I get that a&e is busy, but was not expecting to be spoken to so rudely

[mitsicar]

Went to a&e tonight. I have a foreign object stuck in my ear. I did not know it was in there until someone looked last night before I left my house and said i should get it looked at. Wasn't able to go to a&e today as my son had his own medical appointment in another city that I have waited months for and we were in a hotel for last night. There was no way I was cancelling it for my own ailment.

The pain has got significantly worse. Have shooting pains into my jaw and cheek bone and my ear is making clicking noises. This is since about lunch time today. Went to a&e this evening and the triage nurse asked me how long it had been in my ear. I said I suspect a few weeks, but I thought I just had an earache and it went away after a while so thought it was gone. Got some new foam ear plugs last week (which obviously pushed the foreign body in further!) and am now suffering for it. I hadn't finished when she cut me off and said 'well I don't really understand why you have picked this evening to come to a&e' and told me I would be better off going to my GP. I am in some pain but ended up leaving because she just made me feel like I had done an awful thing by heading straight after my son's appointment. I spoke to 111 earlier in the day and they told me to go to a&e asap because I could risk my hearing and that whilst it isn't life threatening, it is both an accident and an emergency. I asked if I could wait until morning and they said no. This was the 111 dr not the triage staff. I have no idea if this is the correct advice.

AIBU to think I didn't do anything wrong? I told her a medical professional has looked at it (a friend of mine who is a dr of 30 years) and said it needs ent because of how far in it is and she actually rolled her eyes at me and said I should see an actual GP (I suspect by that she meant my own GP?) and that a&e were sending everyone to minor injuries and that cases like mine are the reason she now has a 6 hour waiting list.

Is this normal for a&e now? Is it so awful working there that being rude has just become the norm or do most people have a better bedside manner? I haven't been to a&e since I was a child and was really shocked by the way I was spoken to, after being advised to go there by 111 and a trusted friend who is a medical doctor (GP).

To add, she didn't look in my ear.

Would you have done anything different? Am I missing something?

Are you not aware Klinik is just one of several online triage and consultation software providers available to general practices and many alternatives are used , some of which are shite.GP surgeries can have different internal operational policies regarding how they handle urgent care and route patients to A&E too.

Loving the way the entire country is supposed to run like Lexibletheflexible ‘s London GP.

Who the hell goes to A&E for entertainment anyway? It's horrible waiting on a hard seat for hours in pain.

Ignoring what a GP would or wouldnt do if presented with this situation. A GP is who you should go to with an ailment that you have 'put up with' for days if not weeks.

It is neither and accident or an emergency even if you might get referred there. The A&E dept are there for emergencies. Yours is not even close and even if you were referred there it would be by appointment which means they could work around your issue.

The nurse told you the truth, you didnt like it.

I’ve experienced similar in paeds settings.
Sadly this is the state of nursing in some places, and has been for a long time. Whilst this of course isn’t across the board, nurses are quite often not the overworked grafters they’re purported to be.

But she hadn’t had the problem for weeks. She had what she thought was a simple earache until her friend pointed out that there was a foreign object there causing the pain. She also said the pain had worsened.

And OP was triaged in minor injuries, so the HCP wasn’t run ragged with serious injuries, she was just pissed that A&E were sending her patients, resulting in a long waiting list - none of which is anything remotely concerning OP. There is simply no excuse for being so rude to a patient and belittling them to the point where they leave without treatment.

Well the pain was that bad she went when it was convenient?

The nurse was exasperated. We need more of them telling people to see their GPs before A&E regardless of what 111 say.

Which is great if you have a walk in eye clinic. Why do people on here not realise not all hospitals are the same. The fact that op is having to travel and stay in hotels for her son's appointments shows she's most likely in an area that doesn't have all these specialist services. The nhs is a postcode lottery and people living in large cities will have a significantly different experience then those living rural

Some seem to. You see whole familes there with snacks chatting seemingly having a social outing.

