The Emergency Room Is for Emergencies

I have always known that the ER, or A&E as it is called in the UK, is over run with people who do not need to be there. However, this was driven home on Tuesday when I had to take my daughter to the hospital.

What happened?

She fainted. My eleven-year-old daughter passed out on me. We were in the study talking. She said she felt dizzy, and her ears were ringing. This is not normal for her. She walked towards the kitchen but stopped to lean against the wall. Then she looked up before falling backwards like a felled tree.

Her eyes rolled back in her head; she took out the upright Dyson on the way down and landed hard. For about 10–15 seconds, she stared blankly at nothing before she would answer me. Finally, once she was aware again, I sat her up and asked her what happened. She had no idea. She didn’t know she had fainted, didn’t know she had taken out the Dyson, and had no idea she was on the ground. All she remembered was the grey carpet turning purple and dizziness.

What we did.

Once she was upright, we gave her a bottle of water while I tried to call 111. (It is the UK’s version of a non-emergency medical line.) While on hold, we worked on getting her coherent and dressed. I was not taking her to the walk-in wearing a kimono unless I had no other choice. By the time she was fully dressed, we were still on hold with 111, so I hung up, and we went to the walk-in clinic.

There, we were triaged. They took her BP, ran through everything that happened and asked a million and one questions. Her BP was 120/70, so we were happy with that. Once we saw the doctor, he retook her BP. But sitting and standing. It was 120/70 sitting and 110/70 standing.

They could not find any apparent reason for her to faint. The Doctor wanted her to go to A&E for an ECG. Although he didn’t think there was anything wrong with her heart, he didn’t want to chance it.

So, with a letter in hand, we went to A&E. You could not walk straight in. There were people everywhere. I counted at least a hundred just in the front door by doing a quick scan. Thankfully, we were heading to paediatrics. But even they were busy. However, paediatrics tends to only receive patients who actually need to be there.

We were there for six hours.

Being triaged and seen by the doctor took little time. They do not play around in paediatrics. Unfortunately, the A&E doctor also wanted the ECG. So we sat. Several hours later, the doctor came and talked to us. She had called several times to see if we could be bumped up the list, but there were over two hundred patients waiting in A&E. Meanwhile, only one cardiology team was available.

In the end, we decided to go home as she was exhausted. We knew we would not be seeing cardiology before the next day. I took her to our GP, who went through everything again. She also agreed with the need for an ECG and multiple blood panels.

We are now waiting for an appointment for an ECG and blood. It could be weeks. Our GP told us that if she showed any signs of fainting again, to go straight to the hospital.

We told her about the wait and people, and she was not impressed. She told us about her rotations in A&E and how it was filled with drunks, drug addicts, and people who should never be there. With injuries so minor that they could have been dealt with at home.

I won’t put statistics here, but roughly 15% of A&E patients are non-emergency. Honestly, I think it’s a lot higher. The worst I saw was people coughing their heads off, stumbling about or looking sorry for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure many needed to be there, but there were just as many that didn’t.

Why?

In the UK, you do not pay for health care out of pocket. If you can’t get a doctor’s appointment the same day, there are walk-in clinics that you can go to. They are on the scale of between GP and hospital care. Again, it is free. Even with all of this, A&E is overflowing with non-emergency cases.

Did you know that it is mostly younger abled body people that go to A&E? Statistically, older adults do not go unless they have no other choice. It’s usually them being brought in when someone else makes them.

So why does the younger adult generation need to fill the desperately needed spots for real emergency cases? Enquiring minds want to know.