Great to hear everything's okay, Ian, my old mate. I can only echo your comments about our wonderful NHS staff.
At 4 hours you did well then, because Barnsley A&E came 9th on the list of the 10 hospitals with the longest average waiting times that was published today. When I first came here with cholecystitis I was waiting 9 hours before I got seen, but when I came back in a few weeks ago with a blocked bile duct it was only 4 hours. I’ve been stuck in the hospital since Friday, when I came in for my gallbladder removing as a day case. It was only yesterday when the doctors deemed fit to tell me that the operation had not gone well. I thought I was just waiting for my drain out, to be discharged, that things would settle down and it would all be behind me, but I’m now facing another admission at some point in the near future for the same horrid procedure I had a couple of weeks ago, ro sort out the couple of stones that are once again in my bile duct (the longer it is till that happens the better, as I’m already in a tremendous amount of pain and the procedure, where they shove a tube down my throat to cut and widen the bile duct to allow the stones to pass through, is rotten), and then, because they were not able to remove all of the gallbladder I face the possibility of recurring cholecystitis, like, forever. The surgeon tried to reassure me that the chance was reduced, but as my spinal cord tumour was about a 1 in 10million chance, statistics don’t reassure me! My own surgeon hasn’t taken the time to come and see me since the operation, but it became apparent, one hour before my operation, that despite me being under his care since July, and despite this being my third admission under him since then, he had never looked at my case notes, as he was unaware of my spinal cord surgery, which is a pretty big deal for me, health wise, and has implications on my recovery from other treatment/surgery. So whilst all the staff here have been excellent as always, there’s one chap that if I had got my hands on him yesterday morning, I would have wrung his sodding neck! I’d quite like to know why he proceeded with the operation, rather than closing me back up, treating the inflamed gallbladder and then doing the operation when it was safer to proceed, but that’s a conversation for another time.
it’s a difficult enough job as it is, but the extra pressure put on A&E staff by being unable to shift the patients up to the wards makes it practically impossible. The knock on effect is then a lack of space to see patients in the department and then the paramedics being unable to offload their patients, meaning people are unable to get ambulances when they need them. The big problem causing all this is outside the hospitals’ control. It’s the lack of social care for patients who no longer need to be in hospital, but cannot safely be discharged. And we all know why they can no longer get the staff to work in social care! I was an A&E nurse for years in Liverpool, Brighton and London, but my mates who still do the job assure me it’s a completely different beast these days. In my day it was panic stations if the wait went above 4 hours, or if more than one ambulance pitched up at once.
The other major problem is the near impossibility of getting a GP appointment, meaning many patients who would otherwise be seen by a GP practice for minor ailments such as small cuts turn up at A & E.
I don’t know if it’s always been the same but everything in the NHS revolves around the GP , you get referred back to the Gp from specialists to refer you on to another specialist or service , I’ve been under the Pain Clinic for my back for 12 months , went today for some more injections in my facet joints , the Consultant referred me back to Gp to refer me on for more physio , last year the orthopaedic Consultant referred me back to the Gp for a referral to rheumatology . I’m sure the specialisms used to talk with each other
That’s always happened, but they just fill the waiting room up, they don’t block cubicles. They should be told they’ll be low priority and accidents and emergencies will take priority. When I worked in Brighton we had authority to call GP surgeries and tell them we were sending their patient back to them, now, to be seen. When I first did this in London I got a bollocking. Lots of different hospitals for GPs to refer to in London, so we weren’t allowed to upset surgeries.
