‘Only attend A&E if it’s life-threatening’ says NHS as flu and Covid-19 cases rise
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/health/only-attend-ae-if-its-life-threatening-says-nhs-as-flu-and-covid-19-cases-rise-4927012
Posted by Wagamaga
‘Only attend A&E if it’s life-threatening’ says NHS as flu and Covid-19 cases rise
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/health/only-attend-ae-if-its-life-threatening-says-nhs-as-flu-and-covid-19-cases-rise-4927012
Posted by Wagamaga
36 Comments
West Yorkshire’s Health and Care Partnership (WYHCP) has said health services across the area are “extremely busy” and asked the public for its support in helping to manage the situation.
It said members of the public should only attend A&E when care is needed for a “life-threatening illness or injury”.
They really need to start investing in the care before A&E if they want to discourage use of A&E. As much as they talk about things like GPs and pharmacies, half of these aren’t fit for purpose and often people have no option but to go to A&E
I guess we should just all not have accidents or emergencies then
Issue is that 111 continually refer people to A&E who don’t need to go, based on symptoms given over the phone…
People like Rory Sutherland have made a great point that the way to discourage people from going to A+E for more trivial reasons is to start calling it “accident and emergency” again. Calling it A+E makes people forget that it’s not for minor ailments.
Tell that to literally every other facet of your infrastructure advising otherwise and passing the buck babe
We have a walk-in clinic in my home town, just come in when you’re sick and you might wait anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours, but you will be seen and treated by a GP same day.
Far more efficient than an appointment system, especially for acute sicknesses.
A broken collarbone won’t kill you but I’m sure as shit going to the hospital.
Flu and covid are not life threatening for 99+% of population. How are they causing a problem for A&E?
But where else can you get stitches if not from urgent care, which usually requires triage in a&e first.
If you don’t get timely stitches what wasn’t a life threatening injury could become one.
This is also in large part due to a huge amount of people taking no responsibility for their health. If you take a sick animal to the vet they ask about, and recommend dietary and lifestyle changes.
If you are drinking, smoking, eating junk, and sitting in your arse all the time you are often the cause of your own ill health, as well as making recovery much slower and more painful.
If you have the flu or COVID and have not made sure that you are properly hydrated and taking in the correct nutrients but want an appointment you are a part of the problem.
Actually not bad advice. I’ve been to A+E twice and both times the A+E was half full of pissed up idiots, there were police there, and a lot of old people.
A+E should be for serious injuries and life threatening conditions. Otherwise you are clogging up the NHS and its finite resources.
Well get ready for the normal GP bad.
Not the guys that underfunded cut corners and hollowed out primary care to make a buck out of your misery that the majority voted for.
We desperately need more funding for primary care (GPs). They have to do so much paperwork, see so many undifferentiated patients… it also saves time.
You go to the GP and they can order bloods, an x-ray and start you on antibiotics. You go to hospital, you wait to be triaged. Then one of the doctors sees you, sends you for bloods. You wait for a Porter who then waits for you to have your bloods and takes you back. Then you wait for the doctor to look at them, they then send you for an x-ray. The Porter takes you to x-ray… etc etc etc. it’s a massive faff. Plus that assumes you don’t have to wait hours for people in a more urgent situation than yourself (which there always are).
We need to give more money to GPs and make it a better profession that doctors want to specialise in!
How about some massive GP centre, next to A&E and first come first serve, 24hrs, pooled by a towns entire GP and other related specialisations. Proper rapid triage as they walk in the door.
Maybe fix the GPs then so you can actually be seen.
I can see why people are abusing A&E there’s no other way to get medical attention
Shite primary care, and an issue that would massively improve peoples lives, but what do people focus on when elections come around? Also when GP and others in healthcare strike for more funding the same public is “meh”.
Broke my ankle a few weeks ago. Urgent care was shut and I was in so much pain going home and waiting til morning when it opened wasn’t an option. But I wasn’t considered life threatening. Was I supposed to just suck it up?
They misdiagnosed my injury anyway as I found out a month later but that’s a whole additional layer to the story…
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My broken leg isn’t life threatening then I’ll just stay at home at wait for a GP appointment for 3 days
Please also go if, you know, you’ve got a broken leg.
I had to go to A&E recently. Long story short, the time between presenting at reception and getting seen by the clinician was 2.5 hours. In that time I had been sent to Urgent Treatment who saw me and sent me straight back to A&E. I needed CT scans and blood tests and all manner of drugs via IV.
2.5 hours isn’t great but it’s far from the horror stories I’ve read. However, I was admitted and considered infectious. Due to no beds, I slept and was treated in the waiting room for about 15 hours. Nurses did my obs and administered all my meds while I slept in a cold, bright, noisy waiting room.
Thank god I got treatment, but headlines like this annoy me. Because if only the people who truly need A&E treatment showed up, there still won’t be enough beds for them. And some of those people who genuinely need A&E might not have gotten that bad if they were able to access GPs, Urgent Treatment, Minor Injuries etc.
It’s all well and good telling people not to go there needlessly but all the other options have been taken away, so people just wait and get so sick they need A&E or they have to go there because it’s their only useable option.
111 is fucking unless, the people on the other side literally have a flow chart to make decisions which isn’t productive at all. Spoke to a paramedic a few months back that said “skip 111 and just call an ambulance, it makes more sense” and that’s what we do from now on. Same result, quicker reaction.
This happens when you underfund primary care to its bare bones, leave it to face the heat of societal hate, and empower disgusting media rhetoric against highly skilled professionals to hide government failings! And comments on this post show how we have reached to this point.
GPs are sick and tired of never ending unpaid work expected of them, and still getting slated every time NHS is overwhelmed due to its own failings. So, they are taking their skill and leaving to a place where they are not easy targets for political failure. I’d say this country is getting exactly what it has voted for, for past 13 years.
