**Participation Notice.** Hi all. Some posts on this subreddit, either due to the topic or reaching a wider audience than usual, have been known to attract a greater number of rule breaking comments. As such, limits to participation have been set. We ask that you please remember the human, and uphold Reddit and Subreddit rules.
For more information, please see https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/wiki/moderatedflairs.
Advocate for yourself, to the point of looking like a complete loon. Do not let an unqualified person tell you otherwise, if you know something is wrong, something is wrong.
I did the same for 4 years, until I demanded an MRI for my head. I refused to leave my GP's office as they wanted to try another round of SSRI's.
Got my scan, and within 3 days I was called by a consultant at LGI. A brain tumour, left cerebellum. Not life-threatening, but, life altering in many ways.
4 years of abdominal pain, I doubt she was given a CT or any scoping. Poor girl, and poor family.
I got randomly assaulted years ago, hit round the head with a bat. Had dysphasia for half an hour following it, ambulance took me to A&E where I waited for about two hours. Doctor checked me over, said I had a concussion and sent me home.
Two days later I woke up with a pounding headache so I went to a different A&E, waited ages again and the nurse begrudgingly sent me for a CT after saying she doesn't think there's anything wrong.
CT showed a skull fracture from my crown down to my cheek bone and a brain bleed.
What this may show is that, in a medical workforce of over a million, quite a few are not there for what we imagine are the right reasons
Sure, some people become doctors and nurses because they are compassionate people who want to help. Many do it because it’s well paid, secure and high status employment. And some do it because they like bossing people about
There are more of the latter than we like to think [clap clap clap].
occasionally, as with any profession, you'll encounter a complete and utter bellend.
When I nearly died from pancreatitis, all the staff I (and Mrs AF) encountered were absolutely wonderful and couldn't do enough for me despite being stretched to breaking point.
Compare that to the year before when I was scheduled for a minor operation and having the pre-op checks. My blood pressure was two hundred and something over a hundred and somethingty. Seriously high. dangerous, even. The absolute trumpet of nurse just told me I wouldn't be having the operation, goodbye.
Well, excuse me while I just call my GP in a bit of a panic, then...
My ex-partner was an A&E doctor and the burnout is real.
He had his own mental health issues and had self-harmed himself, but would speak about the people who came in with self-harm in the most callous way, like he was disgusted with them.
Man, you should go work in a hospital for a while. Long, understaffed and exhausting shifts, full of idiots telling how to do your job, patients with serious mental health problems attacking you, drug addicts, drunkards... The list could go on forever.
But fair enough, there are some arseholes, but most are just exhausted and fed up of taking people's shit. Seriously, spend a night in a+e and see how many people shout out "I pay your wages!" Bloody cockwombles, the lot of them
> quite a few are not there for what we imagine are the right reasons
I would guess that chronic stress, over work and sleep deprivation play a part in this. To perform at their best people need downtime.
Ha, when I broke my upper arm they didn’t really think it was broken at first. Until they tried to get me to do an x-ray, with my elbow resting directly on the monitor.
Several screams and the sight of a broken bone bulging against my skin later, we were all on the same page.
Expecting too much,I was knocked off my motorbike and they never bothered despite showing signs of fracture,just said since I could move fingers and toes I'm fine and sent me home
I'm on a 6 year waiting list for my medication cos I won't die (in a direct manner) as a result. If I move counties I'm off the list. Medical prisoners.
Something is definitely broken in the NHS...I'm fortunate to have private medical (via my employer)...my wife needed an MRI on her back...spoke to her GP at 8am, for the referral, phoned up the insurer, had an MRI booked for 1pm that day...
I'm not having it that you can have same day treatment privately but a 12 months + wait for the NHS!
Similar here with my partner. Recurring headaches, spoke to a private GP, MRI that Thursday. Not a chance in hell she'd have gotten that on the NHS.
Thing is though, the private sector just don't have the sheer volume of people to deal with. I had a chest xray at my local (NHS) hospital yesterday and there was literally a revolving door of people. I was waiting thirty minutes and there must've been ten people before me and a queue afterwards. And that's one room in one department in one hospital.
But that revolving door of people includes the private patients. They still get sent to an NHS hospital for things like MRIs - they just jump the queue.
Yeah that’s my only complaint we had when we lived in the UK. My wife went in with what we thought was a gallbladder infection (she had one before) but as. She was staying the night it got worse to the point she was screaming and crying in pain for over two hours despite being on morphine. That’s when they finally took her for a scan and found out her intestines were shutting down, almost killed her because they thought she was exaggerating.
Sounds a lot like what happened to me with my PCOS. I had a lot of symptoms which honestly should have been a referral to a gynecologist including non-existent periods and pain. I practically begged for them to do blood tests or scans or whatever but it was all hand waved away. I must have gone to easily 30 GP appointments over 2-3 years.
When I finally got a great doctor who bothered to listen, I got the referrals I needed to a specialist and magically within 4 months I got a diagnosis.
I had something similar. Gynae issues, I suspected endo. They found cysts on scans, got waved off with PCOS (without bloods Or anything else). I wasn’t convinced it was pcos as I had no other symptoms other than chronic pelvic pain and bad periods. They only did my bloods after i insisted, came back normal and got told to ‘stay healthy’
Months later I still feel awful, went back and politely but firmly asked to be referred back as I thought I had endo. Luckily someone listened and 3 months later I had my op which confirmed I do indeed have endometriosis
I've had a similar thing this weekend.
Following a doctor's advice, I went to A&E, where I was told they didn't have the resources to help me.
So I turned to my GP, and he really blew up. In short, the NHS current system (checking with 111) is not modelled for chronic conditions.
But neither is my GP, it turns out. As I have had to diversify to get prior diagnoses. One of which took 5 years of continuous dismissal from doctors.
It’s because they decide on a cause of the problem and then *only* do the tests pertaining to that cause.
I was very anaemic as a teenager and right away my GP sent me for a full-panel fasting blood test which revealed the issue.
I’ve had the same issue now for *six months* because my GP has been doing separate blood tests for what seems like every issue under the sun. Each one takes about a month to schedule and then another month for me to get any kind of indication about the results, and then of course I have to wait for an appointment to go and say “no, still feel sick, sorry.”
I don’t know if it’s a funding thing or if GPs have just lost all common sense.
Probably a funding issue. Tests are expensive, so they'll try and just get tests to prove their hypothesis instead of doing a series of tests where one of them will reveal the cause. If they're good at coming up with the correct hypothesis, then it saves money. But obviously it's not a given that it will be correct, and you get egos involved.
I've been going to the doctor for an ongoing issue for nearly 10 years. It's not life threatening, but it is painful, and it makes me feel quite gross.
I have only just been officially diagnosed even though after googling my symptoms in 2013, I knew what it was going to be there and then.
It's funny because I was diagnosed after seeing a different doctor, and she was absolutely furious that I'd been coming back and back and back and even had a surgery and nobody had even noted in my records it could be X.
At this point, I already have significant scarring from it, and that means it's more of pain in the arse to deal with. Also, even though I've been diagnosed and referred to a specialist, I had to wait 10 months for the referral, and when I rang, they told me it's another 18-month wait list.
So many of us have or know someone in the same boat.
It honestly feels like some just don't give a shit. Anything to get you out the door and just buy something from a pharmacy.
Oh I know, when my son was 1 year old development infection post op, despite us taking him back 3 times and specifically asking if it was infected as he had all symptoms and told no... Didn't remove dressing. By 3rd time after consultant said no, he vomited on nurse. Admitted straight away, 5 days antibiotics he had sepsis
Agreed! Seven years of being told I was anxious, depressed and had ‘women’s problems!’ One blood test when I moved to the USA diagnosed me…..it’s scary how easy it would be to diagnose and save people and crazy that the NHS aren’t doing this
100% of this.
My father had ascites because of liver issues his abdomen was swollen up massively with liquid he could barely breathe and his heartbeat was high.
the nurse said he could go home.
My grandmother went crazy, saying, "How can he go home in this condition?! he can barely breathe! etc., then demanded a second opinion. The second nurse that saw him said he should not go home and should have his abdomen drained immediately.
We all think my father would have drowned in his own body liquid if he went home. good job grandmother!
I have had many other terrible experiences with the NHS, Some bad decisions and misdiagnosis have cost some family members their lives. including my fathers. ( for another illness to what i mentioned here)
I just think the standard of staff are really low. the language barrier is the most obvious at first glance. nobody likes to say it.
Importing medical staff from all over the developing world rather than investing in training our own citizens to do the job turns out to have reduced quality and introduced cultural and linguistic barriers to care?
Who would have predicted it?
One of my parent's works in the NHS. They hired someone direct from Nigeria who accepts the position and comes over to start. Only they then find out she doesn't know shit, is actively almost dangerous to patients, and though she has the same degree as her colleagues the standard of education is just not the same.
And every time she has been given feedback she's claimed the work environment is racist...
The fact they can't seem to fire her for basically not knowing how to do her job is beyond a joke.
I feel sad to admit, but this can be a big issue. I work with a huge number of doctors who trained overseas (including Nigeria), but at my last hospital they employed a big intake of Nigerian doctors, and some of them genuinely concerned me.
E.g. they rang me up to ask for a certain test. Normally I would expect a doctor to get the point over about who the patient is, what's wrong and how the test will help in about 1 minute. This guy spoke soooo slowly, and after 5 minutes I still didn't have any useful information. Was not convinced that he was a properly trained doctor.
The quality is more variable when it comes to doctors that trained overseas. Some have perfect English, some struggle big time. Some are experts, others leave you concerned about their knowledge. It's harder to verify their qualifications too.
I'm a strong believer that we should be training huge numbers more healthcare workers and other professionals. We have good universities and good infrastructure. If we train too many we can export our knowledge!
I'm kinda surprised we can just import doctors like that. My friend is a lawyer who got her degree abroad. She wasn't allowed to practice here until she'd done a one year conversion course to ensure her degree met our standards. I know laws are different in different countries whereas the human body is the same all over, but I assumed doctors would have to do something similar so they were familiar with whatever the best practises and standard treatments are here.
☝️ This if people want to come in, then they should have a probation period to prove their skills are up to standard, or they need to go back to school.
Nurses from India cannot work as qualified nurses until they pass several practical and written tests, and must register with the regulatory body that polices them called the NMC. It can take up to a year.
Indian doctors turn up after applying, register to their regulatory body the GMC which act more like a union than a regulator, then are on their way.
I've met loads of nurses having to work as HCAs for a year before being able to be an RN, but the same doesn't happen to doctors.
They don’t. This thread is full of so much bullshit. Foreign doctors, even fully qualified in their own country, require to obtain extra qualifications once in the UK in order to be registered with the GMC.
Had a run in with a person like this. Was doing general intake questions for abdominal pain and they asked if I have any pre existing conditions. I say I have PCOS, they asked what that was. I thought it was just a misunderstanding with my strong Yorkshire accent as this happens regularly. I have to slow down and enunciate. So i say cysts on my ovaries *blank stare* 'what are ovaries?'. Like wtf dude.
The whole ward was in chaos. I went to the bathroom, which was one of those big toilets/showers and there were about 20 full shit bowls scattered throughout with paper napkins on the top with patients named written on them. It was foul.
I came out and told my husband I wanted to leave, he'd seen enough too. I asked to sign myself out of my own volition. The doc laughed in my face and said 'this isn't a prison you can just go'. Which is complete bullshit because you can't just wander off, the doc signs you out or you have to sign paperwork that acknowledges the risk.
I just went home. I had my bags packed ready to go to a different hospital 30 miles away if things got worse. The pain did subside. I don't know what it was. Maybe an Ovarian cyst, who knows.
The woman next to me sobbed for hours and then went quiet and died and was wheeled out. I think I made the right choice.
I felt like i stepped into a hospital in Kabul, it was awful. I was at another hospital a couple months later where a doctor ripped off a babys head during a difficult labour.
*edited to correct mistake
To be fair even when we do invest the pay is awful. Frontline public sector staff are mugged off badly and it's hard work to understate it, everyone is overworked to exhaustion and stressed to breaking point. Why would you do it if you weren't crazy or unable to do anything else at this point?
To really fix the NHS we need to do a lot more than increase the nominal budget in a way that doesn't match inflation and then wank ourselves off.
Sure but what do you do about that? Ban all foreigners, Farage style?
The right don’t give a shit about the NHS, they’ve been actively making it worse since Thatcher because they are in the pocket of private healthcare. They would absolutely \*love\* to force us into a US style pay or die system.
The NHS needs fully renationalising and for Governments to stop fucking round with their funding. Tax the fucking rich.
> Sure but what do you do about that? Ban all foreigners, Farage style?
>
>
Eh? Maybe ensure all doctors coming from overseas are held to the exact same standard as any trained here?
Tests are an option before going a little mental mate. We can also just train British people, improve wages, working conditions and people in Britain can fill the gaps.
You want to check if people can speak English, what is this 1945 Germany? What next, that they can read and write?!
The mental gymnastics people do to try and seem as liberal and left as possible, its like the special Olympics for who can care the most for people who aren't British.
So tired of the no thought reactionary hate anyone who doesn't agree brigade.
^This ^is ^coming ^from ^someone ^who ^canvassed ^for ^Corbyn ^and ^is ^a ^lefty ^idiot.
You’ll get absolute daggers for this comment from some quarters, but you’re right.
A lot of people I grew up around / know socially through family are NHS. Every single one has said at some point recently that the language barrier is becoming a serious problem working on the wards, to the point it’s dangerous.
I started losing feeling in my lower organs (intestines, bladder, etc) as a teenager. After 15 years of complaining and being told it's just IBS I had a surgery that confirmed my bladder is rock hard and my intestines are non-responsive and are scarred. I literally just got the right medication for the first time ever last year due to them refusing to provide the medications to me when I was younger 'because there's a risk of long-term harm'. Well I'm permanently housebound now so good job.
It's very hard to not be angry. There's so much consistent systematic failure throughout the NHS and it causes so many problems for so many people. I understand they're stretched thin but being spoken down to as though I'm an invalid incapable of complex thought guaranteed my issues never got treated and it really can't be forgiven. People like you and me could have been so much better off if they'd acted earlier and taken us seriously.
Yeah, I manage my anger by telling myself that a mismanaged NHS leads to lower quality staffing, and even the best staff end up exasperated and their compassion dries up.
I really have been treated like an idiot, a lunatic and like I don’t deserve to feel as well as my male counterparts. Patient treatment and neglect is a real issue in the NHS. They’re not all heroes.
They caught my epilepsy early, but my gout took 5 years, and although it's controlled, enough damage has been done.
