And the vast majority of the remaining two thirds go in for neither an accident or emergency.
arncl on
If your main concern when going to A&E is the potential waiting time, then you probably shouldn’t be going to A&E.
BlindStupidDesperate on
My sister is an A&E triage nurse.
She reports that it was amazing where all the A&E patients went during COVID. She also reports that its amazing where they all go when there is snow on the ground.
Its almost like a good number of the people who attend A&E dont actually need to be there?
YoshiMK on
Took our 4 year old to A&E a few weeks ago… took 2 hours+ to be seen and was only 2 ahead of us.
The adult A&E part was rammed… like 20+ people. No idea how long some of them would have to wait! One guy was stumbling around with what appeared to be a stab wound to the head or something it was bizarre
blozzerg on
“Having witnessed her mother-in-law’s experience, Charlotte says she will not attend A&E unless it is a life-threatening condition”
Isn’t that exactly what A&E is for? The thing people forget is that if you were immediately dying, you would be seen there and then.
If you break your leg and you’re stable, unfortunately there’s going to be people with more serious conditions seen first, and then they’ll make their way down the list of people not immediately dying. If 5 people turn up with broken legs, someone has gotta be fifth. It might be uncomfortable and a long wait but they wouldn’t make you wait 10 hours for a laugh.
peachfoliouser on
This is good because most people don’t actually need to go to A&E in the first place.
Dis-Charge on
There’s definitely a large group of people who use A&E when they shouldn’t (like the other 3 commenters are saying), but this is still an awful headline to see for a supposed first-world country.
My nan was on a waiting list for 18 months to see a specialist for her kidneys.
I personally went home from the hospital after they said it would take 3 hours to see someone for my dislocated shoulder, and this was 10 years ago. I can’t imagine how bad it is now (I left the country).
jtthom on
I’d imagine there are a lot of people who go to a&e because they can’t get a local GP appointment
lupinle1 on
Because two in three Brits go to A&E due to a cough.
Swimming_Register_32 on
I don’t know what the solution is but having it free at use definitely adds to people using it unnecessarily. I don’t know if a fine system should be placed for time waters but something does need to change.
Archistotle on
The waiting times are genuinely ridiculous. Cut my finger near to bone last year, called 111 & they called me a taxi to A&E at around half 6 in the evening. I was eventually sent home at half 2 in the morning with a cast and an **appointment** to get it sewn up 3 days later.
I understand it wasn’t a life-threatening issue & they have to prioritise, but that’s just it, isn’t it. If that’s the outcome of the calls they need to make, something has gone terribly wrong with healthcare in this country. And a lot of that may have to do with people going into A&E unnecessarily, but they’re always been doing that & waiting times have never been this bad.
lostandthedamned on
Every time i’ve been to A&E in the last few years there seems to be a 50/50 split for non-traumatic cases. Half of the people don’t need to be there and would be OK with a pharmacy or GP visit. The other half needed help months ago and didn’t see anyone because they didn’t have time or didn’t want to be a bother.
Constant news stories about how under stress the NHS is don’t help if they just scare people into not attending health services when needed through fear of being blamed as part of the problem.
rollo_read on
If the wait time is a barrier to seeking assistance from A&E, then you don’t need to be at A&E and your decision on level of urgency is purely upon wait times, you’re the problem.
Expensive-Dingo-2573 on
i avoid a&e because there are people who need it more than me. i had a bunch of accidents, i just patched myself up
I would only go if it’s really really serious
PossibleSmoke8683 on
Presumably most the time they are not that sick if they can give it a miss , so this is a rare case of waiting times being a good thing ..
HampshireMet on
Good, I’ve been to A&E several times over the past few years and the amount of time wasters is mental. I’ve always been seen quickly and this is at major London hospitals. I get that not everyone is the same, but if you’re having a long wait, then chances are then you probably don’t need to be at A&E.
