Horror as terminally ill woman ‘forced to sleep on floor’ while waiting in A&E

13 comments

1. And by “horror” they mean “a bunch of people going ‘well, yeah, I can believe that'”. It’s awful but, ultimately, surely no one is shocked by this?

2. To play devils advocate it’s Not like they can do anything to stop her being terminally ill why should she get preferential treatment over other people with immediately life threatening conditions that can actually be treated.

3. This happened to me too except they made me stand up and threatens to call the police on me for not being able to

4. Unfortunately this situation regularly happens in every A&E in the UK.
   Chronic understaffing, misuse of nhs funds, not enough beds on the wards, bed-blocking due to lack of nursing home places and care packages.
   What’s needed is Staff recruitment and retention, more government funding for the nhs and social care and and an investigation of misuse of nhs funds and streamlining of nhs management, this would be a start.

5. The NHS is over. Death by middle management on 150k min and Equality Officers on 80k and dying women sleeping on floors.

   The NHS budget is 181.7 BN. It’s insane. We should simply be given vouchers each year of 200k to use for healthcare, encouraged to get insurance and told to go private or public depending on what we want.

6. Ah! finally NHS matching with third world countries medical systems.

7. I started nursing in A&E while John Major was in government. Had exactly the same except they did have a ratty old bed squeezed in to our minors department.

   What they didn’t have was a blanket or pillow. Just two sheets. Poor bastard was dying and the curvature of his arthritis neck kept his head suspended over the bed.

   30 years later and I can still remember it.

   It’s why I handed in my notice the day after Johnson won the election – I wasn’t going to work in that anymore. I was struggling to get painkillers for my palliatives, it was only going to get worse.

   When Blair came in things got a lot better, sadly I don’t think that’s going to happen with the presumably incoming Labour government. I just hope I’m wrong.

8. My sister was waiting with a friend in A and E after she got hit in the face with a hockey ball. Definitely needed looking at.

   Over the tannoy there was a recording saying ‘If you are thinking of going home, did you really need to come?’

   They had to wait 8 hours to be seen.

   Can you imagine being cold, alone, unwell and listening to that? Fuckin appalling.

9. My mum with stage four cancer and seriously ill was left on a trolley for three days in an examination room on a day treatment unit waiting for a ward bed at the end of last year. I went three days without sleep as the staff did not provide hands on care as it was not their job so I couldn’t leave her as no one would look after her. The nurse in charge kept the radio on full blast all night in protest at having patients on the ward, they lied to me about contacting contacting her consultant to come and see her and told me that he’d been to see her but that she was confused so didn’t remember, I had to ask to see the notes to get the nurse to admit she’d lied. I felt so hopeless and it broke my heart. The only other option was to send her back down to A&E where she wouldn’t even be guaranteed a trolley and at risk of infection due to her treatment if I left to go home for a change of clothes and some sleep. Luckily she doesn’t remember any of it but I do and can’t believe the state we find ourselves in when it comes to health services in the UK. This is coming from someone who has worked as a clinician in the NHS for 20 years.

10. When I was in hospital in January, a bed in a corridor would’ve been a relief from the ward. People with serious dementia etc. screaming all night made it impossible to sleep. I understand it’s not their fault but damn, it was like torture. I was tempted to go sleep on the floor in the toilet.

11. Vote Tory. Remember Boris was really a man of the people. Liz was one of you. The mask drops with the current multi millionaire.

12. Might as well bring your own sleeping bag an roll mat at this point.

13. This is just everyday NHS. I had to wait in A&E for almost an entire day while having a stroke. As if that wasn’t bad enough my period started while I was sitting there. I repeatedly begged the doctors and nurses for a sanitary towel and some painkillers and they kept saying they would bring them but they never did. After many hours I was sitting in a pool of my own blood soaked through my clothes. While having a stroke. As if that’s not enough, I was left barely able to use my left side, and I was on the waiting list for physiotherapy for over a year. I’m now permanently disabled, the physios said if I’d been able to start physiotherapy quickly I might not have been so disabled now. This is the NHS.

    It also took the NHS 3.5 years to diagnose my cancer – by which time it was much worse than it otherwise might have been – because they refused to do any tests because according to them I was “too young for it to be anything serious.”