed ASAP. Prepandemic I don’t think I’d ever seen people actually receiving IVs for acute illness in chairs, or corridor care on trolleys (well for the trolleys maybe barring during a severe flu season as a very temporary measure which everyone was horrified about instead of simply accepting it as the norm).

We really urgently need more investment in our NHS and social care with our ageing population and the fact that people are living longer but are chronically unwell for much of that extended time and often going in and out of hospital.

It's just not ok for people like yourself to feel they have to put off seeking admission due to worrying about having to sit on a chair for days etc. I see so many of my patients who have self-discharged before being seen even though some of them have waited over 24 hours and were very sick. They then come to me and people don't always understand that what I can do as a GP in the community and what can be done in hospital for someone who is critically ill are very different and take longer to arrange if even possible.

I was very unwell myself a couple of days ago in this heat with a bad asthma flare having been exposed to relentlessly high temperatures at work and suffering from heat exhaustion for the preceding couple of days. Not only did I have to take the day off work during this crisis because I became so breathless, but I also found myself knowing I should go to A and E (it’s the worst asthma flare I’ve ever had and it was scary, plus I have an underlying inherited heart rhythm issue which can cause sudden death if dehydrated or overheated or too much strain is put on my cardiovascular system), and I would have in normal circumstances.

But I deliberately avoided it as I just knew our local A and E would be mobbed, furnace-hot, and I’d probably end up having to sit in a hard chair for days. And eg. miss out on not only sleep but meals, as nobody thinks about people sitting in A and E having to eat and drink as they’re not officially “admitted” yet and back in the day the most people waited was 4 hours before a serious breach was declared. At home I have portable air con in my bedroom and can lie down and have access to food and drink. But it was a risk not to go in that I found myself calculating when I shouldn’t have to. I’ve only ever gone to A and E a couple of times in my whole life and was extremely ill when I did and admitted both times. So I don’t think I was overreacting, and am pretty sure given the whole situation they’d have admitted me if I’d turned up there.

But it was the first time I’ve had to sit and really try to balance the risks of exposing myself to the poor conditions in hospital against the risks of staying home without access to blood tests and ECGs and IVs and nebulisers and oxygen etc. Or at least the first time I decided the risks of going to A and E probably outweighed the benefits even though I was very unwell at the time. It’s just not ok in this day and age in a developed country.

Mainly because people want a fully functioning health service but aren’t prepared to pay for it.