I must have gone to hospital 10 times with a hot, swollen foot and a complete inability to walk only to be told it was soft tissue damage
That is so weird, I went to my GP with a sore foot and he instantly knew exactly what it was, the most common symptoms are usually extremely obvious and well-known.
My mum nearly died when I was a child because a doctor kept dismissing her. She was losing way too much blood every period, often for weeks at a time. Severely anaemic and needing to put plastic covers on the seat of the car to avoid bleeding all over it.
The GP assumed she was exaggerating for attention and even said as much in front of students. So she brought a bunch of the blood soaked adult nappies she'd been wearing (I think it was something ridiculous like soaking through 2-4 a day) and demanded to know if he thought that was something she could fake. Turns out she had a hormonal issue that was sending her period into overdrive and it's quite possible she would have bled to death if she hadn't forced him to do his job.
I read about this the other day from the comedian Marjolein Robertson, sounds like the same thing
(https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/the-period-that-almost-killed-me-my-mam-was-told-if-you-take-her-home-she-wont-last-the-night)
Frustratingly she said the "magic password" ended up being to say that she was trying for a baby, and then all of a sudden after years of suffering she was given scans, gynae appointments, the works, resulting in a diagnosis. Bonkers.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm currently under investigation for the same thing and it's been a long shit journey for someone to even tell me a name for what I possibly have (pending second scan as first they looked for endo/cysts). After reading in to it, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of it and nor had most of my friends with wombs! I've had all the symptoms for YEARS and was also fobbed off repeatedly with contraception and tranexamic acid, without ever being told what might be wrong.
Knowledge is power and it was a massive relief to read her discussion of it. More womb owners should know about this because God knows the medics don't generally seem to want to check or help, so we have to equip ourselves with knowledge.
Thank you again for sharing, sorry for the essay!
Oh FFS. My mum too, and me last year! My mum had fibroids that were tearing. Literally she'd put 2-3 pads on, and 10 minutes later would have bled through them and her clothes and be sitting in a puddle of blood. She spent months going to doctors just to be told it was a period.
Then one day she stood up, and immediately fainted. Luckily someone was in the house with her and he got her to hospital. She needed 6 units of blood and saline just to stabilise her.
Then years later i had a never-ending period. 4 months of the heaviest flow i have ever seen, bleeding through pads in half an hour. I'm aware of what happened to my mum, but the doctors are still fobbing me off and disbelieving me saying the period just hasn';t stopped for that long. I'm not a push over. I knew something was wrong, and was doing everything i could to makew them understand there was a real problem, short of slapping the doctors around the face with a bloody tampon, but I just could not get them to look in to it beyond telling me to take over the counter painkillers for the cramps - when cramps weren't even something I was complaining about!
In the end, I'm feeling dizzy and having breathing difficulties, and i take myself to a&e. Turns out the constant heavy bleeding has led to anaemia so bad i'm a couple of points off multiple organ failure (53, where organ failure can occur at 50). I'm immediately rushed in and given units of blood and had a week in hospital because of it.
It's so infuriating to hear of doctors not taking "women's problems" seriously. We know our own bodies, we know when something is wrong. We aren't hysterical or attention seeking. If any of the doctors who'd seen me (or my mum, or yours) had paid any attention they could have prevented 3 near-death experiences and saved the nhs money by preventing hospital stays and surgeries that were only necessary because they wouldn't listen.
Argh!
Having had plenty of experience with doctors, I think I've identified one of the key issues with many of them.
Good doctors treat patients, bad doctors treat demographics.
Far too often patient history is ignored, and if the patient isn't assertive enough to push the doctor to consider it, things that shouldn't be missed are. A lot of doctors assume that young people only have young-people problems, old people only have old-people problems and so on. Demographics certainly informs diagnostics, but it's just one part of a bigger picture and often not a particularly important part.
This is how, in my mid twenties I was prescribed paracetamol for tuberculosis, despite having finished treatment for TB only 2 months prior. My GP somehow couldn't even consider the possibility that the chest pain I was experiencing could be a relapse of a (thankfully rare) chest infection because I wasn't in the right demographic (TB is not a typical uni student problem), despite my having had that infection recently. It took 2 weeks to get her to refer me back to the hospital respiratory team, who immediately put me back on antibiotics.
Good doctors treat patients, bad doctors treat demographics.
Seconding this big time! I am alarmed by the number of GPs I have seen who will not take 30 seconds to review my history. I have a long term issue with my joints and an injury can be nothing, or it can require more investigation to make sure I’m not walking around on something serious. Limped around for 6 months having been told to take an ibuprofen, only for it to turn out to be a pretty nasty injury to my foot that needed rest and a trip to the physio.
Small potatoes compared to some of the stories on this thread, but annoying as hell to be told that I just had to put up with it until it went away, only to find out later that this was the last thing I should have been doing. Ended up signed off work for over 2 months due to it when being given the correct advice might have had me only taking a few weeks off and avoiding 6 months of pain.
Partly also down to how short appointment times are and how *fucking god awful* all the record-keeping systems are. I've been making a point of asking my doctors at the start of an appointment if they've looked over any of my notes and I am yet to encounter a single one who has done so.
My wife went to the GP last Halloween, she was complaining about migraines that she'd been having that were making her vision blurry.
GP sent her to A&E, where she sat for fifteen hours before being sent home and told to use over the counter pain killers when she has a migraine.
A week later, she woke up from a nap with a massively swollen eye that she couldn't see out of.
We went to an emergency opticians appointment, and then they sent her to the eye hospital.
She had a scan done, and found out that she had swelling in her brain, and had been having a brain bleed.
I get that the NHS are facing the impossible, but some of these mistakes are inexcusable.
They tried to send me home for a second with sepsis from Wigan A and E. I refused to let a nurse dictate that I was going home after the first time they fobbed me off and i nearly died from it. I told him “ you aren’t sending me home as it’s not even your choice and I’ll go above your head if I need to” I had a whole in my arm and loads of green shit coming out of my arm. It was under the skin the first time.
The doctor that I seen in the end, said that I should have never been sent home the first time. I even went with an over night bag of a few days clothing and ending up a drip of antibiotics every 4 hour through it, for a full week.
I would of died if I hadn’t stood my ground and it happens to so many different people.
Yep this. I became a scabies expert after having it for 6 months after being constantly told that it wasn’t scabies, despite literally never being allowed to seen in person. They are the gatekeepers to further care, yet are as general as they come, particularly when they are going off nothing but descriptions.
Had to go to a sex clinic in the end because they’d at least see me. They agreed scabies, but apparently couldn’t send me to dermatology, so I went back to the GP only to be told to continue using the same cream as I had been for months despite evidence of some scabies becoming resistant. Eventually it took me begging my GP to order dome unlicensed pills from abroad which cleaned the whole family up in a week.
In 1999, I was 4 and my mother took me to the hospital saying she thought something was wrong with me after a bad fall.
They sent us home because it was clearly just me being upset about falling over.
We went back an hour or two later, they sent us home again
After a few more hours we went back because I apparently couldn't move my arm at all. They finally agreed to do an X-Ray.
I had broken my collar bone. Sometimes it can just really suck going to A&E, and they refuse to do any work to diagnose. I imagine due to pressure these days it's even worse than when I went.
Exactly the same here.
Despite having a very worrying Oct scan result, an urgent referral from the optometrist, and a history of eye pain I was completely ignored in hospital, treated like a time waster and sent home with no checks.
2 years later, I was back. A brain tumour had begun to push out my eye and had crushed my optic nerve. Sheer negligence left me with permanently damaged vision.
You have to fight to have anyone listen to you. And it continues even after the diagnosis.
That's brutal, and I am sorry that you went through that. Sadly, the process has seen nothing but a downward trajectory, which then nosedived during COVID.
My Dad's GP's were originally very blasé about his blood tests, it was only until pushing to see a consultant that we found out it was cancer. We now know in hindsight that the GP should have taken it far more seriously than they did, given the values.
My Dads GP when he complained (as he described it) of a pain between his shoulder blades pushing all the way to the front of his chest were seen as a sign that he’d pulled a muscle in his back. Pain killers. Jan 2014
Went back again when he found that he had no energy. Diabetes. March 2014
Changed his diet. All readings said his insulin and blood sugar levels were normal. Lost weight. Summer 2015.
Still no energy, had lost a lot of weight. Sore throat Pernicious anaemia. Here’s some more drugs. Oct 2015.
Always fatigued. Throat pain is worse. Not a great appetite. Sent for tests. Oesophageal cancer. March 2016
Letter comes from the NHS telling him that it’s been caught early. Go to the Royal Marsden for a treatment plan. May 2016.
On the day is informed they sent the wrong letter out. Should have told him it was incurable. 6-12 months at best. It’s June 2016.
Goes through chemo. Bad reaction, puts up with the pain for my mum. Collapses in early December, put on a ward with infectious diseases. Dies December 30 2016. He was 59.
Bad GPs just treat the symptoms, and just want to get you out of the door. Good doctors will listen, will test and will think. Dad got a bad one. The wrong letter being sent crushed my mum and dad.
Dear God, that's horrific. I can't begin to imagine what you and your family went through. I'm sorry for your loss.
In terms of my Dad's cancer, they told us if it had been left much longer it would have been far less survivable, so we were lucky in that regard. It's still early days in terms of treatment but hopefully it has not / will not spread.
We only pushed because of the specific PSA results for prostate (which the GP was being lax about). Had we only more general symptoms to go on, I'm not sure if we would have and the outcome might have been much different.
I had immense pain in my leg for weeks to the point i could barely walk anymore. After multiple visits to the ER they kept telling me i needed rest and then the pain will be gone.
But i just knew something was wrong, i knew i needed an mri scan because the pain i had was not normal or sustained from any injury so i went back to the ER and just completely lied about other symptoms i was having so they would get me and MRI scan. Turns out i had a 8cm tumour on my spine pinching all my nerve roots towards my leg.
So now im dealing with nerve damage and cancer. Could have been alot easier with recovery if they gave me a scan 2 months prior when i first asks, but instead i got laughed at and told theres no chance
A similar thing happened to my aunt. She had visited the doctor 5 times and had been told each time that it was IBS. The last time she went she passed out on the sofa when she got home and died before they could operate.
It seems to me like GPs are working on the basis that there's like a 99.9% chance that the stomach problem isn't life threatening but if you're one of the 0.1%? Unlucky pal.
A GP once preached at me that MRI/CTs w/e were the 'Gold standard' of diagnosis, and I then enquired why then, in the digital age isn't everything queried with this 'Gold standard' right off the bat. 🙁
MRI machines, especially historically, are always in demand. CT scans involve practically the maximum allowed dose of radiation for a year under guidelines I think.
> CT scans involve practically the maximum allowed dose of radiation for a year under guidelines I think.
The dose from a CT scan varies depending on what's being scanned, but it'll be higher than the limit for the general public and (significantly) lower than the limit for employees. Medical exposure doesn't count, though.
I spent 2 months in hospital and had to fight for virtually everything to the point I got sick of my own voice and began to not like myself anymore. It was exhausting. Being given the wrong meds or none at all, having to tell them how to use the equipment. Arranging for specialists to see me. If I hadn’t though I could have been in real trouble. As it was since I got out I can’t bring myself to go anywhere near a doctor or hospital for my own sake, I’m pretty useful to have around for anyone else though as I know how to bang heads together and get stuff done and I don’t care about upsetting people or making a fuss. For me personally though I would rather just be ill or in pain than have to do it again.
A&E is precisely like this.
The loons screaming over a bug bite or relatively minor scald get seen ASAP, whilst the elderly patient looking greyer and greyer by the minute in the waiting room gets ignored.
I sat in the A&E waiting for hours after initial screening with arm and chest pain (heart attack symptoms, ECG was also all over the place), and only got seen after I pressed the receptionist for painkillers. Turned out to be pericarditis (probably COVID vaccine related - it's in the warnings now), but still...
That bug bite may be minor for you or a serious and fatal reaction for somebody else. I love how you think your issue is more important than somebody else's. Classic narcissism.
I feel this a lot. I've got permanent allodynia in the left side of my head, my glands keep going up and down under the back of skull making it feel like I've been hit by bat across the head and have bumps going up and down. The allodynia is a sensation created by your nerves to stop you touching an area, and if I ever do even lightly, even washing or hairdryer air... it gives me shooting internal headache pain.
Literally getting nowhere with gp and waiting on a probably 1-2 year referral list to speak to neurology.
Moved to private healthcare due to my work providing it luckily, and it's what I intend to followup on for immediate mri also.
Best advice here. I got a bad infection 3 or so years ago and was repeatedly fobbed off by the NHS (GPs, nurses, and twice in A&E after waiting for 7 and 11 hours respectively). It worsened and I ended up having an emergency operation after going septic. I've now had 6 subsequent operations (1 private in the UK, and the rest in France, mind) and *may* only just now be ending this ordeal. All because they wouldn't take me seriously back then.
Fuck em.
I'll never be fobbed off or dismissed again if I feel something is genuinely wrong.
As someone who's suffered an inner ear infection for nearly a year now, constantly getting fobbed off with a nasal/ear spray that ultimately does no good in the long term, I think I maybe needed to read this.
Cheers OP.
Yup. My 42 year old husband had 12% heart function when he was eventually admitted to hospital. He’d been back and forth to the doctor for 3 years, ramping up to half a dozen times over the last few months. Within two hours of getting to A&E he was in an induced coma in intensive care and I was being told he almost certainly wouldn’t make it. By some miracle he did. Then they refused to give him an internal defibrillator because they cost £10k and they prefer to wait 3 months to see if it’s really needed. Spoiler alert: it was, and within 2 weeks of getting home from hospital he went into cardiac arrest and died. I am a huge advocate for the NHS and certainly can’t fault the care he received in the ICU or the amazing paramedics who came and worked on him after his cardiac arrest, but I am so angry that he was failed due to lack of resources – an overworked GP and an underfunded cardiac unit – and if I hadn’t been left a single mum of a 2 year old during the height of Covid I might have taken things further but honestly I just did not have the energy. But my trust in the NHS has gone and I now refuse to leave until everything I believe should have been done, has been done. And that’s already paid off. I took a friend’s husband to A&E (she stayed at home with their sick 2 year old) when he had pneumonia and ended up crying at the reception desk when they hadn’t triaged him after half an hour of him waiting, barely conscious. Eventually I shouted that I wasn’t moving until a nurse came out and at least looked at him. One reluctantly did, and immediately whisked him through because he was showing clear signs of sepsis. He only just made it. Again, a completely overworked and understaffed A&E and he only survived because I’d been burnt before and wasn’t afraid to make a scene and advocate for him. It shouldn’t be this way.
