The Curious Case of British healthcare: A Tale from the A&E

My boyfriend cut his finger when cutting food, and when he discovered it was still bleeding hours later at around midnight, he decided to call 111, the non-emergency number. Before he got through to an operator, gave them all his personal details, and dealt with the confusion of the operator over his current and permanent address, the bleeding had almost stopped. Despite his assurances to the operator that this was the case, he was strongly advised (read: ordered) to go to the A&E. And so we did.

There were only about 10 or 15 people at the hospital, some of whom, like me, were merely accompanying someone else, which made me foolishly think we will be out of there in no time. The first thing to surprise me was the length of the talk we had with the staff at the check-desk. Not only did she ask for necessary information like name, date of birth, and type of injury, she also enquired about address, contact for next of kin, and probably more. What was so surprising about this was that almost all of this information had already been relayed to the 111 operator who had referred my boyfriend to the hospital and thus sent the information over (or at least should have sent).

After about an hour or hour and a half of waiting, we were called into the minor injuries section. Inside, a nurse asked the exact same questions we have already answered at the check-desk and also entered them in a computer. Third time’s the charm! The she took a brief look at the finger (barely removing the plaster) and sent us back to the waiting room to wait to see a doctor. I did not see anyone leave after being seen in the minor injuries room, everyone went back to waiting just like us.

Ultimately, we gave up. At around 4:30 am, we decided that any care my boyfriend can receive was not worth the wait as we cursed the 111 operator for insisting we go to the A&E in the first place.

I never believed the horror stories about the British A&E until I saw it with my own two eyes. For comparison, just less than two months ago, when my boyfriend was visiting me in the Czech Republic, he sprained his ankle and so we took a trip to an A&E there. He got an x-ray done within about an hour, saw a doctor, immediately got another x-ray done to check a different area of his foot just to be sure nothing was broken, consulted the doctor again within a few minutes, and we were done. This was around 6 pm.

I will conclude this story by mentioning another good thing to know about healthcare in the UK that might surprise you if you face it. You cannot go to a specialist doctor, such as a physiotherapist, dermatologist or ORL without a referral from your GP, which you cannot go to without making an appointment, which you can’t get to in less than a week, if you’re lucky, or more, if you’re not.