An Insider’s Guide to Surviving A & E
Helpful hints for victims of date-rape, car crashes, muggings, disease, drugs & hospital vending machines…
Want to cut down waiting times in A&E? More money, doctors, nurses,
machines, blah blah - all that would help, but here are a dozen
practical ways that you, the public, can help things run a little more
smoothly …
1. Please, please, please girls, when that 12th Smirnoff ice hits your system DO NOT tell your mates you’ve been spiked and get them to call you an ambulance. Instead, do us all a favour and have a look in the mirror in the bogs. Would YOU waste your last Rohypnol on someone who looks like you do right now? You’re with your boyfriend for fucks sake. You are PISSED, enjoy it or get over it.
2. Teenaged boys. I know it’s hard being you. I know everyone hates you. I’ve noticed in my years in A&E that it’s YOU and not old ladies who are getting mugged and beaten up every day. However, when you find yourself in casualty after a ruck, and you find out you have to wait for a doctor for longer than the duration of your current phone call, DO NOT walk 2 minutes down the road and call yourself an ambulance to bring you back. Remember I just saw your face, and I HAVE a concentration span - unlike you. No matter what your mode of arrival is you are all seen in priority order. You just got yourself to the back of the queue again. And you just wasted £400 on that ambulance ride (Yes, that’s how much it costs).
3. For the love of god STOP asking me how long you’ll have to wait. Your guess is as good as mine. 4 years down the line I still can’t see any patterns emerging. It’s impossible to know how long the patient in front of you is going to take with the doctor. Stop wasting my time, stop staring at the clock and read something.
Twins waiting in the emergency ward. Photo by the author
4. Learn to use a vending machine. So much of my time is spent giving lessons to fuckwits on how to get a can of coke out of a machine whose general design has been the same for about 50 years. When it says ‘Out of Service’ and you lose your money in it, it didn’t steal it - you donated it. And anyway, you said you’ve been throwing up all day, I doubt a can of Fanta and a Doubledecker is going to make you feel any better.
5. Stop worrying about other patients. When that guy who was sat next to you goes for treatment before you, don’t come to me saying that he didn’t look sicker than you. How do you know? If you’re a doctor go home and treat yourself. Stop being a busybody. That junkie sprawled out on the floor? He’s not dead, he does that every day. LEAVE HIM! That nutter outside the door having a freeeekout? She’s letting off steam, nutters do that, it’s her right. LEAVE HER!
6. Pregnancy tests. I’m SICK of this. Buy one. Or go and get one for free from your GP (get a GP for fucks sake people, he’ll never make you wait more than about 15 minutes or so) or nick one. Being up the duff is NOT a medical emergency. Ditto the morning after pill (you can now buy it from pharmacies), though by all means come in for it if the chemists are shut. I’d rather nip this shit in the bud now rather than endure all your pregnancy bullshit which brings me to….
7. Paranoid mothers/expectant mothers. You’re foetus hasn’t moved for 5 minutes? Maybe they’re having a break from kicking the shit out of your spleen. Enjoy it. Your five year old has a bruise? WOULD YOU LIKE ONE TO MATCH? I would have had to be nigh on decapitated for my mum to take me out of school and in to A&E. Your 14-year-old has a bit of a snotty nose and you leave work to bring him to me? Fucking sad…
8. Kids on ‘tag’. Ok so you hate your bail conditions. My brother had one of these tags once and I know how frustrating it can be having Group 4 straight down your house because you were home 2 minutes after your curfew. But don’t start pretending you’re sick so you can tell the tag management you’re in hospital when you actually booked in then fucked off joyriding. I’m seriously sick of this shit. You’re out of prison early; treat it like the bonus it is.
9. Patients’ family/ friends. For starters, why are there 10 of you? One guy is sick right? One or two of you to accompany him would suffice. But what gets me annoyed is when every one of those fuckers starts thinking ‘Hmmm, I’ve had a mild backache for a couple of weeks, now I’m here I may as well book in and see if they can do anything about it. Before you know it I have 10 more TRIVIAL complaints booked in, merely because they thought they may as well whilst they’re here. Read the sign people, pleeeease! ‘ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY’. If you haven’t had an accident and you don’t have an emergency, you’re nothing to do with us. We’re not here to dole out check-ups.
10. When you have just had a car crash, do not judge your injuries by what your car looks like. Modern cars have crumple zones; you are up and walking BECAUSE your Punto now looks like a concertina. If you feel ok, you probably are.
11. Immigrants from hot countries. All you Latinos and Africans new to this miserable climate, I appreciate there are scary-arse diseases in your countries and that you have to be wary of. But a cold is a cold is a cold. You WILL get at least one every year, more if you keep coming in here (germ central). Bed rest and lemsip my friend - not casualty.
12. Be nice to me (the receptionist - for my considerable sins). I’m all you have in the waiting room. Doctors looking down their noses at me. Thick-calved nurses roll their eyes at me. I’ll campaign to get you seen quicker/painkiller prescription filled a bit faster. But sit there calling me ‘Britney’, ‘Bitch’ or ‘A slut with no ambition’ (all genuine insults I’ve received), I’m going to do fuck all for you.