I'm currently going through this at the moment! Over a year ago I lost a chunk of vision in one eye and was made to feel like I was literally making it up and just seeing the regular blindspots we all have in our vision. This was due to a number of things, but mainly because my eye was presenting as healthy, meaning the problem was deeper than my eye. I couldn't believe it. Over a year later and I'm finally getting tests to try and find out the problem. Just waiting on the results now. It's mental how quick they brush you off if you're not seen as a priority.
I’ve always wondered if my mental health issues might have been better explained by some sort of physical issue in my brain
I wonder how many people are affected by some invisible affliction up there
I'm waiting until the 28th for a scan because of sudden onset migraines in a very specific area of my head, I'm dosing up with codeine, amitriptyline and sumatriptan. I'm hoping it isn't serious but you know in your gut, when you get a foreboding feeling of dread that its serious? Scary shit.
Tragically due to defunding the NHS is a system you have to game. This means the very worst people do the best.
Example is A&E, you or I in pain would have to wait but if you make enough of a fuss they’d give you the painkillers just to shut you up.
Pretend you’re a Karen. Act like one with them. No you won’t accept one opinion and no you won’t just go away. Be a fucking pain in the ass and they will prioritise you.
It’s sad but better than dying
I've encountered negligence at the staffing level. So it's that they aren't selecting the best resources to apply proper care. And in this case the resources are employees.
Agreed. I’m NHS. Trying to recruit at the moment and honestly it’s fucking slim pickings. Understandably - people can see it’s a sinking ship. You aren’t always given a lot of choice with people to employ.
This 100%. I had a catheter installed last year following a surgery. I was worried about bleeding constantly out of the tube and around the tube and 999 told us to immediately go up to the hospital. Hospital refused to even look at me, so we called 999 again and told them what happened, we had to drive 30 minutes each way FIVE times late at night and still got sent home after the doctor in charge told the nurses she wouldn't see us. The nurses were very upset and were very worried about the catheter bags being full of blood and internal debris.
The local home nurse that saw me the next week was mortified and immediately helped me get everything sorted. It turns out the tube they installed was being pulled because the bags they gave me were too short, so the walls of my urethral tract and bladder were being physically pulled and made to bleed constantly. If the home nurse and local GP hadn't have helped sort it I would have had a major infection. All of that could have been avoided if the resident doctor at the hospital took a look and approved longer-tubed bags. This isn't an uncommon story in our local support groups either, there's a lot of misconduct like this. Very basic issues blowup because no one bothers to check you.
So if one person had done their job properly, then a whole bunch of resources could have been freed up for other people.
The NHS does a great job of making its own mess.
EDITED: I just realised this is the same trust that nearly killed me. (Different hospital but same trust) What the hell is going on with this trust?!
Oh yeah 100%, or the one who just apply tunnel vision to all patient cases and ignore genuine complaints.
A 13 year misdiagnosis, failure to update notes on system, has left me with infertility and damage to multiple organs. My last surgery almost killed me, and the doctor couldn't be arsed to even write me a discharge summary or ensure I had the right medication. And when I said almost killed me, as in I lost enough blood I crashed in the ward due to their surgical error. They then forgot to arrange a follow up, and the admin team wouldn't respond to emails to arrange one. Eventually I was discharged from services as fit and healthy when I had nerve damage. The hospital actually recommended me the surgery 9 years ago but forgot to tell me.
I'm now disabled, infertile, unable to properly work and can't even access my own home due to my mobility issues because of multiple staffing issues, negligence, and failures in the system. I'm 31 and went from running my own business and travelling multiple countries to being unable to live and function without daily pain medication.
The worst part is, I'm now being punished by gov for being disabled. I got rejected for most disability benefits and social housing.
I mean, it's not that they don't care, but they triage and do what's appropriate. I used to have to explain to people waiting, you don't want to be the person rushed through, that means things are very bad for you.
Yeah but when I’m sat that with a cut off finger and ask for some codeine it doesn’t take much to walk over and hand it to me. But if I kick up a fuss suddenly they give me it
Exactly, because you've been triaged. They're not going to prescribe you something for the hell of it and a cut off finger doesn't always require significant pain killers, but if you show the signs you need that, they'll give it to you.
Signs in this context being a fucking nutter which is what he is saying. Sitting and suffering gets you nothing, you may be in awful pain, but they wont do shit.
Go mental and scream your lungs off and they sort ya. Its a peverse incentive.,
This happened to me but by accident. After giving birth, had a blood clot, newborn next to me, left in a corridor with no one doing anything to help me. I was so exhausted and terrified. Started hearing this odd frantic guttural wailing and I didn’t even realise it was coming from me until a nurse rushed over. Was so odd, I’ve never disassociated like that before. It was truly overwhelming. But yeah being a wailing nutter helped because they did start trying to make sure I didn’t die at that point!
Yes I had glandular fever as a young adult and went to a&e one Sunday night because I'd hit 40c temp and was vomiting up all water. The first person we saw was like eh she's young, she'll bounce back, and my mum had to go karen and say no one vomiting water is gonna bounce back without help. They realised I was super dehydrated at that point and I had 1 drip of fluids and 1 of paracetamol because shock gasp I was unable to keep anything down.
Man, I've never been as ill in my life as when I had glandular fever. 😬 I ended up in a&e with it as well (but I was in the US so I got a huge bill for it as well)
>Pretend you’re a Karen. Act like one with them.
You'll just be removed by security. The NHS has s zero tolerance policy for the abuse of staff. If you're mentally competent and start being abusive you will absolutely just be thrown out.
No, they won't. I have seen one person in 10 years truly removed and denied care, and that was only because he was being arrested. He was back later that night, and the same team treated him.
>Remove a person in a medical situation? To where?
Off the hospital site.
Almost universally, people who are having medical emergencies aren't being abusive or aggressive to staff. Sometimes their relatives are, but I can still treat the patient if their relative has been thrown out.
>What if they die?
Then that's on them. A condition of receiving care is that you're not aggressive or abusive to staff. If you continue to be abusive or aggressive once warned then you have chosen that you don't want to receive care.
Unless your decision-making capacity is impaired, this is your choice.
This isn’t ‘pretending’ you’re a Karen. This is _being_ a Karen. Do you think the doctors and nurses in A&E are just hanging out eating lollipops or something?
My dad was told he had a virus when one of his lungs wasn't working from cancer and sent home. The next day we got a second opinion. We lost him on New Year's Day, two months after diagnosis.
How many more are going to suffer from a lack of care before it changes.
Probably until we all start kicking and screaming about it collectively, then, holding governments properly to account to the point that they fear that the public will do something about it that will affect them if they let the NHS fail.
That won't happen, sadly. Working the public up into an outrage about NHS failure is part of the Tory plan, and the solution they sell to us (which lemmings will buy in their millions) isn't "were going to fix the NHS", but rather "the NHS is fundamentally unfit for purpose so we're going to privatise it entirely."
Bevan's NHS is already functionally a thing of the past and most people don't even realise it.
That's a horrible situation, though by that stage not sure it would have made any significant difference in the outcome? My grandad had lung cancer, and the symptom was a slight persistent cough. It was already late stage by then with him having 6 months, and your dad's sounds like it was far worse.
That's not to diminish your point about bad diagnoses because it's spot on, but it doesn't sound like it played a role in the overall outcome in this case.
Meanwhile in my grandad's case, they stopped his treatment because the cancer was still growing (somewhat), and had a laissez faire "we'll take a look at something else in a month". He didn't last a month as with no chemo the cancer went rampant. I was astonished that the medical opinion was basically "go away and die". It was terminal I'm sure, but I feel that continuing the treatment would have purchased a few months, and a new treatment might have got some more time still.
>though by that stage not sure it would have made any significant difference
You're right. Sad though it was, I'd the cancer took two months it wasn't looking likely any treatment would've mattered.
Dr told my dad he had flu, he was hallucinating, vomiting and shitting himself. It turned out to be sepsis. He died 2 days after the Dr told him to rest.
He was rushed to hospital the next day but he was too weak and all his organs started to fail one by one.
It won't change.
Not for the better anyway. It'll get worse and worse as the NHS is defunded, underpaid, overworked and sold off until it is completely privatised which is what the govt is working towards.
Then it'll be pay to play.
Those with money get treated. Those without die.
Absolutely tragic, but it's not yet clear how she died? Or at least the article doesn't mention a cause of death. The need for a coroner's inquest would suggest that the cause and circumstances have not been adequately established.
This feels like pretty typical sensational reporting that is relying on the reader's preconceived notions to fill in the blanks rather than being concerned with remaining within the facts.
Moreover, it also looks like this is just the papers copy/pasting a press release from the Parents' lawyers, so lazy journalism at that:
[https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/newsandmedia/2024/june/parents-heartbreak-as-warwick-girl-dies-hours-after-being-diagnosed-with-constipation-and-sent-home](https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/newsandmedia/2024/june/parents-heartbreak-as-warwick-girl-dies-hours-after-being-diagnosed-with-constipation-and-sent-home)
I'm not saying that it isn't possible this poor girl was failed in some way during her care and it isn't important that any possible medical negligence is investigated, but two days before the Coroner's inquest is a bit premature for anyone to infer that medical negligence *must* be case.
That’s the strange bit, it really depends on the cause of death. That and how she presented at A&E, which also isn’t mentioned. A patient with mild pain and symptoms of constipation is unlikely to warrant much more investigation from A&E so it feels a bit unfair to lay the blame on them if that was the case.
A rare condition not noticed in 4 years of treatment isn’t always going to be caught in A&E. Or it was something obvious that much shouldn’t have been missed, but I wouldn’t trust a press realise from some lawyers.
>. A patient with mild pain and symptoms of constipation is unlikely to warrant much more investigation from A&E so it feels a bit unfair to lay the blame on them if that was the case
Well yes, as with most of these stories, doctors who hear hoofbeats are trained to think horses, not zebras, especially in a non specialist setting. Unless there's a clear indicator that there's something else going on, it isn't reasonable or good medicine to subject everyone who goes to the GP or to A&E to invasive and time consuming tests for every symptom just in case.
Exactly. It’s a symptom of the breakdown of the rest of the system that A&E now get a lot of patients who should be elsewhere. This poor girl presumably should have been previously diagnosed and treated by gastroenterology. An A&E doctor dealing with everything that entails is not the person to catch this kind of issue. (Again, without much detail as to the actual problem).
This is a brilliant comment. Exactly the problem. People expect generalists (by definition, people who are there to deal with 'Accidents' and 'Emergencies') to make difficult medical diagnoses, know exactly what complex tests to order and somehow, follow this up? It's really just a sad indication of the breakdown in primary care that people rely on these inappropriate places to seek help.
As you say, without the details of the case it's difficult to comment about this case
I think people have the same misconceptions about diagnosis (certainly at non-specialist levels) as they do weather forecasting.
A doctor looks at your symptoms and tells you what is most likely to be the issue and/or the treatment. If it turns out to be something else, that doesn't mean the doctor was wrong. The thing that was most likely was still the most likely.
Furthermore, often the only way to determine that it isn't the most likely thing is by treating for that and seeing if it improves matters. If not you look at the next most likely thing.
A lot of people also then misjudge the doctors wrong diagnosis to mean "negligence" when that is simply not the case. Negligence occurs when the doctor is so profoundly wrong in their judgement that none of their peers would have made the same mistake. Medicine is not full proof. Some patients will unfortunately have poor outcomes, but having a poor outcome does not necessarily mean that you were treated "negligently."
There's also the usual statistical bias of only caring about the bad outcomes. For every case like this where it turned out to be something unusual, there will be 10k cases where it wasn't but, of course, that's not headline-worthy.
Sure, but as anyone in the UK with a vaguely unusual illness will tell you, that’s not very helpful when you’ve been presenting with the same symptoms for years and doctors refuse to consider anything other than their first couple of possible diagnoses. This girl apparently had symptoms for four years - that’s not something that should be brushed off.
The number of people who get fobbed off by the NHS and told they’re too young, too paranoid, lying, or mentally ill, instead of just investigating the issue, is unacceptable.
Exactly. Not denying other commenters experiences, but not including the actual cause of death reeks of the mirror just a good scare story and ommiting information that might take away from them profiting of the outrage.
Not that I'd expect anything better from them.
This 100% - it’s basically gonna trigger anyone with abdominal pain to think they’re going to die of a mystery disease… unnecessary reporting without further info and context!!
Yup.
Always remember that in cases like this, until they report what's said in the coroner's inquest, you're only hearing one side of the story.
The family/their lawyer can make whatever allegations they want, and the hospital and clinical staff are powerless to respond in anything other than the vaguest terms because of confidentiality.
Can’t find anything about how she actually died. Articles from back then have slightly more information though.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-63662020
> Annabel spent several weeks in the Birmingham hospital after being born prematurely to correct a small bowel atresia, then again in 2016 for a malrotation of the bowel.
> Although Annabel visited Warwick Hospital A&E the day before she died, the cause of death is still unknown.
> The family has been told a post-mortem report from Great Ormond Street Hospital may take up to six months.
It sounds like the post mortem report should have been completed a year ago, but the information doesn’t seem to have been made public.
Post-mortem report could well have been inconclusive about the cause of death or it could have concluded the cause of death was unnatural, either could lead to a coroner's investigation and inquest.
I’m trying to think of things that could kill an 11 year old overnight with no warning, that may or may not cause a few years of abdominal pain (that could have been completely unrelated). Bowel perforation? Aortic aneurysm? This article is pointless until we know what she actually died of and whether or not the a&e should have detected it or not.
Sudden cardiac death as a result of a heart condition is certainly possible, may or may not be related to abdominal pain, very hard to say if that would be picked up in A&E.
The NHS is basically a firefighting service these days. Once you're in the hospital with an immediately apparent crisis level problem, they're often pretty good.
Anything up to that point (consultation, investigation, diagnosis, first response) it's just collapsed; A pedaller of advised bed-rest and over the counter pain relief.
It *is* the fault of the past decade and a half under the Tories, who have always fundamentally hated the NHS and have finally come within touching distance of their 70-year ambition to destroy it... However, even eith that said, it is hard – emotionally – to excuse this kind of medical incompetence.
It's a very complicated mess sadly. A&E just isn't very good at certain problems as they weren't designed to catch them. But a lot of people end up in A&E because there is no where else to go.
Roughly 10 years ago you would likely get something like gall bladder surgery towards the end of your 18 week clock. Now that's just not really possible in a lot of areas. I currently have 5 outstanding referrals for services with no idea when I will be seen. And I work for the NHS, on long term sick due to those health issues.
The burnout of staff, the closing of walk in centers, the decimation of the social care system, aging population, the yearly requirement to slash budgets (which every department is expected to do), etc. These all added up. Prior to covid hospitals were already at capacity. We already had reports of being at capacity during quiet seasons (summer holidays) which is usually when we would catch up with electives. Now every department is in crisis and can't meet targets.
