For the last week or so I had been suffering with a pain in my right chest and some days the pain was going down my right arm and around the back of my right shoulder – I had just been taking 2 paracetamol to relive the pain every time.
On Friday the pain was there and my wife Val said to me: “you – Doctors Monday!” I said OK I will see how feel.
over the weekend I felt the pain subsiding and thought it had nearly gone so come Monday it felt OK.
On Tuesday as I was showering the sharp pain was back there again on the right of my chest so I took it on myself to phone my local GP to see if I could get something, like antibiotics (thinking as it was just a chest infection or something) as I had a chesty cough too . The receptionist said she would get the Doctor to call me back. About an hour later she did and asked me to pop down to the surgery for an ECG and blood pressure (considering my age, 57) and the symptoms I described. So the care nurse done an ECG and a blood pressure reading (well 2 spaced apart) and then showed my GP.
My GP called me in and said ECG seemed fine and diagnosed it as Costochondritis, but still wanted me to go to Hospital A&E Department to get it checked out fully. She said that they can do a special blood test to see if it is heart attack (or had a heart attack) and do a chest x-ray. I said I don’t really fancy a 10 hour wait in the emergency department (which I heard was the norm lately) I said to her what would you do and she told me that if I were her husband she would advise me to go along to the hospital and get it checked out. Said that she would send an email to the ED in the hospital and that “because it could be a heart issue then maybe they might see me quicker”
so driving home we came across a crossroads (yes folks it really was a crossroads with a fork in the road!) so I thought if we turn left its home if we turn right its the way to the hospital – well I thought, the doctor must know what she is talking about , and i was pretty worried that the pain was not going away , or rather it went away for a day or 2 nearly but was back again .
So we (the wife drove me in , I was not going to drive with heart problems!) Wife parked €3 for 4hrs –
got into the A&E department at 5pm, after registering at the reception (that was a difficult experience because the receptionist staff taking details are behind glass , and the microphone/PA were not working when I went there anyway so I could not hear at all what details the receptionist was asking, I am glad my wife was there because she relayed to me what the receptionist was asking). Again , not too impressed of all the details you have to tell the receptionist your name phone number and address in this day of GDPR and everyone else in this room listening to all your details – there is no privacy!
we went into the waiting room and it was wedged pack with people. Expecting to see people with blood pouring from a cut finger and someone holding the cut off fingertip in their other hand and sawn off arms and nails in eye’s and people moaning and groaning in pain there was only 2 people out of all the people in there with their arms in slings – the rest of the people in there looked absolutely fine … looked more well than I did anyway.
We found a seat (2 seats together) but my wife was a bit anxious of all the crowd there in the waiting room and there was a lot of coughing and spluttering going on so I told her if she wanted to go home she could as I would be there for ages.
just around 6pm a triage nurse came in an called my name out (never have liked the idea of calling names out in the waiting room could they not just give people with a numbered ticket and call the number out instead?) not bad going being seen within a hour for triage I suppose. So the Triage nurse asked me questions , offered me pain killers for the pain , and took another ECG and said that she was sorry she could not offer me a trolley to lie down on because there were none available – so then it was back into the waiting room – the start of the overnight wait before anything else was done) .
So, sitting in the waiting room I was thirsty and wanted some water, there was one of those water machines which dispense chilled and room temperature water. That was not working (or had run out) – so then I saw some bottled water in the vending machine next to the water dispenser thing, would normally take a tap of a card or phone but display on machine said ‘cash only’ so I did manage to have some coins in my pocket (well enough for a bottle of water) so put the money in and it took it but when it come to selecting it just gobbled up my money and that was that pressing the selection did not drop the water down into the bottom basket and pressing the little button to get coins back didnt work either (just a little note about the vending machines in there, all 3 of them throughout the night loads of people were going up and having trouble using them, ranging from they were confusing to use, and not accepting card’s all the time and rejecting them saying ‘use another card’ – this is a shoutout for you vending.ie , do you think you can address them make them easier to use and maintain them?) I am sure I could have gone into to cubicle parts and asked a nurse for some water and told her the water dispenser was not working but the doors from the ED waiting room to the cubicles or where the nurses are were locked and could not be opened unless you worked there as a nurse, doctor, security person or paramedic and flashed a card to a keypad to open the doors. (throughout my time waiting in the waiting room people kept turning the waiting room lights off with the light switch right next to the doors believing this was the switch to opening the door but it wasn’t it was met with laughter from the waiting patients every time the lights went off in the waiting room – maybe the light switch should be placed right outside of the waiting room or turned on and off from somewhere else just to avoid confusion??)
