"Experience with my father at A&E"

My 87-year-old father fell in his bedroom. Fortunately, I sleep in the next room and heard him go down, so was at his side immediately. He hit his head on a metal cabinet. He was conscious, not any more confused than usual (Alzheimer’s) and not bleeding. However, I know that even slight head injuries should be examined by a professional because they can turn out to be very serious indeed. I phoned NHS24 and the automated service told me there was a 30-minute queue. So, I dialled 999 for an ambulance. I was told that that would be quite some time.

By this time, I was very frightened. I replied that I’d take advice over the phone but NHS24 had a 30-minute queue. I was told that that was good and that the normal queue for NHS24 was around 5 hrs (who can stay on hold on a phone for 5 hours?). So, I braved the queue and it turned out to be slightly less than 30 minutes (but not much). Spoke to triage, who put me through to a clinician (no doctors there either, it seems) who spoke to my father. The advice was to take my father to A&E and that an ambulance wasn’t coming. 

My father didn’t want to go and neither did I. However, a head injury needs to be seen, so off we went. We were forced to travel for 40-odd minutes to go to the Queen Elizabeth A&E in Renfrew. 

We arrived at 1.30 am. While I was registering my father’s presence (and hoping that the referral from NHS24 was good enough to get us seen fairly quickly – in A&E it seems like it’s everyone for themselves I’m afraid) my father and brother had read the notice board which said that it was 3 hours for triage and 5 hours for medical help. My father wanted to go home right there and then, and I really wish we had. The notice board was wrong. Triage happened in less than 3 hours (one nurse working on her own) but medical treatment? Not at all.

At 7.30 am my father stormed out of A&E, having not been seen by a doctor, absolutely furious, but thankfully still alive and asked me if I had any money for a taxi because he wasn’t waiting for me (that's how angry he was, he would not ordinarily leave me anywhere). Reception told me at that point that there were still 3 people in front of him and that the reason for the delay was that they couldn’t move people out of A&E because there were no beds in the hospital.

They didn’t seem to have a problem, however, accommodating the large number of people who walked (and were not obviously bleeding) into A&E, in the company of the police, though. There were easily as many police officers (I don’t know whether to be glad that there are police officers available or sorry that they were all in A&E) as there were people waiting to be seen. At 6 am I was desperate enough to actually seriously consider committing a crime to see if we couldn’t be seen sooner. However, at 6 am there were no police officers left in A&E and there did not seem to be anybody being called to be seen either..

We got home at 8 am and my father went to bed, as did my brother, but I was having stomach pains so had to eat something. Which prevented me from sleeping at all, so I just got up and spent the day trying to care for my father (fortunately for me he spent the vast majority of the day in his bed, got up for a few hours and then went back to bed), not knowing what to do for the best, but knowing that there are no ambulances and no medical help in A&E, even if we can get an ambulance. My brother got up not long after me and volunteered to go to the supermarket.

My father spent more time in his bed in the three days following that than he ever has before. And he was more confused than usual as a result of his routine being altered. And for what? He worked all his life, paid his taxes and obeyed the law and now that he’s at the end of his life and will need an ambulance and professional care more and more he can’t get either. The next time I need an ambulance I won’t be able to get one and if I do, he won’t go because he won’t be seen, and I really have nothing to say to him. I think he’s going to die.

In my view, the bed blocking and staff shortages existed long before the pandemic. We can’t get in to see a doctor at our practice either, it’s telephone consultations only, and the last time I phoned they had none until January 6th. NHS24? How does one stay on hold on a phone for 5 hours?