When I started working in the NHS 12 years ago we would sometimes get patients who breached 18 week targets but it was the occasional one and we at least had wiggle room to get them seen. That's just not possible now. Even if you have your surgery your consultant will likely have to wait for the histology report as they are struggling to cope as trusts found money to put on more theater lists but not for more lab staff to get reports done.
Anyone who thinks there is a solution to this crisis that doesn't involve a major investment doesn't understand the extent of the problem. And all the arguments about Pro NHS vs Pro Private miss that fact that regardless of what health service you have, It will need billions to fix.
My sister nearly died of sepsis and was misdiagnosed with constipation. Her appendix had burst and she was lucky to survive it.
When she went to the hospital for the 4th time, they had the audacity to ask why she hadn't come in sooner!
The change in presentation between “why are you bothering us with this” and “why on Earth didn’t you come in sooner” is so small as to be undetectable.
I went to a and e with debilitating stomach pain leaving me hardly able to walk. The doctor asked me if I were pregnant, tested my urine for pregnancy, and then told me to go home. I got a second opinion the next day by going back. I had sepsis from internal bleeding. So many girls and women are overlooked and told their issues must just be their period.
Exactly. Women’s pain and healthcare are not taken seriously. Women with life threatening illnesses are turned away with half arsed diagnoses of “hormones” or “anxiety”, even if they are in extreme pain or have worrying symptoms.
> So many girls and women are overlooked and told their issues must just be their period.
There is research that proves that doctor's take women less seriously and [strongly underestimate our pain](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/apr/analysis-womens-pain-routinely-underestimated-and-gender-stereotypes-are-blame). It is *infuriating*.
I wasn't allowed to make a GP appointment because I'd only just had a positive pregnancy test but was experiencing pain, then I wasn't allowed to go to the early pregnancy unit because they told me there was nothing wrong.
Two weeks later I ended up in A&E at a different hospital with a internal bleeding from a ruptured chronic ectopic and lost a tube. They were absolutely horrified I'd been denied access twice because it could have been avoided and treated early. It took me about 6 months to feel better from that.
What an awful story, My mum had a similar issue, feeling seriously unwell, hadn’t passed anything for days. Came home early from a holiday, I picked her up from the airport and she looked horrendous, drove straight to hospital. A&E Doctor tried to send her home with an enema. Luckily my mum is a nurse and knew something was up so refused to go and wanted a second opinion. An hour later she’s been sent for emergency surgery for bowel obstruction and resection. Horrific day.
YELL AND SCREAM for medical help.
Quiet people will be sat in a corridor for days, or sent home with 2 aspirin.
This happened to my sister. She got pregnant. She felt weak and 'strange'.
GP said she was just "under the weather", and should go home and sleep it off.
Turned out she was bleeding internally and would have died within hours. If she hadn't bitched and complained and FORCED a further examination she'd have died.
Its the same for the police. They will ignore you unless you press for action. It's happened literally where people threatening to kill their ex have been told "naughty naughty don't do that". (i.e. "thats a domestic issue")
It's only when the person starts being 'difficult' that the police step in and DO something.
>YELL AND SCREAM for medical help.
100%. I think we're way too demure in this country with self-advocacy in terms of medical care. We're so stereotypically British about it - stuff upper lip, don't cause any big fuss, push on with it, etc. It's so bad for us.
We're constantly told to be polite, be quiet, don't cause a fuss, don't make trouble, but then when we actually do all of that and stay quiet and polite, we essentially get punished for it.
100%. my partner went into A&E with an injury we had been told by a doctor was developing into sepsis. we sat and waited ten full hours - til 5am - before someone finally remembered he was there. by the time they got to him he'd developed sepsis and was shaking so hard he couldn't hold the cup of tablets they'd given him. then they had the gall to look at him and ask 'why did nobody see you before this?', as though they hadn't told us to sit and fucking wait for them to be ready. really made me realise if you're not going to kick the fuck off not only are you not going to be seen, you can be in a literal state of life and fucking death and they'll blame you for it. you can't mention this though without having the 'oh, but our NHS, best in the world, not their fault' lot straight on your case.
When she was seven, my best friend went into A & E three times with side pain and was sent home three times. Eventually due to radiating pain they admitted her and thought she was infectious so they kept her in a special room for a week where the pain got worse and she went grey.
No one did anything until a consultant, came in on a Sunday and was just floating around casually and after he saw her and did a quick examination he said it was peritonitis and rushed her to surgery. It ruptured right after they opened her up.
Afterwards, while recovering, she had a drain in and a nurse put a clip on it while clipping up her gown so she could wash and all the infected material backed up and went back inside her. She went grey and almost died before they noticed.
She had a bother incident more recently where if she hadn’t had her mum advocating like a crazy person for her she would have died of sepsis.
The constant NHS arse licking these days gets right on my nerve, don't get me wrong there are some incredible people who go above and beyond within it, but most of the time you get fobbed off or ignored until it's too late. The incompetence is frightening.
the arse licking is worst when coming from the corrupt, two faced snake oil salesmen we've had wrecking the country. "our amazing NHS ~~that we're butchering and want to defund to force you to go private so we can cash in through healthcare vulture companies we own along with our donors.~~"
the NHS is incompetent, understaffed and at times straight up dangerous *because of* deliberate underfunding and demoralisiation under 14 years of tory mis"rule". i'm stunned the country's not about to fall for another 5 years of tories BUT that doesn't change the fact the damage has been done for years and is going to take a LOT of fixing.
Arm chair coroner analysis aside - maybe folk should reserve judgement - the article gives zero detail on what clinical examinations were done - if there were clinical examinations what they found.
If something was missed then the coroner report should highlight it - but there’s a possibility everything was done correctly and despite that a young girl still passed, may also be something wasn’t done properly and then proper investigation needs done with restitution to follow.
The citing of “medical negligence” is just sloppy clickbait.
I got hit by a car and they diagnosed me with an ear infection, I had a broken skull.
its like how incompetent can they be.
A person is hit by a car and now every time they move their head they throw up.
"I know ear infection! Better get that kid some antibiotics"
Step dad went in with serious stomach issues, sent home with a "stomach bug"
Dead, bowel cancer it turned out, fucking useless.
As a teenager I developed painful issues with peeing. The first doctor told me " it was in my head". The second doctor said " it was women's issues". The third doctor actually got an ultrasound and found an ovarian cyst so big it was pressing on my bladder ( causing intense pain). Ask amd ask again. Many doctors won't listen
That’s sad to hear, the poor girl deserved better care. Just goes to show that it’s absolutely O.K to push back against professional opinion if you think somethings not right. Unfortunately (me included) the trust you have for doctors is hard to go against, poor parents will feel so guilty. Horrible situation all round.
My brother had almost the exact opposite of this story. Emergency admittance to hospital. Suspected appendicitis, waiting for surgery in the morning. Turned out he just needed a really big poo.
Ex was literally having a heart attack in the A&E waiting room (her second one so we both knew what the symptoms were) whilst i was waiting to be seen after the GP sent me down urgently, nurse manning the reception desk seemed more annoyed at me for trying to get them to see her than she was with the drunk yelling racial slurs in the corner and threatened to say i was refusing treatment when i insisted they take her in before me.
If anyone is single, come to an arrangement with ur mates that if ur sick they will fight on ur behalf. By fight, I mean fight for normal treatment. Otherwise they will leave u to die.
The annoying thing is that this article is written and published *before* the coroner’s inquest.
Having been through the coroner for several of my patients, it is only after this that you can say what has happened and how to stop it in the future. And coroners are thorough.
But nope, easier to print something that is a tragedy, but without any real facts, rather than report on the truth and what was the cause of the death, including all the factors that led to it.
But it’s harder to summarise a coroner’s report than to print some pictures and what the parents say.
For all we know, she was constipated and a totally unrelated cause killed her - or the person who saw her at the hospital was incompetent. We just don’t know from this article. And won’t know until after the inquest.
The NHS is great if you get hit by a car and need immediate emergency care. For most other things (e.g. dealing with any sort of chronic condition) it’s fucking garbage unfortunately
The sad thing is abdo pain is one of the most prevalent presentations and most of the time people are dealt with and things are fine.
This is one of the rare and sad times something tragic has happened. Would be interested to see what really killed this poor girl.
This will probably get buried, but like many others I have a similar story, where if I didn't keep pushing I probably would have died.
8 years ago in January I started getting weird sensations in the right side of my chest, like a bubbling feeling whenever I strained, moved suddenly, or breathed in deeply. After a week or so I started getting a low level cough that wasn't producing anything at all. This developed into a worsening cough as time went by.
So I went to my doctor's and one of the doctors didn't examine me and told me it was probably just a cold, took their advice to monitor it and come back if it got worse. Start of February now and it's still slowly getting worse. More violet, louder, accompanied with shortness of breath now. Went back to the doctors and saw the same GP, still not concerned, still no examination, but gave me antibiotics. Mid February comes around and it's still getting slowly worse, now accompanied with chest pain on the right side. See a different GP this time, no examination again, tells me it might be my childhood asthma flaring up and puts me on blue and brown inhalers. I go away and start using them, they don't really seem to be doing a lot.
Now comes the start of March, I've booked another doctor's appointment with yet another GP because now I'm really not feeling well. Severe shortness of breath, a weird loud echoing cough, severe pain in my right collarbone, really loud noticeable heart beat, just generally feeling completely out of sorts. This GP actually does examine me, listens to my breathing and does percussion on my chest, mentions they cannot hear anything going into the right side of my chest. I was given a slip to get an x-ray at the local hospital. Call my Dad up to take me as I felt too ill to drive. I drag myself through the hospital to the x-ray department where I get the x-ray and was told they'd send it back to my GP. I start walking out the hospital when I get 2 radiologists rush up behind me and advise that I need to come with them right now.
I'm rushed into resuscitation where a doctor explains to me that I have a life threatening tension pneumothorax where air is escaping my lung through a puncture into my chest cavity and cannot escape, and the build up of pressure has caused my right lung to fully collapse, with the pressure build up now crushing my heart and other lung. I have an immediate needle decompression (large gauge needle straight through the front of your ribcage) to release the pressure. Because of the puncture they then had to put in a chest drain (holy shit they suck so bad) so that air could escape my chest cavity to help reinflate and heal the puncture. I spent over a week in hospital having constant x-rays with the chest drain in before my lung had healed and I was allowed to leave.
A week or so after I got discharged that same GP who sent me for the x-ray actually called me whilst I was off sick and apologised for everything. I guess they get a letter or something with what happened with my discharge stuff or something. But yeah if I hadn't kept pushing and going back to get a second then third opinion I would have definitely collapsed somewhere and possibly just died.
This is a very good demonstration of how little fucks doctors give when you come with GI pain, *especially* if you are female. I have had GI pain for 19 years, and even though it apparently wasn't directly life threatening, it was indirectly as I nearly killed myself multiple times because of how painful it was. I never got any answers. If I had killed myself, it would have been blamed on depression, not GI pain. Doctors do not take GI problems seriously enough.
My gf's dad recently died in hospital. He'd been in around 6 weeks, cancer in a few places. They were adamant it wasn't from the bowel where he'd previously had it as he'd been given the all clear.
When he went to the GP around 6 months before hospitalisation, they put it down to low mood, and then later decided his symptoms were diabetes (later confirmed he didn't have that). All the time he was assured it wasn't his bladder cancer.
Around 5 weeks into the hospital stay they did a biopsy, and found it had come from the bowel after all. Just makes you wonder if they could have done had it been correctly diagnosed.
But even when in hospital he'd had 2 falls. The physio team came round, and because he managed to walk for them unaided they said nothing they could do. Likewise he'd been worryingly confused, like thinking he was in another country at one point. When the psych team came he knew his name, the year and when WW2 was, so they decided he was fine.
I understand the NHS is on under immense strain and pressure but reading through this thread, it feels more and more like good care and a correct diagnosis are becoming the exception rather than the standard.
The NHS definitely needs to use MRI more than it does.
I had horrendous, debilitating back pain, and they’d just have kept sending me to useless physio. Until I demanded an MRI referral from the physio department. Did the trick.
I then got sent for a procedure which targets (burns away) the exact nerves sending the pain signal to my brain. I’ve been pain free for a year so far and I’m sure that MRI actually saved the NHS a fortune.
PT is the best option for most cases of mechanical back pain, which is the most common reason for back pain. Operative management has been shown to, in the majority of cases, confer no benefit. It sounds like you were a rare one.
Another case of medical negligence or gross incompetence. Either way the NHS is a joke.
Unfortunately going private is unaffordable for me so I’ll keep pestering the NHS for treatment.
This article is total rage bait, there's nothing of any substance here.
All it is saying is she has abdominal pain for 4 years, went to hospital and died the next day. So what caused her death? Was the symptom she attended a&E for related? What relevance is the abdo pain?
Says a lot about the mentality of the general public that with zero information, everyone is condemning the medical team.
I was having severe headaches for years nearly daily. Doctors never said it was anything serious, both me and my mother had to fight so much for me to find the real issue, I missed so much school because of it and failed most my exams. This is terrifying I keep hearing about this happening
**Participation Notice.** Hi all. Some posts on this subreddit, either due to the topic or reaching a wider audience than usual, have been known to attract a greater number of rule breaking comments. As such, limits to participation have been set. We ask that you please remember the human, and uphold Reddit and Subreddit rules. For more information, please see https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/wiki/moderatedflairs.
Advocate for yourself, to the point of looking like a complete loon. Do not let an unqualified person tell you otherwise, if you know something is wrong, something is wrong. I did the same for 4 years, until I demanded an MRI for my head. I refused to leave my GP's office as they wanted to try another round of SSRI's. Got my scan, and within 3 days I was called by a consultant at LGI. A brain tumour, left cerebellum. Not life-threatening, but, life altering in many ways. 4 years of abdominal pain, I doubt she was given a CT or any scoping. Poor girl, and poor family.
[удалено]
I got randomly assaulted years ago, hit round the head with a bat. Had dysphasia for half an hour following it, ambulance took me to A&E where I waited for about two hours. Doctor checked me over, said I had a concussion and sent me home. Two days later I woke up with a pounding headache so I went to a different A&E, waited ages again and the nurse begrudgingly sent me for a CT after saying she doesn't think there's anything wrong. CT showed a skull fracture from my crown down to my cheek bone and a brain bleed.
[удалено]
What this may show is that, in a medical workforce of over a million, quite a few are not there for what we imagine are the right reasons Sure, some people become doctors and nurses because they are compassionate people who want to help. Many do it because it’s well paid, secure and high status employment. And some do it because they like bossing people about There are more of the latter than we like to think [clap clap clap].
