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?

Nobody on here ever thinks you should go to A&E unless maybe you've been decapitated and even then it's a stretch!

I've been once, when I was told to, because I had the beginnings of signs of a life threatening reaction to a new medication, and I was made to feel like a right idiot throughout.

Yes. We would get a letter in a week or 2 saying appropriate reasons to attend a+e.

It really isn’t. People are waiting on corridors because there is no flow through the hospital and they can’t get a bed. The people in minors who don’t need to be there aren’t causing corridor care. They might be causing crowding and adding to triage workload but they are not the reason for people waiting 40 hours on a trolley.

YANBU. She really didn’t have to be like that. And it sounds (from people on here who know better than me) like she was wrong, which is worrying.
I was in a busy a and e on a Friday night recently and, while they were clearly massively overstretched, all staff were at worst civil and in most cases very pleasant and polite.

She's probably on her last run of night shifts and just wants to get home. Still wasn't great taking it out on you.

A&e is no longer one department, to help flow there are often many different areas you are sent to ( often by streaming or triage) which may include:

Minor injuries
Same day emergency care: medical/surgical
minor injuries
Urgent care/GP

Plus the usual Majors, resus etc.
I don’t think op was unreasonable to be honest as it was causing her pain. Not sure a gp would deal with it. It could be embedded too.

However i can also see the nurses point when people go to ED with chronic issues that have already lasted days: that they could of initially seen a gp for ( even if they send you to them afterwards). Nurses will query why they’ve decided to come now. Nurses are trained to triage and some are trained to deflect as needed. There is no need to be rude though and i have also experienced a blunt triage nurse and it wasn’t pleasant when you are already feeling apprehensive.

OP there’s an awful lot of misinformation being spoken on here and an alarming lack of empathy!
I had a very similar situation and my GP sent me to A&E (yes he said A&E) at 8.45 pm. The A&E and MIU are both booked in by the same reception.
A very nice nurse practitioner in MIU removed the item whilst cheerfully saying oh we do these all the time!

My son put something inside his ear at preschool when he was 3 years old. I took him to the GP, who looked inside his ear, confirmed there was indeed something stuck and sent us straight to A&E.

It was the fact you told her that a 'friend who's a medical professional looked inside your ear'. At that point the nurse stopped listening, because you hadn't been to YOUR GP to make that confirmation.

It was rather unprofessional to be honest. I suspect that they do see people who've had a medical professional friend do XYZ, and have been wrong, so it's made her skeptical.

I'd imagine it would be more of a Minor Injuries Unit issue than A&E. I would go to your GP, and get it confirmed and you referred to whichever (A&E/MIU) your GP thinks is best. My local MIU need a referral from either the NHS online or a GP, before they will see you. Yours though could be different.

Nope.

The GP would be able to call the SHO (I know this happens because for some reason my direct dial is confused for the ENT SHO all the time!), who would then be able to organise for the patient to attend the hospital.

OP wanted the drama of being sat in a&e, that’s it.

In any event you can go for weeks with a foreign body in your ear. The most common course of action if it can’t be removed while awake is to issue safety netting advice and wait 6-8 weeks for a surgery date to become available.

Hot clinic means rapid access. It’s a widely used term.

Empathy burnout as said by a Dr up thread is a good description ..

Op unfortunaly I've been a and e and urgent care a few times this summer and I'm.appallad
I've also been spoken to so rudely and not had the care I expect.

Unfortunaly unless you have been recently ,crammed into small airless spaces in extreme heat , people being sick ,coughing all over you ,body fluids left for ages on chairs and floors and left on hard uncomfortable chairs for 6 hours plus in what feels like a torture session it's hard to comprehend just how bad it's become .

We need better it's not anyway good enough.

• and the whole shouldn't have been sent there by 111 makes me want to scream

I think you misread. I said not to go to a+e and that my local hospital would say as much. I then said you would be followed with another letter from your GP stating appropriate reasons to attend A+E.

Please read (my) posts as carefully as you can if you're going to respond to them.

That's not something a GP would do. They don't have the training or equipment to do it. They would advise Emergency department or possibly minor injuries (if there's a separate one in the area)

Most Emergency departments have minor injuries as part of the department rather than at a separate location.

It's not been called 'Accident & emergency' for many years.

Something which has the potential to cause permanent damage to your hearing and/or other functions of the ear is an emergency.

I live in the middle of London and have NEVER waited 6hrs to be seen in a+e because I'd always be triaged to be seen much sooner regardless of how many people are there.

That's because I'm there for an emergency.

Unfortunately some nurses are VERY chippy about doctors so that may not go down well.

If you can decide nah I won't go now as I have something else to do, then you aren't an emergency case.

She was at Minor Injuries

Read her post. She went to a&e. Largely because she wanted the drama, I suspect.

GPs can refer to emergency clinics without going through a+e. My GP would never say go to A+E unless they were calling you an ambulance to the surgery. They'd just refer you to the correct department and you'll be seen that day if necessary.

Which part of op being advised by 111 to go to a and e passed you by?
It doesn't have to a literal accident or emergency just something that cannot be dealt with by a GP.

Yep A&E is grim, I’ve walked through my local one to get to the children’s part with DC and had to step over pissheads laying on the floor in pools of vomit. There’s always police officers there. It’s like a third world country in truth.

Also always seems to take hours for a simple ailment. I actually learnt how to pop my son’s pulled elbow back into place to avoid going. We have private healthcare which is also useless, I’m not actually sure what it’s for - it doesn’t provide emergency care for example. I’d love to have used that instead.

When the NHS is good it’s great but when it’s bad…

Was that the only part of the post you read?

111 do that for everything. It's on their flowchart.