Broken arm - can’t get seen by NHS - help please

[BrokenarmbrokenNHS]

I don’t know how to get my dd help - please could anyone advise?

My dd has an accident at school last week (Thursday). I took her for an xray at minor injuries and they said they didn’t think it was broken. A day later we had a phone call to say it was indeed broken and dd is in a lot of pain. I think it’s the radius bone as it goes into the elbow. They said they would refer to the fracture clinic and we had a choice of 2 hospitals as we are between hospitals. So I chose the more convenient one. This was on Friday on the phone.

My DD’s elbow has now been broken for 5 days. We have been referred to the wrong hospital, but I thought I will not worry about that, I will just go to it even though it’s an hour from her school. But they will not give me an appointment. I was supposed to wait to hear from them, they haven’t called. I’ve called them directly and they say she’s on some bloody list.

meanwhile my y13 dd has a broken elbow with nothing other than a sling and is shitting herself about buggering her A levels up this summer due to not being able to write and being in loads of pain.

What am I supposed to do? Why can’t we get help? This is crazy to leave a fracture for 5 days with nobody giving a shit. I foolishly thought the NHS still dealt with emergencies. I have no idea what to do. Please help.

Some areas will admit quicker clearly - but that's the way it was in mine. I assume it's got to do with the size of hospital as well potentially. I live in a medium sized town in the west of Scotland

WHY ARE YOU IGNORING EVERYONE SUGGESTING YOU GO TO FUCKING A&E???

Is this Ashford and Margate? I had the same thing falling through the cracks. Ended up having to go private.

Sounds like you got poor (or no) advice on how to deal with the injury and that's been the issue.

Ds broke his elbow, just got a sling and told there wouldn't be a routine follow-up appointment unless he needed it.

We did get good info though on the break and how we should care for it. Even got a wee fact sheet with a diagram showing where the break was and the exercises he should be doing.

So it must be a reasonable common injury.

Why are you ignoring OPs updates??

Yikes OP no wonder you are upset the communication has not been sufficent. I hope your daughter can get a GP appoinment soon and some decent pain relief so she can get some rest.

A&E??

Maybe because there is no fucking point.

It's a sh*t show. I broke my ankle on holiday many years ago. Had X Ray abroad and they said it was a just a sprain. I couldn't weight bear at all and I knew it was broken because I heard it break when I fell. As soon as I got back to the UK I went to A&E and they x rayed it, said it was just a sprain and that i wasn't trying hard enough to walk, and refused to give me crutches. I could only hop. So I hopped home, then went to the GP ans she referred me for an mri scan. In between all this I was so desperate i travelled from London to Wales where my mum lives and happens to be friends with an orthapedic surgeon who gave me a boot and crutches so I could get round. ,
When I turned up to my mri appt I found out that my GP referred me for the wrong leg. Lol. So they sent me home. I then had to hop back to the GP get a new referral for an mri. During the mri they told me my ankle was broken - they weren't supposed to tell me but I had been trying to walk on a broken ankle for 3.5 weeks before it was finally discovered. By this time the damage was done, I had damaged blood vessels and have suffered from lymphodema ever since due to the negligence I experienced. I now live abroad and when I recounted this experience to the doctors here they were horrified. Because quite frankly the NHS is not fit for purpose. It's not normal, but we seem to have come accustomed to it.

Probably because it was terrible advice

It would be marvellous if it worked like that. It doesn't. Epsom Hospital staff don't necessarily, in my experience, know the difference between green, red and amber and if they aren't listening, transfers don't happen. It isn't help by the fact that the ambulance service takes serious breaks to Epsom rather than directly to St Helier.

It is woeful.

However, thanks for the explanatuon about the amoeba - the irony was clearly lost on you.

Is it not? It saved my mums life in 2017.

My son broke his ankle. Walk in centre said it wasn't broken and made out he was making a big deal over it all.