Individual GPs are delivering MORE appointments than before covid but they are still not enough because too many people, a never ending demand, and too little GPs. There’s no money to hire more of them and those who are working are busy filling the gaps of secondary care’s hideous waiting lists. A patient waiting for knee replacement for 3 years will take up appointments from GP until secondary care fixes it and finally called a hero. That costs time, needs more staff, and above all needs more money! Instead what government thought was a good idea was to fill primary with pharmacists, PAs, ANPs, and Paramedics, who have their own limitations and can only do half the job. So, a musical chair of appointments while you finally get to the GP who can actually diagnose or help properly. It’s a pretend healthcare at the moment because during that musical chair, people actually think they were seeing a GP. What a beautiful system! But when you don’t fund the preventative healthcare properly and leave the most accessible and gatekeeping service in your healthcare for 13 years- that’s what you get! Overwhelmed hospitals, ambulances lined up, crowded waiting rooms, poor access, and absolute shit productivity. Let’s all cherish the tax cuts, austerity, and getting rid of useless GPs who are probably providing good value for money to other countries because their skills were not something to be protected in this country.
When my GP says “sorry no appointments available, call tomorrow or go to a walk in” and the walk in says “well we can’t do much, you should go to your GP”, there’s only one option left.
It’s 8.33am. im definitely not getting through or seeing a gp today l. But my child is looking a bit worrying. Breathing, temperature, etc. Maybe I’ll ring 111.
Hello? Yes well, computer says best to get it checked out. I’ll let a&e know you’re on the way.
Post Covid people have become more sceptical of vaccines. Wonder if it’s led to fewer people getting the flu vaccine this year. It seems to be rife at the moment.
Confusing message, you can have some fairly horrible but non life threatening situations. I mean if you’ve broken your arm/ leg are you meant to be heading to the gp on New Year’s Day?
It’s sad that the NHS has become a hotbed for both Morons who come in at the slightest problem, and Staff that only want to see you if you’re visibly missing a leg. Obviously not a new problem, but the system is over encumbered with the amount of people and not getting the support it needs, as well as people being actively discouraged from going which leads to anxiety when they do need to go. Which isn’t a problem for the Morons they’re meaning as they’ll just fucking go anyway.
GPs are privately owned and the partnerships have often sold out to corporates who are hollowing out the service in pursuit of profits (the linked article suggests half the number of GPs per person in these corporate surgeries than the national average).
It’s the ultimate boomer ladder-pull: you don’t make your employees partners and leave your GP/dental/veterinary/accouting/legal practice to them, you cash out by selling to a corporate buyer instead. Corporate buyer then starts cutting costs and services because they don’t have to look the people they care for in the eye. Users pushed to health service of last resort (A&E).
Fortunately [it is said to be in retreat.](https://bjgplife.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-gp-ownership-by-big-business/)
I have ulcerative colitis and went into a flare just before Christmas, after Christmas things got…unusual. Typical symptoms getting replaced seemingly overnight with something completely different.
On the 30th, I spoke with my IBD Nurse who advised me to go to A&E – as she was concerned about there potentially being a blockage in my bowels.
I arrived and booked myself in at 12:30PM.
41 hours later I got a bed.
Thankfully no blockage, but I do appear to have an infection on top of my already inflamed bowels. Not fun, but making a lot of progress here.
You need to tell your GPs not us.. they just tell you over the phone or by text now to fuck off to hospital A&E…
So what do you do with situations that aren’t life threatening but still require urgent treatment?
What about the innocuous situations that reveal life threatening issues?
FFS, we need to stop treating the NHS as a political issue and run it independently of the government like the courts.
My brother in law works in acute medicine/ED.
His best/worst triage?
“I’ve stubbed my toe.”
“Right…”
“It knacks.” (hurts to the uninitiated)
“Yes…”
“Well, aren’t you going to do anything?”
“Take your shoe and sock off. Wiggle your toes. Which toe is it as I can’t see any redness or bruising?”
“Oh, ah, yeah, it’s on the other foot…”
“…”
“…”
“You can get paracetamol from any supermarket or pharmacy.”
“Can I have a sick note?”
“No, we don’t issue sick notes.”
Cue swearing and cussing and the summoning of the security to throw the prat out on their ear.
He’s also had people turn up with hiccups, headaches and cuts so small they’d stopped bleeding and were already scabbing over by the time they reached assessment.
THIS is partly why A&E is in such a state, people have apparently about as much common sense as a rock.
Edit: I forgot my other fave!
Brand new hospital with spanky new ED. A middle aged couple turn up and wait 7 hours to be seen.
“What’s brought you here today?”
“Well, I’m waiting for scans for my XYZ disease but as this is a new hospital I thought you might be able to get them done a bit quicker.”
“So you’ve not had an accident?”
“No…”
“And are the scans deemed urgent? How long have you been waiting for them?”
“Well, I have them every 6 months generally. Mr S, my consultant, said they’re preventative… See, here’s his letter…”
“Hang on, ABC Hospital… That’s a 4 hour drive away!”
“Yeah well, we thought that with all your fancy new equipment you might be able to do them faster here.”
“Uhhh…”
🤷🏻♀️
That is kind of what it’s supposed to be for.
Minor injuries units exist for things like broken bones, some cuts, etc.
Remember the paramedic strike back last year, service actually **improved** on the strike days because ambulances weren’t going out to non-emergency calls and people weren’t calling out ambulances for things they could sort out.
Source: paramedic in the family.
You would not believe the amount of people prepared to waste NHS time for petty bullshit btw got dozens of stories.
It’s almost like people in charge thought that a pandemic that never went away and an already strained NHS was going to just survive ok…