💯. Every word of this. I can’t work out if people who say it’s ok to be rude to the public in a public facing role because they might have had a bad day have never worked in a public-facing role, or if they are in one and shouldn’t be.

It’s not easy to take a deep breath after being spoken to like you’re stupid, and then smile cheerfully at the next person, but that’s what you’re paid to do.

So you would put your health above your childs health?

No we don't because that's not how the triage system works! 111 sent the OP in, it is then the job of the triage nurse to triage and to allow the OP to finish her sentence. The OP should not have felt pressured to leave the department and I hope she complains to PALS.

She will now have to go through the whole process again or hopefully after she reads these, she just goes back and gets sorted.

Exactly. See a GP, they'll send you to the nearest ENT walk in session, all based in the ENT opd.

It fascinates me when people extrapolate their own individual experience to the rest of the country if not world! It happens a lot on MN, not just this thread. What a fascinating way to think, that your experience reflects the entire population. It is almost like the less the knowledge, the greater the certainty.

I’ve just asked my s in law, an A & E consultant. He says DEF not, neither accident or emergency.

People like this are the reason they often have an 8 hour waiting time.

And this is the problem how the hell are patients supposed to know what to do if the medical professionals can't get their act together to k ow what to do. But yeah blame the patient instead of themselves

All the fools here blaming patients rather than the government and NHS systems, for the state of our health service, are doing exactly what those in power would want. Well done 👏

Sense at last! Sadly the amount of ' DEFINITELY A&E!!' responses indicates why the place is always rammed.

I can assure you, the OP did the right thing. I don't for one second believe your "s in law" is an A&E consultant if they're happy to turn away somebody with a foreign object potentially embedded in an ear drum, which if bursts could mean the OP loses her hearing.

I can 100% confirm this is not a GP matter. I had a silicone earplug stuck in my ear canal and didn't realise until I went for a cleaning at Specsavers. They saw it, sent me straight to A&E who couldn't get the damn thing out. I was then referred to ENT at the hospital and it was a proper process. So no you didn't do the wrong thing and the nurse was wrong (and so is anyone else saying it should've been the GP).

No OP, I don’t think YABU.

My lovely dad (82) has been experiencing random symptoms on and off for 18 months now ranging from sudden projectile vomiting, sudden violent diarrhoea, collapsing and temporary paralysed waist down, hallucinations, agonising lower back pain and black outs. Sometimes just one of the above sometimes several at same time. Been to A & E a few times (unfortunately a significant period of time after symptoms have gone but always on urging of GP) and dad has told me of the disgusting way he’s been spoken to by so called healthcare professionals and actually accused once of wasting time. They checked his vitals and sent him on his way with a suggestion he just books a GP appt. No bloods taken or anything.

Finally had a blood est taken last week and it turns out he has Stage 4 kidney disease and is awaiting a specialist’s appointment as concerns are it’s heading to stage 5 rapidly.

I am so fucking angry at all those touch points in A & E where if someone had bothered to look into why an 80 year old man was experiencing these symptoms this could have been picked up so much sooner and managed to slow down progression. And to have spoken to him as if he was wasting time in some ways that’s as bad as the doing nothing.

Compassion doesn’t cost anything FFS. I don’t care how busy you are.

We don't have an ENT walk in centre it would be a&e or urgent treatment center as thats what's available where we live

I believe it their are some really shit medical professionals about

Nope Read the OP. She thought it was simple earache until her friend told her there was a foreign body there. 111 referred her to A&E, who sent her to minor injuries. Which is where she would have ended up had she seen her GP - either there or walk in ENT if one is available. It just would have taken longer.

And it doesn’t matter how exasperated the nurse was - her workload is not OP’s problem. She was rude to the point where OP left without treatment. Totally unacceptable. The routes to treatment are getting more and more inaccessible when they’re needed, which is not the fault of the patient.

Quite the opposite to sensible actually. If a consultant is willing to risk somebody losing their hearing...