Suddendeath777 on
I waited 15 hours in a and E this weekend for an actual issue.
The waiting area itself was at least 30% full of drunk homeless (complete with cans on the floor) self presenting knowing they’d have a place to sleep until morning at which point they just vanished leading to the nurses calling for people who’d legged it as soon as the first offlicense opened.
Future-Warning-1189 on
You know… for everyone complaining in the comments, A&E wouldn’t be so abused if you could actually get a GP appointment with a competent GP. Or if the GP didn’t just try and refer anything remotely A&E to the hospital without a proper assessment.
The system is broken. My GPs have been nothing but fucking useless and I wouldn’t go seeking A&E for my problems, but depending on some people’s health problem, I can see why they would.
random_user_1968 on
I’ve been to my local A&E a few times, I spent the night on a trolley on my last stay and didn’t complain as I know that cases are triaged.
Turned out I had a spinal spasm and I can wait compared to the car crash victim.
I’ve seen people who have gone because of a cold!
BarnabusTheBarmy on
I’m currently one of those people. I have a suspected hairline fracture right now but I’m not going to get it checked because of the wait time. Why go to my nearest walk-in centre to wait 5+ hrs for an x-ray only to be told to do what I’m already doing (rest, keep it strapped up, painkillers etc.)?
Sure the confirmation would be nice, but it’s not an emergency so I know I’ll be shunted to the back of the queue to waste an entire day waiting.
hime-633 on
My wee sister is a doctor and when she did her rotation in A&E the stories she told were variously heartbreaking and infuriating.
You’d have category A, people who had come in for something really quite minor, and then category B, people who had waited until their symptoms became absolutely unbearable and finally given in.
Category A: sprained ankle
Category B: e.g. a woman whose breast cancer was so advanced, one of her breasts was cankerous.
“Why didn’t you seek help sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to be a burden”.
So for every person rushing into A&E for a hangnail, there is someone actively dying who “doesn’t want to be a bother”.
This is why I worry about the language of reporting around the NHS. “On its knees”, etc. In some – too many – cases, it stops people from feeling that they are deserving enough to seek immediate help.
Cute_Ad_9730 on
Last time I went with my elderly mother (suspected broken ankle) we were assessed, x rayed, diagnosed, consulted, free meds and left within 40 minutes. Torquay hospital amazing service thankyou.
yubnubster on
Probably worth called 111 first. A lot of people waste time going to A&E when they don’t need to. Also, for areas that have more than one reachable A&E, they can direct you to the one with shorter waits.
LilacScentedStoat on
A few years ago now, I almost tore my finger off on a machine at work, went up A&E and was told to take a seat.
Sat there with my finger at a jaunty angle… Blood pissing everywhere from the torn off nail but poorly wrapped in shit roll and electricians tape..
6 hours i had to wait.
As I was sitting there, people were coming in for this and that. The nurse at the desk would tell them to sit or go home.. do they not do this anymore?
————
One lad came in with a bruised elbow, he’d slipped and whacked it on a wall. He was bending and twisting his arm to show the nurse at the station, she told him to leave, it was just a bruise, put some ice on it..
Another guy came in to Accident and Emergency because he had a very bad headache and wanted a scan and such. The nurse said no, you’ll need a referral from your GP.
And one woman…
She came to ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY..
because she suspected she was pregnant and wanted a Doctor to confirm it…
The nurse told her to get a pregnancy test from the chemist next door and go home. The woman was livid.
peidinho31 on
I had a severe esophagitis in September.
I knew I was going to wait hours.
The pain was so intense that I didnt care.
If you are worried about waiting times, then you dont need A&E
GunstarGreen on
I have a heart problem. I sometimes need A&E because it feels like im borderline about to have a serious event. But I’ll be in the waiting room listening to thr people queuing up. Some of it is so minor they really shouldn’t be there. They just need to wait to see their GP. I know its very frustrating, but A&E is not a 24 hour GP.
buginarugsnug on
If you feel like you can avoid A&E for whatever your problem is, then you do not need to be in A&E and urgent care, GP or even an out of hours GP would suit your ailment better.