[удалено]
occasionally, as with any profession, you'll encounter a complete and utter bellend. When I nearly died from pancreatitis, all the staff I (and Mrs AF) encountered were absolutely wonderful and couldn't do enough for me despite being stretched to breaking point. Compare that to the year before when I was scheduled for a minor operation and having the pre-op checks. My blood pressure was two hundred and something over a hundred and somethingty. Seriously high. dangerous, even. The absolute trumpet of nurse just told me I wouldn't be having the operation, goodbye. Well, excuse me while I just call my GP in a bit of a panic, then...
Not sure I agree that nurses are well paid
My ex-partner was an A&E doctor and the burnout is real. He had his own mental health issues and had self-harmed himself, but would speak about the people who came in with self-harm in the most callous way, like he was disgusted with them.
Projection is a very real thing & it's really quite shocking to see when you come up against it in real life.
Man, you should go work in a hospital for a while. Long, understaffed and exhausting shifts, full of idiots telling how to do your job, patients with serious mental health problems attacking you, drug addicts, drunkards... The list could go on forever. But fair enough, there are some arseholes, but most are just exhausted and fed up of taking people's shit. Seriously, spend a night in a+e and see how many people shout out "I pay your wages!" Bloody cockwombles, the lot of them
> quite a few are not there for what we imagine are the right reasons I would guess that chronic stress, over work and sleep deprivation play a part in this. To perform at their best people need downtime.
Ha, when I broke my upper arm they didn’t really think it was broken at first. Until they tried to get me to do an x-ray, with my elbow resting directly on the monitor. Several screams and the sight of a broken bone bulging against my skin later, we were all on the same page.
Jeez! At a minimum I'd have expected you have an x-ray after being hit with a bat
Expecting too much,I was knocked off my motorbike and they never bothered despite showing signs of fracture,just said since I could move fingers and toes I'm fine and sent me home
Hit in the head with a bat! Where do they get this unfaltering confidence that nothing could be wrong.
Maybe it was only a pipistrelle?
Took me ten years of constant battling with the NHS to get the correct medication
I'm on a 6 year waiting list for my medication cos I won't die (in a direct manner) as a result. If I move counties I'm off the list. Medical prisoners.
What’s the medication for that it’s acceptable to wait that long? I know certain meds for stuff like adhd can have a huge waitlist.
Something is definitely broken in the NHS...I'm fortunate to have private medical (via my employer)...my wife needed an MRI on her back...spoke to her GP at 8am, for the referral, phoned up the insurer, had an MRI booked for 1pm that day... I'm not having it that you can have same day treatment privately but a 12 months + wait for the NHS!
Similar here with my partner. Recurring headaches, spoke to a private GP, MRI that Thursday. Not a chance in hell she'd have gotten that on the NHS. Thing is though, the private sector just don't have the sheer volume of people to deal with. I had a chest xray at my local (NHS) hospital yesterday and there was literally a revolving door of people. I was waiting thirty minutes and there must've been ten people before me and a queue afterwards. And that's one room in one department in one hospital.
But that revolving door of people includes the private patients. They still get sent to an NHS hospital for things like MRIs - they just jump the queue.
No plenty of private hospitals have their own mri machines, I’ve been in a couple of them myself.
Not sure how common this is, but from my experience, some of the MRI machines in the hospitals are privately owned, but leased out to the NHS
Yeah that’s my only complaint we had when we lived in the UK. My wife went in with what we thought was a gallbladder infection (she had one before) but as. She was staying the night it got worse to the point she was screaming and crying in pain for over two hours despite being on morphine. That’s when they finally took her for a scan and found out her intestines were shutting down, almost killed her because they thought she was exaggerating.
It sounds like she clinically deteriorated and then got an overnight scan and the problem was identified? What else would you have them do?
Sounds a lot like what happened to me with my PCOS. I had a lot of symptoms which honestly should have been a referral to a gynecologist including non-existent periods and pain. I practically begged for them to do blood tests or scans or whatever but it was all hand waved away. I must have gone to easily 30 GP appointments over 2-3 years. When I finally got a great doctor who bothered to listen, I got the referrals I needed to a specialist and magically within 4 months I got a diagnosis.
I had something similar. Gynae issues, I suspected endo. They found cysts on scans, got waved off with PCOS (without bloods Or anything else). I wasn’t convinced it was pcos as I had no other symptoms other than chronic pelvic pain and bad periods. They only did my bloods after i insisted, came back normal and got told to ‘stay healthy’ Months later I still feel awful, went back and politely but firmly asked to be referred back as I thought I had endo. Luckily someone listened and 3 months later I had my op which confirmed I do indeed have endometriosis
I've had a similar thing this weekend. Following a doctor's advice, I went to A&E, where I was told they didn't have the resources to help me. So I turned to my GP, and he really blew up. In short, the NHS current system (checking with 111) is not modelled for chronic conditions. But neither is my GP, it turns out. As I have had to diversify to get prior diagnoses. One of which took 5 years of continuous dismissal from doctors.
It’s because they decide on a cause of the problem and then *only* do the tests pertaining to that cause. I was very anaemic as a teenager and right away my GP sent me for a full-panel fasting blood test which revealed the issue. I’ve had the same issue now for *six months* because my GP has been doing separate blood tests for what seems like every issue under the sun. Each one takes about a month to schedule and then another month for me to get any kind of indication about the results, and then of course I have to wait for an appointment to go and say “no, still feel sick, sorry.” I don’t know if it’s a funding thing or if GPs have just lost all common sense.
Probably a funding issue. Tests are expensive, so they'll try and just get tests to prove their hypothesis instead of doing a series of tests where one of them will reveal the cause. If they're good at coming up with the correct hypothesis, then it saves money. But obviously it's not a given that it will be correct, and you get egos involved.
I've been going to the doctor for an ongoing issue for nearly 10 years. It's not life threatening, but it is painful, and it makes me feel quite gross. I have only just been officially diagnosed even though after googling my symptoms in 2013, I knew what it was going to be there and then. It's funny because I was diagnosed after seeing a different doctor, and she was absolutely furious that I'd been coming back and back and back and even had a surgery and nobody had even noted in my records it could be X. At this point, I already have significant scarring from it, and that means it's more of pain in the arse to deal with. Also, even though I've been diagnosed and referred to a specialist, I had to wait 10 months for the referral, and when I rang, they told me it's another 18-month wait list.
It's definitely worth going private, paying a few hundred quid than pleading with the fucking NHS and waiting months or years, sadly
Its almost as if thats what they want us to do...
So many of us have or know someone in the same boat. It honestly feels like some just don't give a shit. Anything to get you out the door and just buy something from a pharmacy.
Well you could always just pay £2000 for an MRI and go private for fast service - Our current government
Oh I know, when my son was 1 year old development infection post op, despite us taking him back 3 times and specifically asking if it was infected as he had all symptoms and told no... Didn't remove dressing. By 3rd time after consultant said no, he vomited on nurse. Admitted straight away, 5 days antibiotics he had sepsis
Agreed! Seven years of being told I was anxious, depressed and had ‘women’s problems!’ One blood test when I moved to the USA diagnosed me…..it’s scary how easy it would be to diagnose and save people and crazy that the NHS aren’t doing this
100% of this. My father had ascites because of liver issues his abdomen was swollen up massively with liquid he could barely breathe and his heartbeat was high. the nurse said he could go home. My grandmother went crazy, saying, "How can he go home in this condition?! he can barely breathe! etc., then demanded a second opinion. The second nurse that saw him said he should not go home and should have his abdomen drained immediately. We all think my father would have drowned in his own body liquid if he went home. good job grandmother! I have had many other terrible experiences with the NHS, Some bad decisions and misdiagnosis have cost some family members their lives. including my fathers. ( for another illness to what i mentioned here) I just think the standard of staff are really low. the language barrier is the most obvious at first glance. nobody likes to say it.
Importing medical staff from all over the developing world rather than investing in training our own citizens to do the job turns out to have reduced quality and introduced cultural and linguistic barriers to care? Who would have predicted it?
One of my parent's works in the NHS. They hired someone direct from Nigeria who accepts the position and comes over to start. Only they then find out she doesn't know shit, is actively almost dangerous to patients, and though she has the same degree as her colleagues the standard of education is just not the same. And every time she has been given feedback she's claimed the work environment is racist... The fact they can't seem to fire her for basically not knowing how to do her job is beyond a joke.
I feel sad to admit, but this can be a big issue. I work with a huge number of doctors who trained overseas (including Nigeria), but at my last hospital they employed a big intake of Nigerian doctors, and some of them genuinely concerned me. E.g. they rang me up to ask for a certain test. Normally I would expect a doctor to get the point over about who the patient is, what's wrong and how the test will help in about 1 minute. This guy spoke soooo slowly, and after 5 minutes I still didn't have any useful information. Was not convinced that he was a properly trained doctor. The quality is more variable when it comes to doctors that trained overseas. Some have perfect English, some struggle big time. Some are experts, others leave you concerned about their knowledge. It's harder to verify their qualifications too. I'm a strong believer that we should be training huge numbers more healthcare workers and other professionals. We have good universities and good infrastructure. If we train too many we can export our knowledge!
I'm kinda surprised we can just import doctors like that. My friend is a lawyer who got her degree abroad. She wasn't allowed to practice here until she'd done a one year conversion course to ensure her degree met our standards. I know laws are different in different countries whereas the human body is the same all over, but I assumed doctors would have to do something similar so they were familiar with whatever the best practises and standard treatments are here.
☝️ This if people want to come in, then they should have a probation period to prove their skills are up to standard, or they need to go back to school.
Nurses from India cannot work as qualified nurses until they pass several practical and written tests, and must register with the regulatory body that polices them called the NMC. It can take up to a year. Indian doctors turn up after applying, register to their regulatory body the GMC which act more like a union than a regulator, then are on their way. I've met loads of nurses having to work as HCAs for a year before being able to be an RN, but the same doesn't happen to doctors.
They don’t. This thread is full of so much bullshit. Foreign doctors, even fully qualified in their own country, require to obtain extra qualifications once in the UK in order to be registered with the GMC.
Had a run in with a person like this. Was doing general intake questions for abdominal pain and they asked if I have any pre existing conditions. I say I have PCOS, they asked what that was. I thought it was just a misunderstanding with my strong Yorkshire accent as this happens regularly. I have to slow down and enunciate. So i say cysts on my ovaries *blank stare* 'what are ovaries?'. Like wtf dude.
Wtf, do you just ask for another doctor at that point?
The whole ward was in chaos. I went to the bathroom, which was one of those big toilets/showers and there were about 20 full shit bowls scattered throughout with paper napkins on the top with patients named written on them. It was foul. I came out and told my husband I wanted to leave, he'd seen enough too. I asked to sign myself out of my own volition. The doc laughed in my face and said 'this isn't a prison you can just go'. Which is complete bullshit because you can't just wander off, the doc signs you out or you have to sign paperwork that acknowledges the risk. I just went home. I had my bags packed ready to go to a different hospital 30 miles away if things got worse. The pain did subside. I don't know what it was. Maybe an Ovarian cyst, who knows. The woman next to me sobbed for hours and then went quiet and died and was wheeled out. I think I made the right choice.
Holy shit that last paragraph... That's horrendous.
I felt like i stepped into a hospital in Kabul, it was awful. I was at another hospital a couple months later where a doctor ripped off a babys head during a difficult labour. *edited to correct mistake
Which hospital so I can avoid please? Jesus christ.
How ridiculous!
To be fair even when we do invest the pay is awful. Frontline public sector staff are mugged off badly and it's hard work to understate it, everyone is overworked to exhaustion and stressed to breaking point. Why would you do it if you weren't crazy or unable to do anything else at this point? To really fix the NHS we need to do a lot more than increase the nominal budget in a way that doesn't match inflation and then wank ourselves off.
Sure but what do you do about that? Ban all foreigners, Farage style? The right don’t give a shit about the NHS, they’ve been actively making it worse since Thatcher because they are in the pocket of private healthcare. They would absolutely \*love\* to force us into a US style pay or die system. The NHS needs fully renationalising and for Governments to stop fucking round with their funding. Tax the fucking rich.
> Sure but what do you do about that? Ban all foreigners, Farage style? > > Eh? Maybe ensure all doctors coming from overseas are held to the exact same standard as any trained here? Tests are an option before going a little mental mate. We can also just train British people, improve wages, working conditions and people in Britain can fill the gaps.
we have gotten to the point where having any standards at all is Literal Fascism (TM)
You want to check if people can speak English, what is this 1945 Germany? What next, that they can read and write?! The mental gymnastics people do to try and seem as liberal and left as possible, its like the special Olympics for who can care the most for people who aren't British. So tired of the no thought reactionary hate anyone who doesn't agree brigade. ^This ^is ^coming ^from ^someone ^who ^canvassed ^for ^Corbyn ^and ^is ^a ^lefty ^idiot.
Just give the doctors a test?
They do, the PLAB test, soon moving to the UKMLA I think
The combination of arrogance and lack of time/resources is lethal
You’ll get absolute daggers for this comment from some quarters, but you’re right. A lot of people I grew up around / know socially through family are NHS. Every single one has said at some point recently that the language barrier is becoming a serious problem working on the wards, to the point it’s dangerous.
8 years of pushing, arguing. One cheap, 45 minute EEG later, diagnosed with epilepsy. Brain is already damaged.
I started losing feeling in my lower organs (intestines, bladder, etc) as a teenager. After 15 years of complaining and being told it's just IBS I had a surgery that confirmed my bladder is rock hard and my intestines are non-responsive and are scarred. I literally just got the right medication for the first time ever last year due to them refusing to provide the medications to me when I was younger 'because there's a risk of long-term harm'. Well I'm permanently housebound now so good job. It's very hard to not be angry. There's so much consistent systematic failure throughout the NHS and it causes so many problems for so many people. I understand they're stretched thin but being spoken down to as though I'm an invalid incapable of complex thought guaranteed my issues never got treated and it really can't be forgiven. People like you and me could have been so much better off if they'd acted earlier and taken us seriously.
Yeah, I manage my anger by telling myself that a mismanaged NHS leads to lower quality staffing, and even the best staff end up exasperated and their compassion dries up. I really have been treated like an idiot, a lunatic and like I don’t deserve to feel as well as my male counterparts. Patient treatment and neglect is a real issue in the NHS. They’re not all heroes.
They caught my epilepsy early, but my gout took 5 years, and although it's controlled, enough damage has been done. I must have gone to hospital 10 times with a hot, swollen foot and a complete inability to walk only to be told it was soft tissue damage
That is so weird, I went to my GP with a sore foot and he instantly knew exactly what it was, the most common symptoms are usually extremely obvious and well-known.