Reader Comments
April 20th, 2006
6:51 pm
Funny read
April 20th, 2006
7:06 pm
They should pin this on the noticeboard at Royal London
April 20th, 2006
7:09 pm
A&E has gotta be THE WORST job in the world. I’d rather be a cleaner in a gay sauna
April 20th, 2006
7:18 pm
shit, this lady needs a shag
April 20th, 2006
7:25 pm
This made my day suck less.
British junkies look like American middle-aged dads.
April 20th, 2006
7:33 pm
That guy aint a junkie, he’s just drunk off his arse.
April 20th, 2006
7:35 pm
You know those days in your western utopia where you drink tea all day and bitch because your fav X factor singer didnt get in and Chantelle isnt dressing ‘ No where as good as she should’ for fucks sakes think of this woman and what she has to go through.
Yes it can be shitty waiting three to four hours for a look see but taking it out on her is like Woody Allen dating someone his own age and comlaining that he’s not getting any.
Write a book and if you are going to be angry at anyone be at yourself for voting in a government who constantly cuts HNS funding
April 20th, 2006
7:46 pm
nice one!
April 20th, 2006
9:33 pm
classic!
April 21st, 2006
5:43 am
this womans a keeper.
April 21st, 2006
6:55 am
You think your hospitals suck you should try Australian ones
April 21st, 2006
7:33 am
Great article. This is what Vice is all about, funny articles about things most people would never know about. Bravo
April 21st, 2006
5:28 pm
This is a very well observed article. The London A&E is a horrible place to work. I think the receptionist is very honest in her view of the types of people that come in for treatment. I hope they are paying her a decent salary to put up with that crap.
April 21st, 2006
5:56 pm
better than the shite that has been up lately. get new writers.
April 21st, 2006
5:58 pm
give this lady a job at vice
April 22nd, 2006
4:30 am
The worsts hospitals are the free ones. Try to go with a broken arm in any hospital in Montreal,QC, Canada. You will wait minimum 8 hours.
April 22nd, 2006
2:19 pm
so thats what vice is all about
April 23rd, 2006
4:10 pm
Dear Receptionist,
I like the tone of your angst poem. It’s funny, but not so far off that I know its just some 35 year-old skateboarder drunk vice-staffer that gets to party with models in Milan. In other words, let’s get married. I’m imagining you as Dawn, or better, can I call you Dawn? Will you yell at me and say stuff in rhyme slang. Also I need a place to stay on your side of the pond.
April 24th, 2006
12:52 pm
daaaaaaaaaaamn straight. my mum was a nurse and FUCK the stories she tells would straighten your pubes three times over.
April 24th, 2006
4:04 pm
i’m an orthopedics resident in montreal…you wait FOREVER here…no one even complains anymore…once you’re admitted you get a bed in a hallway if you’re lucky…charge 5$ to get into the ER and all the losers will stay home and blow their nose themselves.
April 25th, 2006
2:42 am
did it bother anyone else that eli used the words mum, fuck, and pubes all in the same sentence? gave me the heebee geebees!
April 27th, 2006
12:09 pm
hahaha YEH you haven’t seen the ones in Down Under!! Opps i did all that shit last time i went to the hospital with my friend (the one who sprang his ankle), really wish i could apologise to the receptionist now :X
April 28th, 2006
3:34 pm
I read this secretly at my job where internet is a no-no.
Good stuff.
May 1st, 2006
12:14 am
I was working in A&E a few weeks ago and we had a 34 year old bloke come in with a sore arm. We asked him how long he’d had this ‘illness’ and he did a few mental calculations before replying “oh, since I was born”.
May 1st, 2006
1:36 am
I AM A RECEPTIONIST IN A LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA HOSPITAL, AND READING YOUR COLUMN WAS MY EVERYDAY THOUGHTS PUT INTO WORDS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD. “THANK YOU!!!”
May 1st, 2006
3:52 am
That’s a brilliant piece of work that is. My cousin works as a receptionist at our local A&E and she has some stories that makes me wanna crack these wankers in the face, even though I’ve never met them! Can receptionists tell them to fuck off? If they aren’t allowed to, they should be!
May 1st, 2006
3:34 pm
keep a bat for qualifying purposes, anythin less than squirting blood gets a battery of batting, now thats incentive for sitting in a dull as fuck room for 6 hours cause your too cheap to be self sustaining. love the “I read this secretly at my job cause internets a no no” where do you work melinda, Tasmania?
May 2nd, 2006
3:02 am
That was pure gold!