But I do acknowledge that urgent care centres are few and far between and sometimes aren’t open when you need them to be. We need an overhaul of the system where there IS a place to go that is in-between absolute emergency and GP.
Technical_Sun_6375 on
Just waited 10 hours in a waiting room to finally be treated and operated on for appendicitis. They had my blood test results for 5 hours and only moved me along after I said I would leave to go home as I was getting worse in the waiting room. There were elderly people in there waiting same amount of time. Chairs were unbelievably uncomfortable they hurt to sit for longer than 30 mins.
Wd91 on
Lots of comments here moaning about customers wasting NHS time, and i’m sure there is some small truth to that.
But i can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a misdirection. Most people going to A&E don’t actually want to be there. Nobody enjoys sitting in a stale waiting room for 6 hours. The fact is regular members of the public aren’t medical experts, we don’t know where we should be going, we can’t triage ourselves and for most of us if we’re in A&E it’s because someone has told us, either directly or indirectly, that we should be there. If this system isn’t working for the NHS then it should be on them to build out a system that does. The expectation shouldn’t be on the general public to ignore medical advice and just chance it.
No-Medicine1230 on
Good. If you avoid it, you don’t need A&E. Call your GP, call 111, go and see a pharmacist. We have an amazing health service with so many pathways that are all…free!
Zealousideal_View47 on
It definitely feels like we are in need of more minor injury units/urgent treatment centres. The last time I went to A&E was because of an ingrown hair that had gotten infected and became such a large cyst that I couldn’t do anything except lay down. Not life and death but I was in so much pain and at risk of further infection. If I could’ve gone elsewhere I would’ve
JackDaniels0049 on
I have heard people say that they go to a&e because they get faster antibiotics, when they have a cold.
I look at them and say you know antibiotics don’t actually do anything for a cold right?
I can only assume they give them to him just to get rid of him. But I know a lot of people just treat it like a walk in doctor’s office.
The first thing I thought when I read the headline is you obviously don’t need a&e if you can just avoid it as simply as that.
You will get the few cases where someone is walking around on a broken knee for a few days, because they don’t want to cause any trouble.
32 commenti
And the vast majority of the remaining two thirds go in for neither an accident or emergency.
If your main concern when going to A&E is the potential waiting time, then you probably shouldn’t be going to A&E.
My sister is an A&E triage nurse.
She reports that it was amazing where all the A&E patients went during COVID. She also reports that its amazing where they all go when there is snow on the ground.
Its almost like a good number of the people who attend A&E dont actually need to be there?
Took our 4 year old to A&E a few weeks ago… took 2 hours+ to be seen and was only 2 ahead of us.
The adult A&E part was rammed… like 20+ people. No idea how long some of them would have to wait! One guy was stumbling around with what appeared to be a stab wound to the head or something it was bizarre
“Having witnessed her mother-in-law’s experience, Charlotte says she will not attend A&E unless it is a life-threatening condition”
Isn’t that exactly what A&E is for? The thing people forget is that if you were immediately dying, you would be seen there and then.
If you break your leg and you’re stable, unfortunately there’s going to be people with more serious conditions seen first, and then they’ll make their way down the list of people not immediately dying. If 5 people turn up with broken legs, someone has gotta be fifth. It might be uncomfortable and a long wait but they wouldn’t make you wait 10 hours for a laugh.
This is good because most people don’t actually need to go to A&E in the first place.
There’s definitely a large group of people who use A&E when they shouldn’t (like the other 3 commenters are saying), but this is still an awful headline to see for a supposed first-world country.
My nan was on a waiting list for 18 months to see a specialist for her kidneys.