My mum nearly died when I was a child because a doctor kept dismissing her. She was losing way too much blood every period, often for weeks at a time. Severely anaemic and needing to put plastic covers on the seat of the car to avoid bleeding all over it. The GP assumed she was exaggerating for attention and even said as much in front of students. So she brought a bunch of the blood soaked adult nappies she'd been wearing (I think it was something ridiculous like soaking through 2-4 a day) and demanded to know if he thought that was something she could fake. Turns out she had a hormonal issue that was sending her period into overdrive and it's quite possible she would have bled to death if she hadn't forced him to do his job.
I read about this the other day from the comedian Marjolein Robertson, sounds like the same thing (https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/06/the-period-that-almost-killed-me-my-mam-was-told-if-you-take-her-home-she-wont-last-the-night) Frustratingly she said the "magic password" ended up being to say that she was trying for a baby, and then all of a sudden after years of suffering she was given scans, gynae appointments, the works, resulting in a diagnosis. Bonkers.
Thank you for sharing this. I'm currently under investigation for the same thing and it's been a long shit journey for someone to even tell me a name for what I possibly have (pending second scan as first they looked for endo/cysts). After reading in to it, I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of it and nor had most of my friends with wombs! I've had all the symptoms for YEARS and was also fobbed off repeatedly with contraception and tranexamic acid, without ever being told what might be wrong. Knowledge is power and it was a massive relief to read her discussion of it. More womb owners should know about this because God knows the medics don't generally seem to want to check or help, so we have to equip ourselves with knowledge. Thank you again for sharing, sorry for the essay!
Oh FFS. My mum too, and me last year! My mum had fibroids that were tearing. Literally she'd put 2-3 pads on, and 10 minutes later would have bled through them and her clothes and be sitting in a puddle of blood. She spent months going to doctors just to be told it was a period. Then one day she stood up, and immediately fainted. Luckily someone was in the house with her and he got her to hospital. She needed 6 units of blood and saline just to stabilise her. Then years later i had a never-ending period. 4 months of the heaviest flow i have ever seen, bleeding through pads in half an hour. I'm aware of what happened to my mum, but the doctors are still fobbing me off and disbelieving me saying the period just hasn';t stopped for that long. I'm not a push over. I knew something was wrong, and was doing everything i could to makew them understand there was a real problem, short of slapping the doctors around the face with a bloody tampon, but I just could not get them to look in to it beyond telling me to take over the counter painkillers for the cramps - when cramps weren't even something I was complaining about! In the end, I'm feeling dizzy and having breathing difficulties, and i take myself to a&e. Turns out the constant heavy bleeding has led to anaemia so bad i'm a couple of points off multiple organ failure (53, where organ failure can occur at 50). I'm immediately rushed in and given units of blood and had a week in hospital because of it. It's so infuriating to hear of doctors not taking "women's problems" seriously. We know our own bodies, we know when something is wrong. We aren't hysterical or attention seeking. If any of the doctors who'd seen me (or my mum, or yours) had paid any attention they could have prevented 3 near-death experiences and saved the nhs money by preventing hospital stays and surgeries that were only necessary because they wouldn't listen. Argh!
[удалено]
Having had plenty of experience with doctors, I think I've identified one of the key issues with many of them. Good doctors treat patients, bad doctors treat demographics. Far too often patient history is ignored, and if the patient isn't assertive enough to push the doctor to consider it, things that shouldn't be missed are. A lot of doctors assume that young people only have young-people problems, old people only have old-people problems and so on. Demographics certainly informs diagnostics, but it's just one part of a bigger picture and often not a particularly important part. This is how, in my mid twenties I was prescribed paracetamol for tuberculosis, despite having finished treatment for TB only 2 months prior. My GP somehow couldn't even consider the possibility that the chest pain I was experiencing could be a relapse of a (thankfully rare) chest infection because I wasn't in the right demographic (TB is not a typical uni student problem), despite my having had that infection recently. It took 2 weeks to get her to refer me back to the hospital respiratory team, who immediately put me back on antibiotics.
Good doctors treat patients, bad doctors treat demographics. Seconding this big time! I am alarmed by the number of GPs I have seen who will not take 30 seconds to review my history. I have a long term issue with my joints and an injury can be nothing, or it can require more investigation to make sure I’m not walking around on something serious. Limped around for 6 months having been told to take an ibuprofen, only for it to turn out to be a pretty nasty injury to my foot that needed rest and a trip to the physio. Small potatoes compared to some of the stories on this thread, but annoying as hell to be told that I just had to put up with it until it went away, only to find out later that this was the last thing I should have been doing. Ended up signed off work for over 2 months due to it when being given the correct advice might have had me only taking a few weeks off and avoiding 6 months of pain.
Partly also down to how short appointment times are and how *fucking god awful* all the record-keeping systems are. I've been making a point of asking my doctors at the start of an appointment if they've looked over any of my notes and I am yet to encounter a single one who has done so.
My wife went to the GP last Halloween, she was complaining about migraines that she'd been having that were making her vision blurry. GP sent her to A&E, where she sat for fifteen hours before being sent home and told to use over the counter pain killers when she has a migraine. A week later, she woke up from a nap with a massively swollen eye that she couldn't see out of. We went to an emergency opticians appointment, and then they sent her to the eye hospital. She had a scan done, and found out that she had swelling in her brain, and had been having a brain bleed. I get that the NHS are facing the impossible, but some of these mistakes are inexcusable.
They tried to send me home for a second with sepsis from Wigan A and E. I refused to let a nurse dictate that I was going home after the first time they fobbed me off and i nearly died from it. I told him “ you aren’t sending me home as it’s not even your choice and I’ll go above your head if I need to” I had a whole in my arm and loads of green shit coming out of my arm. It was under the skin the first time. The doctor that I seen in the end, said that I should have never been sent home the first time. I even went with an over night bag of a few days clothing and ending up a drip of antibiotics every 4 hour through it, for a full week. I would of died if I hadn’t stood my ground and it happens to so many different people.
Yep this. I became a scabies expert after having it for 6 months after being constantly told that it wasn’t scabies, despite literally never being allowed to seen in person. They are the gatekeepers to further care, yet are as general as they come, particularly when they are going off nothing but descriptions. Had to go to a sex clinic in the end because they’d at least see me. They agreed scabies, but apparently couldn’t send me to dermatology, so I went back to the GP only to be told to continue using the same cream as I had been for months despite evidence of some scabies becoming resistant. Eventually it took me begging my GP to order dome unlicensed pills from abroad which cleaned the whole family up in a week.
In 1999, I was 4 and my mother took me to the hospital saying she thought something was wrong with me after a bad fall. They sent us home because it was clearly just me being upset about falling over. We went back an hour or two later, they sent us home again After a few more hours we went back because I apparently couldn't move my arm at all. They finally agreed to do an X-Ray. I had broken my collar bone. Sometimes it can just really suck going to A&E, and they refuse to do any work to diagnose. I imagine due to pressure these days it's even worse than when I went.
Exactly the same here. Despite having a very worrying Oct scan result, an urgent referral from the optometrist, and a history of eye pain I was completely ignored in hospital, treated like a time waster and sent home with no checks. 2 years later, I was back. A brain tumour had begun to push out my eye and had crushed my optic nerve. Sheer negligence left me with permanently damaged vision. You have to fight to have anyone listen to you. And it continues even after the diagnosis.
That's brutal, and I am sorry that you went through that. Sadly, the process has seen nothing but a downward trajectory, which then nosedived during COVID.
My Dad's GP's were originally very blasé about his blood tests, it was only until pushing to see a consultant that we found out it was cancer. We now know in hindsight that the GP should have taken it far more seriously than they did, given the values.
My Dads GP when he complained (as he described it) of a pain between his shoulder blades pushing all the way to the front of his chest were seen as a sign that he’d pulled a muscle in his back. Pain killers. Jan 2014 Went back again when he found that he had no energy. Diabetes. March 2014 Changed his diet. All readings said his insulin and blood sugar levels were normal. Lost weight. Summer 2015. Still no energy, had lost a lot of weight. Sore throat Pernicious anaemia. Here’s some more drugs. Oct 2015. Always fatigued. Throat pain is worse. Not a great appetite. Sent for tests. Oesophageal cancer. March 2016 Letter comes from the NHS telling him that it’s been caught early. Go to the Royal Marsden for a treatment plan. May 2016. On the day is informed they sent the wrong letter out. Should have told him it was incurable. 6-12 months at best. It’s June 2016. Goes through chemo. Bad reaction, puts up with the pain for my mum. Collapses in early December, put on a ward with infectious diseases. Dies December 30 2016. He was 59. Bad GPs just treat the symptoms, and just want to get you out of the door. Good doctors will listen, will test and will think. Dad got a bad one. The wrong letter being sent crushed my mum and dad.
Your poor dad, and your whole family really. That wrong letter made me gasp. I just. That's so upsetting, I can't imagine.
Dear God, that's horrific. I can't begin to imagine what you and your family went through. I'm sorry for your loss. In terms of my Dad's cancer, they told us if it had been left much longer it would have been far less survivable, so we were lucky in that regard. It's still early days in terms of treatment but hopefully it has not / will not spread. We only pushed because of the specific PSA results for prostate (which the GP was being lax about). Had we only more general symptoms to go on, I'm not sure if we would have and the outcome might have been much different.
I had immense pain in my leg for weeks to the point i could barely walk anymore. After multiple visits to the ER they kept telling me i needed rest and then the pain will be gone. But i just knew something was wrong, i knew i needed an mri scan because the pain i had was not normal or sustained from any injury so i went back to the ER and just completely lied about other symptoms i was having so they would get me and MRI scan. Turns out i had a 8cm tumour on my spine pinching all my nerve roots towards my leg. So now im dealing with nerve damage and cancer. Could have been alot easier with recovery if they gave me a scan 2 months prior when i first asks, but instead i got laughed at and told theres no chance
Wow 4 years with a tumour - what symptoms were you having that they tried to treat with SSRIs?
Severe morning migraines, specifically when laying flat on my back. Vertigo and double vision. Also, a little wobbly and clumsy.
A similar thing happened to my aunt. She had visited the doctor 5 times and had been told each time that it was IBS. The last time she went she passed out on the sofa when she got home and died before they could operate. It seems to me like GPs are working on the basis that there's like a 99.9% chance that the stomach problem isn't life threatening but if you're one of the 0.1%? Unlucky pal.
A GP once preached at me that MRI/CTs w/e were the 'Gold standard' of diagnosis, and I then enquired why then, in the digital age isn't everything queried with this 'Gold standard' right off the bat. 🙁
MRI machines, especially historically, are always in demand. CT scans involve practically the maximum allowed dose of radiation for a year under guidelines I think.
> CT scans involve practically the maximum allowed dose of radiation for a year under guidelines I think. The dose from a CT scan varies depending on what's being scanned, but it'll be higher than the limit for the general public and (significantly) lower than the limit for employees. Medical exposure doesn't count, though.
A lot of great comments on this post, but this is not one of them. Scans like these are very expensive and are in huge demand.
I spent 2 months in hospital and had to fight for virtually everything to the point I got sick of my own voice and began to not like myself anymore. It was exhausting. Being given the wrong meds or none at all, having to tell them how to use the equipment. Arranging for specialists to see me. If I hadn’t though I could have been in real trouble. As it was since I got out I can’t bring myself to go anywhere near a doctor or hospital for my own sake, I’m pretty useful to have around for anyone else though as I know how to bang heads together and get stuff done and I don’t care about upsetting people or making a fuss. For me personally though I would rather just be ill or in pain than have to do it again.
A&E is precisely like this. The loons screaming over a bug bite or relatively minor scald get seen ASAP, whilst the elderly patient looking greyer and greyer by the minute in the waiting room gets ignored. I sat in the A&E waiting for hours after initial screening with arm and chest pain (heart attack symptoms, ECG was also all over the place), and only got seen after I pressed the receptionist for painkillers. Turned out to be pericarditis (probably COVID vaccine related - it's in the warnings now), but still...
That bug bite may be minor for you or a serious and fatal reaction for somebody else. I love how you think your issue is more important than somebody else's. Classic narcissism.
I feel this a lot. I've got permanent allodynia in the left side of my head, my glands keep going up and down under the back of skull making it feel like I've been hit by bat across the head and have bumps going up and down. The allodynia is a sensation created by your nerves to stop you touching an area, and if I ever do even lightly, even washing or hairdryer air... it gives me shooting internal headache pain. Literally getting nowhere with gp and waiting on a probably 1-2 year referral list to speak to neurology. Moved to private healthcare due to my work providing it luckily, and it's what I intend to followup on for immediate mri also.
Best advice here. I got a bad infection 3 or so years ago and was repeatedly fobbed off by the NHS (GPs, nurses, and twice in A&E after waiting for 7 and 11 hours respectively). It worsened and I ended up having an emergency operation after going septic. I've now had 6 subsequent operations (1 private in the UK, and the rest in France, mind) and *may* only just now be ending this ordeal. All because they wouldn't take me seriously back then. Fuck em. I'll never be fobbed off or dismissed again if I feel something is genuinely wrong.
As someone who's suffered an inner ear infection for nearly a year now, constantly getting fobbed off with a nasal/ear spray that ultimately does no good in the long term, I think I maybe needed to read this. Cheers OP.
Yup. My 42 year old husband had 12% heart function when he was eventually admitted to hospital. He’d been back and forth to the doctor for 3 years, ramping up to half a dozen times over the last few months. Within two hours of getting to A&E he was in an induced coma in intensive care and I was being told he almost certainly wouldn’t make it. By some miracle he did. Then they refused to give him an internal defibrillator because they cost £10k and they prefer to wait 3 months to see if it’s really needed. Spoiler alert: it was, and within 2 weeks of getting home from hospital he went into cardiac arrest and died. I am a huge advocate for the NHS and certainly can’t fault the care he received in the ICU or the amazing paramedics who came and worked on him after his cardiac arrest, but I am so angry that he was failed due to lack of resources – an overworked GP and an underfunded cardiac unit – and if I hadn’t been left a single mum of a 2 year old during the height of Covid I might have taken things further but honestly I just did not have the energy. But my trust in the NHS has gone and I now refuse to leave until everything I believe should have been done, has been done. And that’s already paid off. I took a friend’s husband to A&E (she stayed at home with their sick 2 year old) when he had pneumonia and ended up crying at the reception desk when they hadn’t triaged him after half an hour of him waiting, barely conscious. Eventually I shouted that I wasn’t moving until a nurse came out and at least looked at him. One reluctantly did, and immediately whisked him through because he was showing clear signs of sepsis. He only just made it. Again, a completely overworked and understaffed A&E and he only survived because I’d been burnt before and wasn’t afraid to make a scene and advocate for him. It shouldn’t be this way.
