Women who want false nails removing and a man with a dog which swallowed a golf ball are just some of the cases being targeted in a series of NHS videos to
prevent timewasters clogging up A&E.
Health staff have joined actors to star in the films as part of a campaign to save the £8.7m currently spent each year on people wrongly turning up at hospital for emergency treatment. Other films, which were shot on the wards of Manchester Royal Infirmary, feature women waiting for treatment for hair-dye disasters and a pushy mum desperate for her son to be seen by senior doctors for his diarrhoea. All of the scenarios have actually happened.
Health bosses in Greater Manchester say around 165,000 people last year turned up at A&E with minor injuries and illnesses which did not need treatment or could have been dealt with by a GP, at a walk-in-centre, or at home. Salford GP Dr Jenny Hayes plays a triage nurse in one of the videos and said she often has to deal with timewasters.
She said: “People really do show up at A&E with things like broken nails. Everyone in primary care is working to try to deflect people away from A&E units, not just because of the cost, but because A&E is not at all the right place for people with very minor illness and injuries to be treated. I hope these videos will encourage the general public to think twice before going to A&E units.” The videos – available on YouTube – are part of a national NHS Choose Well campaign being launched by NHS North West on Monday.
Actors, who gave their services for nothing, included Phil Broadbent who has appeared in Shameless, and TV presenter Anthony Crank.
Dr Mike Cheshire, medical director at NHS North West, added: “The tales told in the videos are very funny, and they are extreme cases, but there are very serious issues behind them.
“Every single attendance at A&E costs a minimum of £59, and as many as one in four people who attend A&E could have been treated by their pharmacist or GP, or did not need any form of medical intervention.
“Every minute that an A&E doctor or nurse spends treating very minor problems reduces the time they can spend attending to those who have suffered heart attacks, strokes and life-threatening injuries,” he said.
The top 10 examples of timewasting visits to A&E and 999 calls in the region are:
- A patient attending A&E complaining that her false nails were hurting her and asked that staff remove them.
- A patient attending A&E requesting that someone cut her toe nails as she could not get a chiropody appointment.
- A man who dialled 999 as he was suffering from constipation - he was otherwise fit and well.
- A child was brought into the department by her mother after she had trodden in dog faeces and the mother could not bear to wipe it off. She requested that A&E staff cleaned the shoe.
- A man who called 999 for an ambulance after he was bitten on the finger by Guinea pig.
- A woman who called 999 as she didn’t have transport to hospital.
- Female called 999 because she had diarrhoea.
- A woman who went to A&E because she had paint in her hair which she couldn’t remove.
- A woman who went to A&E because her hand had turned blue – it turned out dye had transferred from her jeans.
- A man who attended A&E because he had a hangover.
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Unfortunately, in that top 10 list: 7 / 10 were women, and I wasn't even surprised by that...
I don't join in on the whole man flu mockery thing and this is one of the reasons why. (In all fairness, a heavy cold could actually be described as an illness, whereas false nails and dog poo aren't even close)
How about all the people who go to A&E because the service from their GP is so poor?
why oh why do you go to A&E to remove nails??? Phone a nail bar or salon for advice...timewasting air heads!!!
lol dye transferred from jeans?? hahahahahahaha!!!!
"“Every minute that an A&E doctor or nurse spends treating very minor problems reduces the time they can spend attending to those who have suffered heart attacks, strokes and life-threatening injuries,” he said."
So don't treat them?
-Female called 999 because she had diarrhoea.
Can diarrhoea not be a symptom of something more serious? If cases like that ring 999, wouldn't it be more sensible to direct them to the NHS Direct phone line instead of calling them fools?
Y'know, the one the Tories just shut down. Oops.
you got to be careful that people with small tell tale signs of something far more serious arent deterred by this video. Watch it and then dont want to be a 'burdon' on A&E so dont attend then have something far more serious develop as a consequence.
Half of the problem is usually getting an appointment with the GP! When you have to call up at 8:30 on the dot to get an appointment sometimes feels like you're on the line to ticketmaster with the queue you are held in! and then are told theres no slots available for that day. Annoying to say the least.
Make the timewasting morons pay for seeing an A&E doctor - that will get the message across lound and clear....
"Every single attendance at A&E costs a minimum of £59"
How? Last time I went to A&E (suspected I had a broken foot, pain was excruciating, desision to go to casualty not taken lightly), I spent around three minutes with a receptionist to be booked in, another three minutes with a triage nurse and around ten minutes with a nurse (turned out to be a sprained ligament, felt like a timewaster, staff were great however) . All of these people were getting paid whether I'd stayed at home or gone in to see them. The building would have still needed to be lit and heated, so no extra cost there and it costs them nothing for me to sit in a chair in the waiting room. So where is this £59 figure coming from? Even if I add up a rough figure of what the staff would have been paid during their sixteen minutes with me it would not come to a tenner.
I work in a hospital and so am sadly unsurprised by all of this. Its quite simple, Accident & Emergency, if it ain't one or the other, then don't come.
The majority are timewasters no doubt, however I take exception to the 'pushy mother demanding a senior doctor see her child for diarrhoea'. We have seen many examples recently of juniors seeing children and not taking their signs and symptoms seriously enough resulting in some children ending up seriously ill or even dying - to all mothers out there, if your gut feeling is that something is wrong, then insist on seeing a paediatrician at least rather than an A&E Junior doctor who is probably just a couple of years out of medical school
The answer is reasonably simple? Charge for those attending A&E who don't require treatment there and charge even more for those attending via the free taxi of 999 - those genuine attendees will have shorter queues due to appropriate needs being present & others will have funds/benefits/plasma tvs etc removed instead?! The alternative is the future headlines about 12 hour corridor waits and deaths in ambulances over the winter months. Tragic but inevitable at this rate.
I was at Wythneshawe A&E the other night with a friend who had a sling due to a broken arm. She was the only obviously injured person in the waiting room. The place seemed to be full of people on some kind of day out. Laughing and giggling with their friends,playing with their mobiles,watching TV...most looked far from being ill. These parasites should be ashamed of themselves. A&E is for genuine emergency cases..not people with stomach ache caused by wind/too much pizza/constipation etc..
But what about all those people with already complex health issues, but find themselves dismissed by the A & E Doctors when they present, not once but twice, with severe Angina - and then are eventually offered a place on a ridiculous 20 week waiting list to see a cardiologist? Fortunately I now have an outpatients appointment at another hospital in a couple of weeks time, when I hope I'll get the treatment I need.
Isn't the problem being a victim of it own success. By being free at the point of entrance, allows anyone regardless of condition to be served without cost to the individual.
Would there be a similar example at a BUPA clinic doubt very much. Afraid to say sorry but your problem, then suffer with it NHS A+E. If the system has to crash then let it, then maybe something will have to be done. No point moaning Doctors and Nurses about trivial little problems like the wrong glue used on nails. Change the system to adapt modern life lifestyles.