Hospital declares critical incident amid ‘exceptionally’ busy A&E as patients wait up to 50 hours for treatment
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/hospital-critical-incident-a-and-e/
Posted by Friendly_Fall_
Hospital declares critical incident amid ‘exceptionally’ busy A&E as patients wait up to 50 hours for treatment
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/hospital-critical-incident-a-and-e/
Posted by Friendly_Fall_
26 Comments
Emergency! Please sit over there for just a few days
* ‘The doctor will see you now’
* ‘Actually I’m feeling better/dead’ (delete as applicable)
Is A&E emergency? I know there are different terms that vary by country and I am not in the UK. What kind of patients are waiting 50 hours? Would people from severe car accidents be waiting this long?
>They added: “We have seen an increasing number of people with flu and respiratory illnesses in our emergency departments in recent weeks.”
>“Anyone suffering from a winter virus is advised to stay at home and rest”
So really ‘too many people have come in struggling with breathing so can the rest of you just stay at home if you can’t breathe until you get better or are closer to death’
The issue is useless gps isn’t it.. try to go to one? Get told “sorry we can’t do anything go to a&e” that’s how the queues end up stupid due to minor issues. Issue starts there and ends up at a&e. The whole system is broken.
This is the result of overpopulation (800000 more people each year) and inability of GP practice to cope with increased demand (sheer increase number of patients and more demanding 21st century patients).
There were talks of our A&E declaring a major incident yesterday. All of the corridors were lined with trolleys, several ambulances waiting outside to offload. The problem is a major incident lets you clear the less sick people out, but the trollies remain. You can’t close and go on divert because everywhere you would divert to is already in the same situation.
A lot of it is flu related or a complication. It has hit hard this year, after a few years of Covid.
Too many people attending hospital for non emergency things like not being able to breathe
I’ve been to urgent care once for a broken bone and twice for an infected cut (both which are genuine urgent care cases) – many of the people there were for things like flu, sore throat, headaches (you could hear them arguing/discussing it with the nurses and doctors).
Apart from wasting your own time, there are no penalties for going to urgent care or A&E with frivolous conditions and since it’s free, there is no financial cost to the patients. Unfortunately I feel like since the public seemingly cannot be trusted to use these services in a responsible way, we might have to introduce fines for patients who repeatedly use urgent care unnecessarily.
Ngl but if I was one of them and was able to, I would just drive to another hospital
We desperately need more walk in centres and the ones we have need to be open more. My OH fell off his bike and gashed his arm open, if the walk in centre hadn’t been shut for the night we could’ve gone there but it closed at 630pm. So we had to go to A&E as it would not stop bleeding and needed stitches. Annoyingly it ended up getting infected and we ended up at our walk in centre a few mornings later anyway and he was in and out in 2 hours vs the long night we waited in A&E.
Many issues here:
1 – Simply too many immigrants, I’m not talking skilled workers, i’m talking illegal immigrants and many, many dependents of legal migrants
2 – Absolute mis management of NHS funds
3 – Too many clowns going to A&E when they simply don’t need to
Let’s all vote Reform to fix the problem.
/s for the reform voters.
This is because of three things isn’t it 1) Underfunding 2) people not knowing what an Urgent Treatment Centre is https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/urgent-and-emergency-care-services/when-to-visit-an-urgent-treatment-centre/ and 3) probably a combination of entitlement + stupidity + the climate at the moment e.g. of course I’ll come into work and share whatever undesirable illness I have with at least 23 other people (and of course it’s only 50/50 if I wash my hands after taking a shit as I am that busy saving the UK economy). There’s probably other things thrown in there as well but whatever.
It would be cheaper for the NHS if they advise everyone to get an oximeter and not to come unless the reading is below 93 for 10 minutes or their blood pressure high/low or heart rate elevated. And during triage if they put in oximeters to everyone and monitor them for an hour, then send home those who are just in discomfort. Most people going to A&E are scared because they cannot see the GP. All they need is someone to tell them “go to A&E if this happens, otherwise go home and get some rest”.
But they need to be seeing their GP!!
That’s becoming people are still going to A&E for trivial things because they can’t get GP appointments. The NHS literally is to blame for this one, if they opened up GP appointments properly then this wouldn’t be happening. Take accountability for once.
If you can sit for 50 hours without treatment, then you shouldn’t be at A&E.
Hospitals really need to get better at signposting people to other services. This is as much a failure of the clinical staff at this hospital as it is indicative of pressures in the wider NHS.
Wonder how many less people would have severe flu symptoms if we were all getting enough vitamin D. No wonder it hits us hard in winter with how little sun and vitamin supplements the average person gets.
Nothing to do with us as a population being massively unhealthy due to our own lifestyles…
When there’s another COVID like event, but there’s no longer time/money/willpower/compliance to do lockdowns and such
Someone i knew had attended A&E a minimum of 48 times last year (at least 40 of those times were by ambulance) for stomach pain.
It was wind – she has IBS.
She continues to rock up to A&E for the same symptoms. Other than introducing fines/billing for time wasters, which.. lets face it won’t happen nor would it be enforced so what is the solution for service users like that??
We can’t ban them, we can’t bill them, we cant discredit a persons mental health so what can be done exactly?
Just come.from a busy A & E in somerset.
The staff are amazing, moving people out of the bays the patient has been in all night to start to assess the new days’ patients.
While all nighters are being moved onto surge areas and wards when beds are available.
Last night we were told to go to hospital and an ambulance would be sent. An hour later they phoned and said no ambulance available for many many many hours. Get to the hospital yourself. 300 plus people needed an ambulance in our area last night.
Got to hospital arrived at 630 triaged by 0700 seen a doctor at 919 IV fluids up and running by ten.
The whole system is broken.
I have astmha, and if I get a chest infection, I generally need a course of steriods to prevent it getting to the point that my inhalers no longer work and I need to go to A&E.
I call up my GP, explain all that, and they tell me they can see me for an appointment in just over a week. – Annoyed, I explain again that by that time, I will likely need to go to A&E, so that timeframe wouldn’t help. They tell me there’s nothing they can do as they’re out of emergency appointment slots. (note this was at 8:30am)
So I call up 111, go through the process and get a call back from a 111 GP, explain all the above to them. They agree with me, and call up my GP themselves. 111 calls me back 20 minutes later and I’ve got my perscription to go collect.
If I hadn’t of called 111, I would of ended up in A&E even though it was entierly preventable.
My thankfully very few experiences of A&E have been limited to my children sustaining injuries, however the one time i was there someone ahead of me was there because she had a sore back.
People really need to use 111 more.
I was talking to a friend about this the other day. She told me that one of her friends used to go into A&E, game the triage system by pretending to have symptoms of a life threatening illness (blood clot / heart attack…) to get seen, rather than make an appointment with her GP. I can’t understand the level of selfishness it takes to do that.
You know what’ll solve this? Millions more immigrants. It’s the only way.