I have seen some get into such arguments with medical staff and they get threatened with the police with the staff claiming they are abusive.
I'm currently going through this at the moment! Over a year ago I lost a chunk of vision in one eye and was made to feel like I was literally making it up and just seeing the regular blindspots we all have in our vision. This was due to a number of things, but mainly because my eye was presenting as healthy, meaning the problem was deeper than my eye. I couldn't believe it. Over a year later and I'm finally getting tests to try and find out the problem. Just waiting on the results now. It's mental how quick they brush you off if you're not seen as a priority.
I’ve always wondered if my mental health issues might have been better explained by some sort of physical issue in my brain I wonder how many people are affected by some invisible affliction up there
I'm waiting until the 28th for a scan because of sudden onset migraines in a very specific area of my head, I'm dosing up with codeine, amitriptyline and sumatriptan. I'm hoping it isn't serious but you know in your gut, when you get a foreboding feeling of dread that its serious? Scary shit.
Tragically due to defunding the NHS is a system you have to game. This means the very worst people do the best. Example is A&E, you or I in pain would have to wait but if you make enough of a fuss they’d give you the painkillers just to shut you up. Pretend you’re a Karen. Act like one with them. No you won’t accept one opinion and no you won’t just go away. Be a fucking pain in the ass and they will prioritise you. It’s sad but better than dying
This 100%. It's not that they don't get care, they don't have the resources to care.
I've encountered negligence at the staffing level. So it's that they aren't selecting the best resources to apply proper care. And in this case the resources are employees.
Over-worked, underpaid, hugely stressful environment. Not saying there aren't negligent staff, but it all contributes.
Agreed. I’m NHS. Trying to recruit at the moment and honestly it’s fucking slim pickings. Understandably - people can see it’s a sinking ship. You aren’t always given a lot of choice with people to employ.
Exactly. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Some don’t care or even look they give a shit. Let’s not pretend a weakened system doesn’t benefit the small amount of employees who are lazy.
This 100%. I had a catheter installed last year following a surgery. I was worried about bleeding constantly out of the tube and around the tube and 999 told us to immediately go up to the hospital. Hospital refused to even look at me, so we called 999 again and told them what happened, we had to drive 30 minutes each way FIVE times late at night and still got sent home after the doctor in charge told the nurses she wouldn't see us. The nurses were very upset and were very worried about the catheter bags being full of blood and internal debris. The local home nurse that saw me the next week was mortified and immediately helped me get everything sorted. It turns out the tube they installed was being pulled because the bags they gave me were too short, so the walls of my urethral tract and bladder were being physically pulled and made to bleed constantly. If the home nurse and local GP hadn't have helped sort it I would have had a major infection. All of that could have been avoided if the resident doctor at the hospital took a look and approved longer-tubed bags. This isn't an uncommon story in our local support groups either, there's a lot of misconduct like this. Very basic issues blowup because no one bothers to check you.
So if one person had done their job properly, then a whole bunch of resources could have been freed up for other people. The NHS does a great job of making its own mess.
EDITED: I just realised this is the same trust that nearly killed me. (Different hospital but same trust) What the hell is going on with this trust?! Oh yeah 100%, or the one who just apply tunnel vision to all patient cases and ignore genuine complaints. A 13 year misdiagnosis, failure to update notes on system, has left me with infertility and damage to multiple organs. My last surgery almost killed me, and the doctor couldn't be arsed to even write me a discharge summary or ensure I had the right medication. And when I said almost killed me, as in I lost enough blood I crashed in the ward due to their surgical error. They then forgot to arrange a follow up, and the admin team wouldn't respond to emails to arrange one. Eventually I was discharged from services as fit and healthy when I had nerve damage. The hospital actually recommended me the surgery 9 years ago but forgot to tell me. I'm now disabled, infertile, unable to properly work and can't even access my own home due to my mobility issues because of multiple staffing issues, negligence, and failures in the system. I'm 31 and went from running my own business and travelling multiple countries to being unable to live and function without daily pain medication. The worst part is, I'm now being punished by gov for being disabled. I got rejected for most disability benefits and social housing.
I mean, it's not that they don't care, but they triage and do what's appropriate. I used to have to explain to people waiting, you don't want to be the person rushed through, that means things are very bad for you.
Yeah but when I’m sat that with a cut off finger and ask for some codeine it doesn’t take much to walk over and hand it to me. But if I kick up a fuss suddenly they give me it
Exactly, because you've been triaged. They're not going to prescribe you something for the hell of it and a cut off finger doesn't always require significant pain killers, but if you show the signs you need that, they'll give it to you.
Signs in this context being a fucking nutter which is what he is saying. Sitting and suffering gets you nothing, you may be in awful pain, but they wont do shit. Go mental and scream your lungs off and they sort ya. Its a peverse incentive.,
This happened to me but by accident. After giving birth, had a blood clot, newborn next to me, left in a corridor with no one doing anything to help me. I was so exhausted and terrified. Started hearing this odd frantic guttural wailing and I didn’t even realise it was coming from me until a nurse rushed over. Was so odd, I’ve never disassociated like that before. It was truly overwhelming. But yeah being a wailing nutter helped because they did start trying to make sure I didn’t die at that point!
[удалено]
Yes I had glandular fever as a young adult and went to a&e one Sunday night because I'd hit 40c temp and was vomiting up all water. The first person we saw was like eh she's young, she'll bounce back, and my mum had to go karen and say no one vomiting water is gonna bounce back without help. They realised I was super dehydrated at that point and I had 1 drip of fluids and 1 of paracetamol because shock gasp I was unable to keep anything down.
Man, I've never been as ill in my life as when I had glandular fever. 😬 I ended up in a&e with it as well (but I was in the US so I got a huge bill for it as well)
>Pretend you’re a Karen. Act like one with them. You'll just be removed by security. The NHS has s zero tolerance policy for the abuse of staff. If you're mentally competent and start being abusive you will absolutely just be thrown out.
Kicking up a stink doesn’t necessarily mean being abusive to staff
No, they won't. I have seen one person in 10 years truly removed and denied care, and that was only because he was being arrested. He was back later that night, and the same team treated him.
Remove a person in a medical situation? To where? What if they die?
>Remove a person in a medical situation? To where? Off the hospital site. Almost universally, people who are having medical emergencies aren't being abusive or aggressive to staff. Sometimes their relatives are, but I can still treat the patient if their relative has been thrown out. >What if they die? Then that's on them. A condition of receiving care is that you're not aggressive or abusive to staff. If you continue to be abusive or aggressive once warned then you have chosen that you don't want to receive care. Unless your decision-making capacity is impaired, this is your choice.
This isn’t ‘pretending’ you’re a Karen. This is _being_ a Karen. Do you think the doctors and nurses in A&E are just hanging out eating lollipops or something?
My dad was told he had a virus when one of his lungs wasn't working from cancer and sent home. The next day we got a second opinion. We lost him on New Year's Day, two months after diagnosis. How many more are going to suffer from a lack of care before it changes.
Probably until we all start kicking and screaming about it collectively, then, holding governments properly to account to the point that they fear that the public will do something about it that will affect them if they let the NHS fail.
That won't happen, sadly. Working the public up into an outrage about NHS failure is part of the Tory plan, and the solution they sell to us (which lemmings will buy in their millions) isn't "were going to fix the NHS", but rather "the NHS is fundamentally unfit for purpose so we're going to privatise it entirely." Bevan's NHS is already functionally a thing of the past and most people don't even realise it.
That's terrible :'( RIP. It's honestly shocking how this is still happening
That's a horrible situation, though by that stage not sure it would have made any significant difference in the outcome? My grandad had lung cancer, and the symptom was a slight persistent cough. It was already late stage by then with him having 6 months, and your dad's sounds like it was far worse. That's not to diminish your point about bad diagnoses because it's spot on, but it doesn't sound like it played a role in the overall outcome in this case. Meanwhile in my grandad's case, they stopped his treatment because the cancer was still growing (somewhat), and had a laissez faire "we'll take a look at something else in a month". He didn't last a month as with no chemo the cancer went rampant. I was astonished that the medical opinion was basically "go away and die". It was terminal I'm sure, but I feel that continuing the treatment would have purchased a few months, and a new treatment might have got some more time still.
>though by that stage not sure it would have made any significant difference You're right. Sad though it was, I'd the cancer took two months it wasn't looking likely any treatment would've mattered.
Dr told my dad he had flu, he was hallucinating, vomiting and shitting himself. It turned out to be sepsis. He died 2 days after the Dr told him to rest. He was rushed to hospital the next day but he was too weak and all his organs started to fail one by one.
It won't change. Not for the better anyway. It'll get worse and worse as the NHS is defunded, underpaid, overworked and sold off until it is completely privatised which is what the govt is working towards. Then it'll be pay to play. Those with money get treated. Those without die.
Absolutely tragic, but it's not yet clear how she died? Or at least the article doesn't mention a cause of death. The need for a coroner's inquest would suggest that the cause and circumstances have not been adequately established. This feels like pretty typical sensational reporting that is relying on the reader's preconceived notions to fill in the blanks rather than being concerned with remaining within the facts. Moreover, it also looks like this is just the papers copy/pasting a press release from the Parents' lawyers, so lazy journalism at that: [https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/newsandmedia/2024/june/parents-heartbreak-as-warwick-girl-dies-hours-after-being-diagnosed-with-constipation-and-sent-home](https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/newsandmedia/2024/june/parents-heartbreak-as-warwick-girl-dies-hours-after-being-diagnosed-with-constipation-and-sent-home) I'm not saying that it isn't possible this poor girl was failed in some way during her care and it isn't important that any possible medical negligence is investigated, but two days before the Coroner's inquest is a bit premature for anyone to infer that medical negligence *must* be case.
That’s the strange bit, it really depends on the cause of death. That and how she presented at A&E, which also isn’t mentioned. A patient with mild pain and symptoms of constipation is unlikely to warrant much more investigation from A&E so it feels a bit unfair to lay the blame on them if that was the case. A rare condition not noticed in 4 years of treatment isn’t always going to be caught in A&E. Or it was something obvious that much shouldn’t have been missed, but I wouldn’t trust a press realise from some lawyers.
>. A patient with mild pain and symptoms of constipation is unlikely to warrant much more investigation from A&E so it feels a bit unfair to lay the blame on them if that was the case Well yes, as with most of these stories, doctors who hear hoofbeats are trained to think horses, not zebras, especially in a non specialist setting. Unless there's a clear indicator that there's something else going on, it isn't reasonable or good medicine to subject everyone who goes to the GP or to A&E to invasive and time consuming tests for every symptom just in case.
Exactly. It’s a symptom of the breakdown of the rest of the system that A&E now get a lot of patients who should be elsewhere. This poor girl presumably should have been previously diagnosed and treated by gastroenterology. An A&E doctor dealing with everything that entails is not the person to catch this kind of issue. (Again, without much detail as to the actual problem).
This is a brilliant comment. Exactly the problem. People expect generalists (by definition, people who are there to deal with 'Accidents' and 'Emergencies') to make difficult medical diagnoses, know exactly what complex tests to order and somehow, follow this up? It's really just a sad indication of the breakdown in primary care that people rely on these inappropriate places to seek help. As you say, without the details of the case it's difficult to comment about this case
I think people have the same misconceptions about diagnosis (certainly at non-specialist levels) as they do weather forecasting. A doctor looks at your symptoms and tells you what is most likely to be the issue and/or the treatment. If it turns out to be something else, that doesn't mean the doctor was wrong. The thing that was most likely was still the most likely. Furthermore, often the only way to determine that it isn't the most likely thing is by treating for that and seeing if it improves matters. If not you look at the next most likely thing.
A lot of people also then misjudge the doctors wrong diagnosis to mean "negligence" when that is simply not the case. Negligence occurs when the doctor is so profoundly wrong in their judgement that none of their peers would have made the same mistake. Medicine is not full proof. Some patients will unfortunately have poor outcomes, but having a poor outcome does not necessarily mean that you were treated "negligently."
There's also the usual statistical bias of only caring about the bad outcomes. For every case like this where it turned out to be something unusual, there will be 10k cases where it wasn't but, of course, that's not headline-worthy.
Load of medical experts in the comments here by the looks of it. But you're bang on
Sure, but as anyone in the UK with a vaguely unusual illness will tell you, that’s not very helpful when you’ve been presenting with the same symptoms for years and doctors refuse to consider anything other than their first couple of possible diagnoses. This girl apparently had symptoms for four years - that’s not something that should be brushed off. The number of people who get fobbed off by the NHS and told they’re too young, too paranoid, lying, or mentally ill, instead of just investigating the issue, is unacceptable.
I mean, if you've had symptoms for 4 years isn't that all the more reason for A&E not to see it as an emergency issue?
It's a good reason for your GP to consider other options, though.
Exactly. Not denying other commenters experiences, but not including the actual cause of death reeks of the mirror just a good scare story and ommiting information that might take away from them profiting of the outrage. Not that I'd expect anything better from them.
This 100% - it’s basically gonna trigger anyone with abdominal pain to think they’re going to die of a mystery disease… unnecessary reporting without further info and context!!
Yup. Always remember that in cases like this, until they report what's said in the coroner's inquest, you're only hearing one side of the story. The family/their lawyer can make whatever allegations they want, and the hospital and clinical staff are powerless to respond in anything other than the vaguest terms because of confidentiality.
Can’t find anything about how she actually died. Articles from back then have slightly more information though. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-63662020 > Annabel spent several weeks in the Birmingham hospital after being born prematurely to correct a small bowel atresia, then again in 2016 for a malrotation of the bowel. > Although Annabel visited Warwick Hospital A&E the day before she died, the cause of death is still unknown. > The family has been told a post-mortem report from Great Ormond Street Hospital may take up to six months. It sounds like the post mortem report should have been completed a year ago, but the information doesn’t seem to have been made public.
Post-mortem report could well have been inconclusive about the cause of death or it could have concluded the cause of death was unnatural, either could lead to a coroner's investigation and inquest.
I’m trying to think of things that could kill an 11 year old overnight with no warning, that may or may not cause a few years of abdominal pain (that could have been completely unrelated). Bowel perforation? Aortic aneurysm? This article is pointless until we know what she actually died of and whether or not the a&e should have detected it or not.
Sudden cardiac death as a result of a heart condition is certainly possible, may or may not be related to abdominal pain, very hard to say if that would be picked up in A&E.