I personally went home from the hospital after they said it would take 3 hours to see someone for my dislocated shoulder, and this was 10 years ago. I can’t imagine how bad it is now (I left the country).
I’d imagine there are a lot of people who go to a&e because they can’t get a local GP appointment
Because two in three Brits go to A&E due to a cough.
I don’t know what the solution is but having it free at use definitely adds to people using it unnecessarily. I don’t know if a fine system should be placed for time waters but something does need to change.
The waiting times are genuinely ridiculous. Cut my finger near to bone last year, called 111 & they called me a taxi to A&E at around half 6 in the evening. I was eventually sent home at half 2 in the morning with a cast and an **appointment** to get it sewn up 3 days later.
I understand it wasn’t a life-threatening issue & they have to prioritise, but that’s just it, isn’t it. If that’s the outcome of the calls they need to make, something has gone terribly wrong with healthcare in this country. And a lot of that may have to do with people going into A&E unnecessarily, but they’re always been doing that & waiting times have never been this bad.
Every time i’ve been to A&E in the last few years there seems to be a 50/50 split for non-traumatic cases. Half of the people don’t need to be there and would be OK with a pharmacy or GP visit. The other half needed help months ago and didn’t see anyone because they didn’t have time or didn’t want to be a bother.
Constant news stories about how under stress the NHS is don’t help if they just scare people into not attending health services when needed through fear of being blamed as part of the problem.
If the wait time is a barrier to seeking assistance from A&E, then you don’t need to be at A&E and your decision on level of urgency is purely upon wait times, you’re the problem.
i avoid a&e because there are people who need it more than me. i had a bunch of accidents, i just patched myself up
I would only go if it’s really really serious
Presumably most the time they are not that sick if they can give it a miss , so this is a rare case of waiting times being a good thing ..
Good, I’ve been to A&E several times over the past few years and the amount of time wasters is mental. I’ve always been seen quickly and this is at major London hospitals. I get that not everyone is the same, but if you’re having a long wait, then chances are then you probably don’t need to be at A&E.
I waited 15 hours in a and E this weekend for an actual issue.
The waiting area itself was at least 30% full of drunk homeless (complete with cans on the floor) self presenting knowing they’d have a place to sleep until morning at which point they just vanished leading to the nurses calling for people who’d legged it as soon as the first offlicense opened.
You know… for everyone complaining in the comments, A&E wouldn’t be so abused if you could actually get a GP appointment with a competent GP. Or if the GP didn’t just try and refer anything remotely A&E to the hospital without a proper assessment.
The system is broken. My GPs have been nothing but fucking useless and I wouldn’t go seeking A&E for my problems, but depending on some people’s health problem, I can see why they would.
I’ve been to my local A&E a few times, I spent the night on a trolley on my last stay and didn’t complain as I know that cases are triaged.
Turned out I had a spinal spasm and I can wait compared to the car crash victim.
I’ve seen people who have gone because of a cold!
I’m currently one of those people. I have a suspected hairline fracture right now but I’m not going to get it checked because of the wait time. Why go to my nearest walk-in centre to wait 5+ hrs for an x-ray only to be told to do what I’m already doing (rest, keep it strapped up, painkillers etc.)?
Sure the confirmation would be nice, but it’s not an emergency so I know I’ll be shunted to the back of the queue to waste an entire day waiting.
My wee sister is a doctor and when she did her rotation in A&E the stories she told were variously heartbreaking and infuriating.
You’d have category A, people who had come in for something really quite minor, and then category B, people who had waited until their symptoms became absolutely unbearable and finally given in.
Category A: sprained ankle
Category B: e.g. a woman whose breast cancer was so advanced, one of her breasts was cankerous.
“Why didn’t you seek help sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to be a burden”.
So for every person rushing into A&E for a hangnail, there is someone actively dying who “doesn’t want to be a bother”.
This is why I worry about the language of reporting around the NHS. “On its knees”, etc. In some – too many – cases, it stops people from feeling that they are deserving enough to seek immediate help.