Hope it ends up in the printed version…
May 2nd, 2006
6:09 am
Hi there all. I am an Emergency doctor from Melbourne Australia. I can’t tell you where I work (in case you try and track me down for some free medical advice… which will likely be “fuck off and see your GP”). I want you all to know that there are VERY FEW medical problems that can’t wait til tomorrow to see your GP. If you think you have a broken bone… (except your spine), it can wait (ask any orthopaedic surgeon). If you have a laceration with your tendons hanging out like spaghetti, and it’s stopped bleeding - it can wait (ask any plastic surgeon). Basically if you can muster the respiratory muscle strength and airway reflexes necessary to vocalise your bullshit complaint to the nurse/receptionist, you can wait, because we doctors are busy out the back, where you can’t see, because it’s none of your fucking business, because other people’s medical problems are confidential, treating several patients at the same time in accordance with an internationally accepted triage scale, who are really sick who’ve been brought in unconscious, not breathing, with missing limbs, having heart attacks and strokes and seizures and asthma attacks and anaphylactic reactions and ruptured ectopic pregnancies and psychotic deteriorations of their schizophrenia, choking on their own vomit or shitting litres of blood or miscarrying their 15 week fetuses onto the floor, bleeding to death internally or externally or both (ie all problems I have treated and that can’t wait). So when you’re about walk up and speak to the receptionist and ask one more time “how much longer do I have to wait?”, you should just fuck off and go home, beacuse we really, truly, honestly don’t give a shit about your pathetic whining complaint. We are here for EMERGENCIES. And we are here because we truly like helping people in dire situations. If you call an ambulance for a bullshit problem you won’t get seen faster, you will be escorted from the ambulance into the waiting room. If you show any sign of physical or verbal threat to a doctor or nurse you are guilty of assault, if you touch them it’s battery (under Australian Law), and you will be kicked the fuck out, and most likely charged, no matter what’s wrong with you. We’re not security guards or police and have no obligation to treat you if you’re violent. If you assault us our duty of care goes out the window and you are on your own, fuckface. If you don’t like the service, don’t complain to the receptionist, doctors or nurses, or the other staff, we have no control over the funding, (and therefore the staffing and number of inpatient beds that get full and stop us from being able to bring more people in to treat inside the ED) write to your local member of parliament and the local paper. Oh, and like the receptionist above said: GET A GP, MAKE A FUCKING APPOINTMENT, AND GET IT SORTED THERE, IF YOU NEED TO GO TO HOSPITAL THEY WILL TELL YOU. AND YOU WON”T HAVE TO WAIT
Please copy this rant, paste it in your blogs, email it to everyone you know, put it on the back of your toilet door at work, and show it to everyone you know. The ED staff at your local hospital will be eternally grateful. I would encourage any ED staff who read this to read up about duty of care, and assault/battery, and start having people forcibly removed from your departments if they are making assholes of themselves. It’s your right to have a safe workplace, get a ‘zero tolerance’ policy happening where you work, the message will get out. No other industry would put up with it, I don’t anymore, why do you? Oh and by the way NO, your drink hasn’t been spiked, you are just fucking wasted so fuck off and get some McDonald’s and go home. And, if you are going to take GBH, do us all a favour and lock yourself in your room on a long weekend when your family is out of town and drink a litre of it, then just die, or take it and lie down on some train tracks, because I never want your fluoro-clothed, glo-stick adorned, vomiting screaming delerious ass in my ED, ever again, cunt.
May 2nd, 2006
11:24 am
Yesterday some patient asked me if I would reimburse her parking fee. I said that regrettably we don’t offer refunds. She then said,
‘I knew I should have called an ambulance’ (she had a small lump on her arm) ‘in Jamaica the parking is free at the hospital’
IN JAMAICA THEY DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING CARS!!!! A JAMAICAN DOCTOR WOULD PROBABLY SHOOT YOU DEAD IF YOU TROUBLED HIM WITH ANYTHING LESS THAN 3 GUNSHOT WOUNDS IN YOUR BODY!!!
Sometimes I worry that I shout so loudly in my head that other people can hear it…
May 3rd, 2006
11:17 am
I think it describes Royal London to a tee. I was once in there waiting patiently and nearly totally lost it when someone came in with a saucepan on his head. I mean for fecks sake…tool.
June 13th, 2006
2:20 pm
I e-mailed the comments of the Melbourne doctor above to a friend of mine who used to work as an A&E doctor. His response was almost as funny. I reproduce it here verbatim….
Whoever this self-obsessed patient-hating piece of shit is, they should not be practiscing. First of all, it’s not YOUR emergency department, secondly a broken bone is not a medical complaint, thirdly not all broken bones can wait until tomorrow - if you had the eleven years of emergency medical experience I’ve had, you would know that - the list is endless…….not one thing you said makes sense. Won’t give away your identity? Not surprised, people like me hunt you down and get you struck off. I’ve never heard such drivel, such vitriolic bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself, whoever you are. I bet you have serious stress issues.
Also, Gentlemen don’t use the word cunt, cunt.
July 24th, 2006
2:59 am
DIE OF PLAUGE BEFORE YOU ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE TAKE TO WOODHULL MEDICAL CENTER. I do not care how serious you think it is, get the cabbie to drive you to NYU Downtown Hospital at any price. Take your own infected digit off with dull boxcutter and rubbing alcohol. You’ll thank me.
December 21st, 2006
11:12 pm
can i ask what hospital this applys for. it looks strangely familiar to my local, kings college.
December 26th, 2006
12:50 am
you sound like a whiny person.
January 7th, 2007
5:42 pm
maybee the NHS is so fucked because their staff are all writing for magazines in work?