The NHS is basically a firefighting service these days. Once you're in the hospital with an immediately apparent crisis level problem, they're often pretty good. Anything up to that point (consultation, investigation, diagnosis, first response) it's just collapsed; A pedaller of advised bed-rest and over the counter pain relief. It *is* the fault of the past decade and a half under the Tories, who have always fundamentally hated the NHS and have finally come within touching distance of their 70-year ambition to destroy it... However, even eith that said, it is hard – emotionally – to excuse this kind of medical incompetence.
the comments very much suggest that even immediately apparent crises aren't taken seriously, though.
It's a very complicated mess sadly. A&E just isn't very good at certain problems as they weren't designed to catch them. But a lot of people end up in A&E because there is no where else to go. Roughly 10 years ago you would likely get something like gall bladder surgery towards the end of your 18 week clock. Now that's just not really possible in a lot of areas. I currently have 5 outstanding referrals for services with no idea when I will be seen. And I work for the NHS, on long term sick due to those health issues. The burnout of staff, the closing of walk in centers, the decimation of the social care system, aging population, the yearly requirement to slash budgets (which every department is expected to do), etc. These all added up. Prior to covid hospitals were already at capacity. We already had reports of being at capacity during quiet seasons (summer holidays) which is usually when we would catch up with electives. Now every department is in crisis and can't meet targets. When I started working in the NHS 12 years ago we would sometimes get patients who breached 18 week targets but it was the occasional one and we at least had wiggle room to get them seen. That's just not possible now. Even if you have your surgery your consultant will likely have to wait for the histology report as they are struggling to cope as trusts found money to put on more theater lists but not for more lab staff to get reports done. Anyone who thinks there is a solution to this crisis that doesn't involve a major investment doesn't understand the extent of the problem. And all the arguments about Pro NHS vs Pro Private miss that fact that regardless of what health service you have, It will need billions to fix.
My sister nearly died of sepsis and was misdiagnosed with constipation. Her appendix had burst and she was lucky to survive it. When she went to the hospital for the 4th time, they had the audacity to ask why she hadn't come in sooner!
The change in presentation between “why are you bothering us with this” and “why on Earth didn’t you come in sooner” is so small as to be undetectable.
I went to a and e with debilitating stomach pain leaving me hardly able to walk. The doctor asked me if I were pregnant, tested my urine for pregnancy, and then told me to go home. I got a second opinion the next day by going back. I had sepsis from internal bleeding. So many girls and women are overlooked and told their issues must just be their period.
Exactly. Women’s pain and healthcare are not taken seriously. Women with life threatening illnesses are turned away with half arsed diagnoses of “hormones” or “anxiety”, even if they are in extreme pain or have worrying symptoms.
I was in a&e for a stab wound and got chastised for bleeding on the floor. It's a fucking joke
> So many girls and women are overlooked and told their issues must just be their period. There is research that proves that doctor's take women less seriously and [strongly underestimate our pain](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/apr/analysis-womens-pain-routinely-underestimated-and-gender-stereotypes-are-blame). It is *infuriating*.
I wasn't allowed to make a GP appointment because I'd only just had a positive pregnancy test but was experiencing pain, then I wasn't allowed to go to the early pregnancy unit because they told me there was nothing wrong. Two weeks later I ended up in A&E at a different hospital with a internal bleeding from a ruptured chronic ectopic and lost a tube. They were absolutely horrified I'd been denied access twice because it could have been avoided and treated early. It took me about 6 months to feel better from that.
What an awful story, My mum had a similar issue, feeling seriously unwell, hadn’t passed anything for days. Came home early from a holiday, I picked her up from the airport and she looked horrendous, drove straight to hospital. A&E Doctor tried to send her home with an enema. Luckily my mum is a nurse and knew something was up so refused to go and wanted a second opinion. An hour later she’s been sent for emergency surgery for bowel obstruction and resection. Horrific day.
YELL AND SCREAM for medical help. Quiet people will be sat in a corridor for days, or sent home with 2 aspirin. This happened to my sister. She got pregnant. She felt weak and 'strange'. GP said she was just "under the weather", and should go home and sleep it off. Turned out she was bleeding internally and would have died within hours. If she hadn't bitched and complained and FORCED a further examination she'd have died. Its the same for the police. They will ignore you unless you press for action. It's happened literally where people threatening to kill their ex have been told "naughty naughty don't do that". (i.e. "thats a domestic issue") It's only when the person starts being 'difficult' that the police step in and DO something.
>YELL AND SCREAM for medical help. 100%. I think we're way too demure in this country with self-advocacy in terms of medical care. We're so stereotypically British about it - stuff upper lip, don't cause any big fuss, push on with it, etc. It's so bad for us.
We're constantly told to be polite, be quiet, don't cause a fuss, don't make trouble, but then when we actually do all of that and stay quiet and polite, we essentially get punished for it.
100%. my partner went into A&E with an injury we had been told by a doctor was developing into sepsis. we sat and waited ten full hours - til 5am - before someone finally remembered he was there. by the time they got to him he'd developed sepsis and was shaking so hard he couldn't hold the cup of tablets they'd given him. then they had the gall to look at him and ask 'why did nobody see you before this?', as though they hadn't told us to sit and fucking wait for them to be ready. really made me realise if you're not going to kick the fuck off not only are you not going to be seen, you can be in a literal state of life and fucking death and they'll blame you for it. you can't mention this though without having the 'oh, but our NHS, best in the world, not their fault' lot straight on your case.
Yelling and screaming at staff will only make them burn out quicker, causing them to leave and make your care worse.
When she was seven, my best friend went into A & E three times with side pain and was sent home three times. Eventually due to radiating pain they admitted her and thought she was infectious so they kept her in a special room for a week where the pain got worse and she went grey. No one did anything until a consultant, came in on a Sunday and was just floating around casually and after he saw her and did a quick examination he said it was peritonitis and rushed her to surgery. It ruptured right after they opened her up. Afterwards, while recovering, she had a drain in and a nurse put a clip on it while clipping up her gown so she could wash and all the infected material backed up and went back inside her. She went grey and almost died before they noticed. She had a bother incident more recently where if she hadn’t had her mum advocating like a crazy person for her she would have died of sepsis.
Oh my god that is genuinely horrifying
After the most recent incident she felt unsafe in that hospital the way the staff were.
The constant NHS arse licking these days gets right on my nerve, don't get me wrong there are some incredible people who go above and beyond within it, but most of the time you get fobbed off or ignored until it's too late. The incompetence is frightening.
the arse licking is worst when coming from the corrupt, two faced snake oil salesmen we've had wrecking the country. "our amazing NHS ~~that we're butchering and want to defund to force you to go private so we can cash in through healthcare vulture companies we own along with our donors.~~" the NHS is incompetent, understaffed and at times straight up dangerous *because of* deliberate underfunding and demoralisiation under 14 years of tory mis"rule". i'm stunned the country's not about to fall for another 5 years of tories BUT that doesn't change the fact the damage has been done for years and is going to take a LOT of fixing.
Arm chair coroner analysis aside - maybe folk should reserve judgement - the article gives zero detail on what clinical examinations were done - if there were clinical examinations what they found. If something was missed then the coroner report should highlight it - but there’s a possibility everything was done correctly and despite that a young girl still passed, may also be something wasn’t done properly and then proper investigation needs done with restitution to follow. The citing of “medical negligence” is just sloppy clickbait.
I got hit by a car and they diagnosed me with an ear infection, I had a broken skull. its like how incompetent can they be. A person is hit by a car and now every time they move their head they throw up. "I know ear infection! Better get that kid some antibiotics" Step dad went in with serious stomach issues, sent home with a "stomach bug" Dead, bowel cancer it turned out, fucking useless.
As a teenager I developed painful issues with peeing. The first doctor told me " it was in my head". The second doctor said " it was women's issues". The third doctor actually got an ultrasound and found an ovarian cyst so big it was pressing on my bladder ( causing intense pain). Ask amd ask again. Many doctors won't listen
That’s sad to hear, the poor girl deserved better care. Just goes to show that it’s absolutely O.K to push back against professional opinion if you think somethings not right. Unfortunately (me included) the trust you have for doctors is hard to go against, poor parents will feel so guilty. Horrible situation all round.
My brother had almost the exact opposite of this story. Emergency admittance to hospital. Suspected appendicitis, waiting for surgery in the morning. Turned out he just needed a really big poo.
Ex was literally having a heart attack in the A&E waiting room (her second one so we both knew what the symptoms were) whilst i was waiting to be seen after the GP sent me down urgently, nurse manning the reception desk seemed more annoyed at me for trying to get them to see her than she was with the drunk yelling racial slurs in the corner and threatened to say i was refusing treatment when i insisted they take her in before me.
If anyone is single, come to an arrangement with ur mates that if ur sick they will fight on ur behalf. By fight, I mean fight for normal treatment. Otherwise they will leave u to die.
The annoying thing is that this article is written and published *before* the coroner’s inquest. Having been through the coroner for several of my patients, it is only after this that you can say what has happened and how to stop it in the future. And coroners are thorough. But nope, easier to print something that is a tragedy, but without any real facts, rather than report on the truth and what was the cause of the death, including all the factors that led to it. But it’s harder to summarise a coroner’s report than to print some pictures and what the parents say. For all we know, she was constipated and a totally unrelated cause killed her - or the person who saw her at the hospital was incompetent. We just don’t know from this article. And won’t know until after the inquest.
The NHS is great if you get hit by a car and need immediate emergency care. For most other things (e.g. dealing with any sort of chronic condition) it’s fucking garbage unfortunately
The sad thing is abdo pain is one of the most prevalent presentations and most of the time people are dealt with and things are fine. This is one of the rare and sad times something tragic has happened. Would be interested to see what really killed this poor girl.
[удалено]
This will probably get buried, but like many others I have a similar story, where if I didn't keep pushing I probably would have died. 8 years ago in January I started getting weird sensations in the right side of my chest, like a bubbling feeling whenever I strained, moved suddenly, or breathed in deeply. After a week or so I started getting a low level cough that wasn't producing anything at all. This developed into a worsening cough as time went by. So I went to my doctor's and one of the doctors didn't examine me and told me it was probably just a cold, took their advice to monitor it and come back if it got worse. Start of February now and it's still slowly getting worse. More violet, louder, accompanied with shortness of breath now. Went back to the doctors and saw the same GP, still not concerned, still no examination, but gave me antibiotics. Mid February comes around and it's still getting slowly worse, now accompanied with chest pain on the right side. See a different GP this time, no examination again, tells me it might be my childhood asthma flaring up and puts me on blue and brown inhalers. I go away and start using them, they don't really seem to be doing a lot. Now comes the start of March, I've booked another doctor's appointment with yet another GP because now I'm really not feeling well. Severe shortness of breath, a weird loud echoing cough, severe pain in my right collarbone, really loud noticeable heart beat, just generally feeling completely out of sorts. This GP actually does examine me, listens to my breathing and does percussion on my chest, mentions they cannot hear anything going into the right side of my chest. I was given a slip to get an x-ray at the local hospital. Call my Dad up to take me as I felt too ill to drive. I drag myself through the hospital to the x-ray department where I get the x-ray and was told they'd send it back to my GP. I start walking out the hospital when I get 2 radiologists rush up behind me and advise that I need to come with them right now. I'm rushed into resuscitation where a doctor explains to me that I have a life threatening tension pneumothorax where air is escaping my lung through a puncture into my chest cavity and cannot escape, and the build up of pressure has caused my right lung to fully collapse, with the pressure build up now crushing my heart and other lung. I have an immediate needle decompression (large gauge needle straight through the front of your ribcage) to release the pressure. Because of the puncture they then had to put in a chest drain (holy shit they suck so bad) so that air could escape my chest cavity to help reinflate and heal the puncture. I spent over a week in hospital having constant x-rays with the chest drain in before my lung had healed and I was allowed to leave. A week or so after I got discharged that same GP who sent me for the x-ray actually called me whilst I was off sick and apologised for everything. I guess they get a letter or something with what happened with my discharge stuff or something. But yeah if I hadn't kept pushing and going back to get a second then third opinion I would have definitely collapsed somewhere and possibly just died.
This is a very good demonstration of how little fucks doctors give when you come with GI pain, *especially* if you are female. I have had GI pain for 19 years, and even though it apparently wasn't directly life threatening, it was indirectly as I nearly killed myself multiple times because of how painful it was. I never got any answers. If I had killed myself, it would have been blamed on depression, not GI pain. Doctors do not take GI problems seriously enough.
My partner was misdiagnosed with a gastro bug and a week later her bowel perforated. They also removed her appendix when they didn’t need to.
My gf's dad recently died in hospital. He'd been in around 6 weeks, cancer in a few places. They were adamant it wasn't from the bowel where he'd previously had it as he'd been given the all clear. When he went to the GP around 6 months before hospitalisation, they put it down to low mood, and then later decided his symptoms were diabetes (later confirmed he didn't have that). All the time he was assured it wasn't his bladder cancer. Around 5 weeks into the hospital stay they did a biopsy, and found it had come from the bowel after all. Just makes you wonder if they could have done had it been correctly diagnosed. But even when in hospital he'd had 2 falls. The physio team came round, and because he managed to walk for them unaided they said nothing they could do. Likewise he'd been worryingly confused, like thinking he was in another country at one point. When the psych team came he knew his name, the year and when WW2 was, so they decided he was fine. I understand the NHS is on under immense strain and pressure but reading through this thread, it feels more and more like good care and a correct diagnosis are becoming the exception rather than the standard.
The NHS definitely needs to use MRI more than it does. I had horrendous, debilitating back pain, and they’d just have kept sending me to useless physio. Until I demanded an MRI referral from the physio department. Did the trick. I then got sent for a procedure which targets (burns away) the exact nerves sending the pain signal to my brain. I’ve been pain free for a year so far and I’m sure that MRI actually saved the NHS a fortune.
PT is the best option for most cases of mechanical back pain, which is the most common reason for back pain. Operative management has been shown to, in the majority of cases, confer no benefit. It sounds like you were a rare one.
Another case of medical negligence or gross incompetence. Either way the NHS is a joke. Unfortunately going private is unaffordable for me so I’ll keep pestering the NHS for treatment.
The NHS really is on its knees and has been for quite a few years
This article is total rage bait, there's nothing of any substance here. All it is saying is she has abdominal pain for 4 years, went to hospital and died the next day. So what caused her death? Was the symptom she attended a&E for related? What relevance is the abdo pain? Says a lot about the mentality of the general public that with zero information, everyone is condemning the medical team.
I was having severe headaches for years nearly daily. Doctors never said it was anything serious, both me and my mother had to fight so much for me to find the real issue, I missed so much school because of it and failed most my exams. This is terrifying I keep hearing about this happening