Around 10pm my wife said she would come in and wait with me , keep me company and brought me in some bottles of water and a bar of something and a packet of crisps. She came in and sat down and another patient who was waiting her daughter (I presume) brought in a Supermacs take-away for her mum and her (stunk the room out , not nice in a ED waiting room – if you weren’t already feeling sick , with pain or whatever, you would after the smell of greasy fast food take-away – why do they even allow this to be eaten in the waiting room?)
Throughout the night people (mainly the men) would be going outside to have a smoke and then come back into the ED waiting room smelling of smoke and then a coughing fit so you could smell it even more. – so much for SUH being a no smoking campus (if that what it is?) – and then of course they cannot walk through doors so the outside doors opening every time they wanted to go out for a smoke brought in cold air on one of the coldest nights of the year (-4’c it was outside) .
at around midnight a few people who had been in the ED around about 5pm before I got there , (God knows how much long before I got there), started getting agitated and restless and a Nurse had come into the waiting room and I see a couple of people go up to her (and presumably complain and ask how much longer?) at which point the nurse announced to all of us in the waiting room “I am sorry for everyone for the long wait, I can assure you we are working hard and its been very busy tonight in the department , we shall be doing bloods and x-rays soon”
Around 1am Wednesday – a nurse came in and called me and put a canular line into my arm and took some bloods and took my blood pressure , it was a bit on the high side she said and asked if I had blood pressure issues and I said that I was on blood pressure medication (bisoprolol) but that I don’t think I took it on the morning of that day , I just forgotten to take it. (no chest x-ray still though)
Quarter to 2am – my wife Val said she better pop out to put another ticket on the car in the car park I said would they even be out in the night checking tickets on the cars and she said I am not even gonna chance it (i.e. getting a fine) – I said to her what a shame you have to go out in the freezing cold and put another ticket on the car , there should be some kind of thing you could renew the parking charge through your phone (not knowing that there was).
She came back (frozen) and put another parking ticket on the inside of the windscreen (another €3 for 4hrs) – saying the windscreen is totally frozen anyway so if there were a car park attendant going around they wouldn’t be able to glance in though the windscreen and see the ticket anyway. On walking back from the car she noticed a sign saying that they do in fact have an online phone app so she took the details down for that.
Throughout the night these chairs in the A&E department were really uncomfortable , especially at the base of the spine. My particular seat was a plastic bucket seat one with just a plastic cushion on the bottom and no cushion on the back there was a few chairs in ED with plastic cushions on the seat park and and on the back (little note here , i am not expecting recliner seats or anything fancy, but if you are expecting people to spend hours and hours on end to wait throughout the night please can you supply more comfortable chairs for people to sit on please at least!)
I tried to sleep in these uncomfortable chairs on and off because I was wrecked at this time and nothing was happening anyway but between the outside doors opening and letting in the cold air -3’c outside (even the air conditioning in the department was blowing out cold air all night instead of warm air the waiting room) and the loud noises of the refrigeration motors on the vending machines and only what I can describe as some people in the room pacing up and down in the waiting room past me (most probably stretching their legs) and people talking on their phones and phones ringing , well there was hardly any sleep to be had , at best I just closed my eyes for a while. – it was very unusual, I always find hospitals to be one of the most hot places to be normally but that particular night it was absolutely freezing in that waiting room, I thought it might have been because I was also tired and had been waiting around so long, but some others had hospital blankets (and were still cold and shivering) and then others with coats and whatever they had on them .
At one stage of the night a guy came in with a backpack and just lay down across about 3 or 4 chairs and used his backpack as a pillow and just spent the night in the waiting room and just left at around 7am without being seen. not wishing to jump to any conclusions i just presumed maybe he was a homeless person possibly, and I don’t blame him at all, it was absolutely Baltic out there on the night and really icy, to be honest it wasn’t much warmer in the waiting room with the broken heating or whatever it was doing.
4am – was thirsty so Val went to vending machine to get me a cup of coffee and a shortbread biscuit. no sooner did she sit down and pass the coffee over to me didn’t the double doors open between the waiting room and emergency cubicles and in come 2 chirpy catering ladies and said “who wants a nice cup of tea and sandwiches?” – well the people in the room all got up so quick to get their tea and sandwiches I have never seen people walk so fast! LOL – it was like a mini party everyone coming back with their paper party plates and cups of tea and chatting to each other. I found it comical anyway the mood changed immediately , before that people were trying to sleep and it was quiet, but as soon as that trolley came in with the free refreshments that changed the dynamics of the room (and most probably appeased some of the complaints of long waiting times)
around 9.10am Val saw a consultant walking the corridor (at that time the doors were unlocked between waiting room and cubicles) and Val asked how much longer to wait and the consultant said I have Andy on the list here I am just waiting to find a room in the cubicle . Then about 5-10mins later she called for me . And I followed her to a trolley where she listened to my chest through a stethoscope and tapped in some places then I said the pain felt a bit like before when I had Pulmonary Embolism in 2010 – to which she seem surprised that I had a blood clot , I would have thought she had it in notes as I was hopitalised with it in 2010 in the (what was then Sligo General Hospital) “Ah OK we better do a blood test for D-dimer then” (don’t ask me why the nurse at 1am did not do a D-dimer test along with the other blood test she done at that time. The consultant took blood out of my left arm even though a canular was already in place in my right arm so that was another thing I was confused about , why did she not do it out of the arm which already had the canular in?
