NHS A and E experience

A&E seems to mean Anything and Everything nowadays.

fancythat

I dont know about other hospitals, but our hospital divides between those who arrive in a&e, and those who arrive by ambulance. The ambulance side is a different area to a&e.

My local hospital does the same .

travelsafar

My BILaw went to our local hospital last week on the instructions of his GP. The person who dealt with him was furious and said ' lazy gps' they should have dealt with this at your surgery!!
Makes me wonder how many others are directed to hspt unnecessarily 🤔

I had this with my mum , we had a doctors appointment and they checked her bp which was a bit high , so they sent us to A&E . I did say it might be white coat syndrome and we had been rushing a bit . But they insisted. The consultant in A&E wasn’t happy and said the GP should have waited a bit and rechecked her bp.

JenniRen

It's shocking in so many places now, Primrose53, we dread the thought of having to go into hospital. Bed blocking is a big problem. We need convalescent homes.

The staff are coping as best they can, trying to treat patients in corridors; a friend spent three days on a chair in a corridor having been taken in by ambulance after a heart attack.

I hope your husband makes a good recovery.

The problem is that hospitals are responsible for some of their own bed blocking because of bad organisation.

I have three times been booked into day surgery for a very minor problem. On 2 occasions, in different hospitals in different areas I have ended up occupying a bed for 3 days. Not because I was ill, but because minor problems like mine only get done when all major ops are dealt with.

I have no problem with that obviously, but why not have a separate operating area for those, like me that need minor surgery whether emergency or elective?

Last time I was booked in in advance, turned up, was immediately made nil by mouth, so sat in bed in a ward all day waiting to be fitted in between major ops. At 10.00pm I was told I would be done the following day and could have a sandwich. The following day I was offered breakfast because already they knew I would not be going to theatre before lunchtime I was finally operated on, probably only 10 minutes or so in theatre, at 9.30pm. This meant a second night in hospital. The following day I spent most of the morning waiting to be seen and discharged. Finally as it moved to midday I said I would discharge myself.

Suddenly the doctor appeared was with me about 30 seconds, looked and said OK and signed the form. The pharmacy after saying my pills would be ready later in the afternoon and refusing me a scrip for an outside pharmacy produced my pills. At 12.30 I was free and we had recourse to the nearest pub!

I blocked a bed for 2 of the three days, because the hospital was bad;y organised. How many times a day does that happen in how many hospitals. How many thousands of beds would it free up for really ill patients

Our hospitals differentiate between A&E and Acute Receiving units. My GP booked me in to Acute Receiving where I was seen really quite quickly.
Another time I was directed to A&E by NHS24 as the Eye Hospital was closed. It was very busy but there was a big electronic sign saying how many were waiting and counting down the hours. That must put a lot of pressure on the poor staff. I must say the place felt like a third world hospital with patients 'parked' all over the place. Every nook and cranny housed at least one poor soul on a chair wrapped in a blanket.

If it makes anyone feel better it is pretty similar here in Australia. The waiting times in emergency are very long,hours and hours and people are losing their lives because of it. If you go in an ambulance it is a lot quicker than if you just get there on your own, they prioritise ambulance patients. The private hospitals are slightly better but not brilliant,either.

fancythat

Sadly, well in my limited experience, there is no respect of age either.

They go by medical need. Which is fair enough I guess?

A&e, coming in by ambulance. nothing as bad as your experience.
But the same, on a smaller scale, around here.

To be fair, from the corridor point of view, apart from everyone squeezing past everyone else, and some lack of privacy[everyone was staring at the person I was with, even some medical staff], whether it was a corridor or somewhere else, made little difference.
It was at least warm enough.

Actually, regarding age, it seems to have been benefited my OH this weekend (taken to A&E by ambulance with symptoms not too dissimilar to those of a mild heart attack he had in the past, though less 'intense'.

Surprisingly, to me anyway, there were no ambulance queues at the hospital, and things weren't chaotic inside either. That was approaching midnight on Saturday. But OH did overhear someone being told there were no beds available.