Last time I went with my elderly mother (suspected broken ankle) we were assessed, x rayed, diagnosed, consulted, free meds and left within 40 minutes. Torquay hospital amazing service thankyou.
Probably worth called 111 first. A lot of people waste time going to A&E when they don’t need to. Also, for areas that have more than one reachable A&E, they can direct you to the one with shorter waits.
A few years ago now, I almost tore my finger off on a machine at work, went up A&E and was told to take a seat.
Sat there with my finger at a jaunty angle… Blood pissing everywhere from the torn off nail but poorly wrapped in shit roll and electricians tape..
6 hours i had to wait.
As I was sitting there, people were coming in for this and that. The nurse at the desk would tell them to sit or go home.. do they not do this anymore?
————
One lad came in with a bruised elbow, he’d slipped and whacked it on a wall. He was bending and twisting his arm to show the nurse at the station, she told him to leave, it was just a bruise, put some ice on it..
Another guy came in to Accident and Emergency because he had a very bad headache and wanted a scan and such. The nurse said no, you’ll need a referral from your GP.
And one woman…
She came to ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY..
because she suspected she was pregnant and wanted a Doctor to confirm it…
The nurse told her to get a pregnancy test from the chemist next door and go home. The woman was livid.
I had a severe esophagitis in September.
I knew I was going to wait hours.
The pain was so intense that I didnt care.
If you are worried about waiting times, then you dont need A&E
I have a heart problem. I sometimes need A&E because it feels like im borderline about to have a serious event. But I’ll be in the waiting room listening to thr people queuing up. Some of it is so minor they really shouldn’t be there. They just need to wait to see their GP. I know its very frustrating, but A&E is not a 24 hour GP.
If you feel like you can avoid A&E for whatever your problem is, then you do not need to be in A&E and urgent care, GP or even an out of hours GP would suit your ailment better.
But I do acknowledge that urgent care centres are few and far between and sometimes aren’t open when you need them to be. We need an overhaul of the system where there IS a place to go that is in-between absolute emergency and GP.
Just waited 10 hours in a waiting room to finally be treated and operated on for appendicitis. They had my blood test results for 5 hours and only moved me along after I said I would leave to go home as I was getting worse in the waiting room. There were elderly people in there waiting same amount of time. Chairs were unbelievably uncomfortable they hurt to sit for longer than 30 mins.
Lots of comments here moaning about customers wasting NHS time, and i’m sure there is some small truth to that.
But i can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a misdirection. Most people going to A&E don’t actually want to be there. Nobody enjoys sitting in a stale waiting room for 6 hours. The fact is regular members of the public aren’t medical experts, we don’t know where we should be going, we can’t triage ourselves and for most of us if we’re in A&E it’s because someone has told us, either directly or indirectly, that we should be there. If this system isn’t working for the NHS then it should be on them to build out a system that does. The expectation shouldn’t be on the general public to ignore medical advice and just chance it.
Good. If you avoid it, you don’t need A&E. Call your GP, call 111, go and see a pharmacist. We have an amazing health service with so many pathways that are all…free!
It definitely feels like we are in need of more minor injury units/urgent treatment centres. The last time I went to A&E was because of an ingrown hair that had gotten infected and became such a large cyst that I couldn’t do anything except lay down. Not life and death but I was in so much pain and at risk of further infection. If I could’ve gone elsewhere I would’ve
I have heard people say that they go to a&e because they get faster antibiotics, when they have a cold.
I look at them and say you know antibiotics don’t actually do anything for a cold right?
I can only assume they give them to him just to get rid of him. But I know a lot of people just treat it like a walk in doctor’s office.
The first thing I thought when I read the headline is you obviously don’t need a&e if you can just avoid it as simply as that.
You will get the few cases where someone is walking around on a broken knee for a few days, because they don’t want to cause any trouble.