They didn't even bother to tell us the radiographer has confirmed it was broken. We ended up in a small community hospital minor injury unit (which is our GP out of hours) the next day as he was in so much pain for the triage nurse to say "we don't deal with fractures here"

"but it's not fractured"

"yes it is"

The problem isn't the NHS per se but between the walk in centre, fracture clinic, community hospital and the GP there is limited sharing of information, two private companies (the GP and the contractor who runs the walk in centre) and two hospitals and nobody seems to be able to get it all to hang together.

I don't think that would be better though with more private providers. But it's certainly true that communication needs to be fixed. Albeit when it's data collection, the NHS can be brilliant at it. When the world was looking for big data on what treatments worked for severely ill Covid patients, it was the NHS they looked at because all of those patients were being treated by the NHS not subcontractors. Then it was easy.

And my daughter’s 5 years ago. I think the true emergency, life and death side of the NHS is phenomenal. The rest is massively underfunded.

Thanks so much for your symbol of support @BeautifulSongsofLove - really appreciate it.

A&E right away

I don’t think it is unusual to wait a week or so to attend a Fracture clinic. I was told xrays would be reviewed and if it needed operating on I would get a call within a day, otherwise to await an appointment which was ten days after the accident. The clinic will only be held a couple of times a week. As long as she has immobilised it, flexes her wrist/hand and has pain relief there will be little to do short term. Presumably no appointment is showing on the nhs app yet?

WHY ARE YOU NOT READING OP’S POSTS???

Actually, I think this is an example of when someone should go to A&E.

Yes, we know that all is well and this whole situation stems from poor commincation, but based on OPs first 2 posts, her DD was confirmed to have a fracture a couple of days after the xray, then after contacting the fracture clinic twice, was not given any advice.

OP stated that her DD was in pain and it had been 5 days.

I dont see why anyone would think it is unreasonable to return to minor injuries or attend A&E, especially if youve tried to contact the relevant department beforehand. Imagine if she did need a cast, and a HCP had not picked up on the fact a cast was not in place? By the time they contacted her, the DD could have damaged her arm more.

Patients can sometimes get overlooked or missed.

And what exactly would A+E do
its been diagnosed you’ve been referred to fracture clinic
at triage you’d more than likely be sent away this is not and accident or emergency there role isn’t to chase admin issues
when the x ray was reviewed the would know how urgent and if surgery was required
it’s not uncommon to leave break for bruising and swelling to settle
the issue is pinning an appointment down for the fracture clinic A+E doctor don’t chase appointments

They can give a prescription for pain relief if someone is in severe pain. A and E. I got no pain relief from minor injuries. I asked but they forgot.

Ever been in a situation where you've broken bones and you can't sleep at night because you are in agony?

I have been to A and E twice in my life. Once with a broken arm and to minor injuries with a broken leg and another time after an accident

The people who misuse A and E are the people who go there when they really don't need to. Not someone with broken bones

It's not helpful to tell people they are misusing services when they actually might need a prescription.

There are always twats on here OP, just ignore those types of comments.

It’s really shitty, I’m sorry about the substandard care and the substandard and patronising comments from some posters.

111 will issue pain relief via a doctor instead of A+E
you will get no medical help from A+E so yes they would be miss using the service

I suppose @ByBreezyUser it's always going to be subjective depending on your experience. I moved abroad 7 eara ago to Switzerland so I now can compare the quality of healthcare between here ans NHS and here it is phenomenal. I discovered here that I had a rare autoimmune disease that was never picked up in the UK despite it being obvious. My mum worked for 40 years as a nurse in a&e and intensive care in the NHS and even she thinks it's terrible. They did save her life when she had cancer but she was also a 75 year old cancer patient made to wait for 36 hours in a chair in a&e after becoming unwell post surgery - which is disgusting. She also had a brain haemorrhage in her 40s and had brain surgery to clip the aneurysm - except they made a mistake in the op, didn't tell us and sent her home where she ended up having a stroke. Thankfully she survived and we sought private treatment after that, but the NHS was only interested in whether we were going to sue or not. There was zero after care. Perhaps it's a post code lottery and some get lucky. But being able to compare it with a different system that works has given me the perspective that the NHS is not fit for purpose - it's one of my main reasons for staying abroad.