After OH had spent nearly 24 hours in a chair, only able to get up to go to thectoilet or to go see another doctor, they finally found him a bed. Meanwhile, a woman who didnt look much younger than OH was left waiting for one. We had talked to her earlier and know that she had been at the hospital some eight hours longer than OH. I sincerely hope that the decision that benefitted my OH was based primarily on need, not age alone. She was certainly not a 'young' woman, and as a result of it she might have ended up having to spent a second night in a chair - though as OH was woken up at 2pm and moved to a different ward, I would like to think that she got the bed she had missed out on earlier.. 😔

I won't go into all the other problems that we encountered, but enough to see that the whole system is on its knees and is barely fit for purpose. I can't fault the staff themselves though. Almost without exception, they are clearly doing the best they possibly can within the constraints of the failing system.

It was probably a male bed, and or a bed on an appropriate specialty ward that was allocated to your husband Oldnproud, the lady probably needed a different specialty bed, on a different ward, in a female bay.

I read yesterday that the number of Covid related admissions has increased dramatically in the last month, that’s probably making an already critical bed shortage even worse. It doesn’t bode well for the winter.

Casdon

It was probably a male bed, and or a bed on an appropriate specialty ward that was allocated to your husband Oldnproud, the lady probably needed a different specialty bed, on a different ward, in a female bay.

I read yesterday that the number of Covid related admissions has increased dramatically in the last month, that’s probably making an already critical bed shortage even worse. It doesn’t bode well for the winter.

I hadnt thought of that, Casdon. Though im pretty sure that he said it was one of the medical staff who told him that age had been the deciding factor. Still, sometimes need to take these things with a pinch of salt.

I read that too about Covid. I hope there was no one in the waiting rooms with it, as it spreads so easily in such overcrowded conditions.
My very elderly mum broke her hip a few months ago. As if that wasn't bad enough, she caught covid while recovering in hospital after her hip was operated on. Luckily, she seemed to only have a mild version, possibly because (I think) she had been vaccinated a few months earlier,

She has successfully finished her treatment and is doing well, thank you Primrose 53. Glad to hear your son is doing well too

I think A&E staff are heroes, the lot of them.
Particularly the consultants.

It takes so much decision making, knowledge, ability to do a wide range of skilled practical treatments, it's always organised chaos & requires a very special sort of human. Yet they can't get private consultancies & earn £££kkk in their free time (which they do get more of than the juniors).

The locum A&E Drs cost a fortune, & there are shortages of highly trained staff for A&E, ongoing for years.

I don't know whether an "A&E" bonus would make a difference. The consultants from other specialties wouldn't like it, but it really is the sharp end & without the staff particularly at the higher levels (where it takes so many years to get the skills & experience they need, no quick fix is possible) no amount of extra beds or systems will guarantee a faster throughput.

travelsafar

My BILaw went to our local hospital last week on the instructions of his GP. The person who dealt with him was furious and said ' lazy gps' they should have dealt with this at your surgery!!
Makes me wonder how many others are directed to hspt unnecessarily 🤔

Our GPS the same tell you to ring 111, or go to urgent care.

🫂 I think you have more pressing things going on at the moment!

Seems to me on a very simplistic level that A&E's have no chance of improving delays etc unless GP's and some sort of convalescent service is sorted out.
If people could go to their GP for complaints then they most probably would and the so-called bed blockers would be better served in some sort of cottage hospital, convalescent facility. Sort out the beginnings and ends of the problem first before tweaking with A&E's in the middle.

Thank 14 years of Tory rule.

50 years ago I took DD to A&E when she broke a bone in her foot. It was late on a Saturday evening and A&E was almost empty, yes, really.

It still took them over 4 hours to call her through xray her foot and strap it up. On that basis A&E has probably improved substantially.

Sadly, I think this situation can only get worse until some hard decisions (and drastic measures) are taken to streamline what has become an unwieldly organisation. But the people who have responsibility for making those decisions are not the people who should be making them! It isn't just a matter of throwing money at the NHS (we could all provide instances of wastage, just from what we're seeing as patients - and staff would have their own input on that too!).
Too many politicians are primarily concerned with their own position rather than the care of their country's citizens. They don't want to suffer the personal consequences of the inevitable public outrage which would follow the reduction of services. Politicians waffle and do nothing, hoping to pass the problem on to whoever will sit in their chair after they've gone. "Goodbye and thanks for the lovely pension!"
I (and probably most of us) can think of many services which could be reduced or stopped, at least for a while. We could also imagine many ways to stop wasting money, from poor staffing structures to where essential supplies are sourced from.
There's no easy answer. It has to be hard, and it will hurt.

This is of course a widespread problem, made FAR WORSE by lots of folk attending who just shouldn't be there (not an accident & emergency).

Having had to visit in recent years and wait for about 9 hours (kidney stones) before a discharge, I saw a wide cross-section of attendees, and I'd estimate a third shouldn't have been there (assorted walking wounded - it's what the minor injury units are for - mums with a child who couldn't get an instant GP appointment, and the usual subset of drug and drink self-inflicted damage). Oh, and that's not just my assessment, it was confirmed by a couple of nurses.

On a further occasion, partner with some eye damage due to a mystery gardening incident, the minor injury unit didn't have the expertise for eyes, but several hours bouncing around the A&E again suggested that a fair subset shouldn't have been there.

This might be a reasonable time to point out that the Reform councillor, recently caught on film saying that "no more than 1% of the country should be non-white" would cause an instant closure of the NHS if that party's racist policies got enacted.

I'm of a mind to think that if you can get to A&E under your own steam and actually walk in then maybe you don't actually need to be there?

Another problem I spotted in A&E was that sometimes quite large family members escort the injured/unwell person. They take up a lot of chairs etc. Maybe just one person needs to accompany the potential patient?

My DD took me to hospital with chest pains at 8am one morning. Tests followed all through the day. At 5pm I was surprised to be told I was being kept in.

I was put in a side ward and kept under observation. I heard and saw how difficult it is for staff to find a bed for people. Eventually I was put in a cancer ward as there was no room in cardiac. By now I was feeling much better and was starting to feel guilty being there at all.

In the morning the doctor told me they didn't think I had angina and hadn't had an "event" and the damage in one artery was found to be very minor,so I could go home. Being discharged can apparently be a lengthy process and I knew my bed would be needed so I asked the nurse to see if she could speed things up a bit.

A senior nurse came to me minutes later and asked me how quickly I could get my belongings together. Long story short a porter shot into the ward with a wheelchair and asked me if I was ready. I wasn't really, so just grabbed all my stuff and put it on my lap. He whisked me to the discharge lounge (strangely it's on the top floor of the hospital) Thus the bed was now free, probably hours before it would have been.

Margs

I'm of a mind to think that if you can get to A&E under your own steam and actually walk in then maybe you don't actually need to be there?

I walked on with a heart attack. I don't think that "able to walk" means "not in need of urgent care." I do not think we should judge fellow patients.

I have just had a very positive experience of the ambulance service, A and E and follow up appointments. I think living in a small town helps. Although they do have long waiting times at busy periods

The Paramedics are amazing.
We should thank them every day.
Yes it needs sorting out and the public educating!

Margs

I'm of a mind to think that if you can get to A&E under your own steam and actually walk in then maybe you don't actually need to be there?

I would be a bit less strict on that.

Many people with suspected heat problems walk into A&E rather than being stretchered in, even if taken by ambulance.

That was the case with my OH two years ago, who had some pain.
The paramedics who came to our house couldn't see any definite signs of a heart attack in the tests they ran, and in the end they said that it was OH's choice whether they took him to A&E to be checked out further. Fortunately, he chose to go, and it was eventually confirmed in A&E that he was having a heart attack.
He walked in under his own steam, albeit via the ambulance entrance, but I can equally imagine people in similar situations making their own way there - with a relative, or via taxi - as it can easily be quicker than waiting an unknown length of time for an ambulance.

Even the paramedics hadnt been able to tell by sight that he was having a heart attack, so I certainly don't think Joe Public can do it any better.