Then she told me to go to the x-ray dept to get a chest x-ray, on the way to the x-ray department lined along the corridors were lots and lots of people waiting on trolleys , many of them were middle aged/old and a doctor was asking a patient about sensitive details there for all to hear, its quite comical (not in a funny way) in these days of GDPR that anyone walking through the corridors can hear all this information , and then its very upsetting seeing all these poor people waiting on trolleys to be admitted or whatever was happening in the corridors and i know it goes on all the time, this is not just a covid applied problem either , it was like this in late 2009 when I was brought in by ambulance with 2 slipped discs and sciatica, I myself was waiting on a trolly for hours in a corridor along with a lot of other patients, so its nothing new, and we are here in 2023 and nothing Has changed, still patients waiting on trolleys in corridors – I often wonder what happens if a serious fire or other emergency and people have to exit quickly down these corridors lined with trolley’s , i suppose they have to have other routes mapped out for that scenario but it still makes you think – why can not the government and successive government and hospital managers just all get together and try and eradicate it once and for all – if its been going on like this for years (which it has indeed) I cannot ever see it being resolved … ever!
I tell you what though I know that with myself waiting in the freezing cold A&E waiting room in uncomfortable seats for hours on end I would have chose a trolley over that , I would never of thought I would hear myself saying that but I have, at least I could have had a lie down and had a blanket over me and a bit warmer and possibly even managed to get some sleep possibly .
there was a bit of a wait in the x-ray waiting room, whilst then I saw a sign on the door that x-ray times were Monday to Friday until 5pm … but surely with A&E / ED they must do xrays even in the middle of the night dont they? – but the way a couple of people in the ED with their arms in a sling were overnight without anything happen got me really wondering if they really really do xrays 24hrs because could this be why the people in A&E had to wait all night because there was no-one around to do x-rays and they had to wait until the morning until they had an x-ray done on their arms??
after a wait the chest x-ray was done on me , the ladies who done the x-ray on my chest was amazed when I said i was waiting nearly 19hours in the A&E department – after the x-ray it was back to the A&E waiting room to wait to be called in again for the results. Wow , we went back to the waiting room and it had heat!! – not only that it was like a bloody Sauna, so throughout the night the aircon was blowing out freezing cold air when you wanted it warm but someone then in the morning done a 360 on it and turned the heat up to unbearable level in there!
20 to 11am Wednesday – Called in by the consultant. Bloods all good, X-ray good ,
D-dimer good (no blood clots) – it seemed the consultant said was a good call from my local GP about it being Costochondritis and the consultant agreed with her diagnosis. A inflammation between the cartilage and breastbone, giving the indication that I was having a heart attack even though I wasn’t. She agreed it was good I came in and got it checked out fully , and I was relieved it wasn’t anything more serious especially having PE in 2010 which shook me a bit …. but on the whole the night in A&E was such an experience I thought to myself I must write a blog about it. I just did not realise it would be such a large blog , so sorry about that , I thought I would just be a few lines, but if it is TLDR I understand – just need to take ibroprufen or other anti-inflammatory meds and rest and it should go off itself
I am not lying, there were a couple of times throughout 19 hours I was in there that I just wanted to get out, go home to just get some rest , but I had the Canular still in my arm and I was still waiting on the x-ray and waiting for results and I would have had to discharged myself so it would have been messy – but a few weeks ago I had heard on the radio news that some people are waiting so long to be seen in A&E that they have just got up and left. I know some people will say “ah well sure if they done that they never needed to be in A&E in the first place then” – but you know that is what it feels like sometimes when you are there for hours on end, even if you are putting yourself in danger leaving before being assessed or treated and you cannot really knock people if you are not or ever been in that situation.
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Things to note:
If you are going into the A&E /ED in the winter take some warm clothes in with you just in case heating is not working again you will be freezing especially if you are there for hours on end
Take bottles of water, just in case the water dispenser is not working – if not bring change plus a tap and pay card (credit/debit card or use phone to pay) for the vending machines – and they are difficult to use – (all throughout the night everyone young and old going to get a coffee or a sandwich out of the machines were flummoxed with how to use them so it was not only me!)
The car parking charges can be pricey – we spent €15euro just on parking – (mind you we did not know at first that you can pay online and its €6 total to park for 24hrs I think if you do it online)
The toilets in the A&E waiting room were nice and clean and fully functional (and also not damaged or vandalised) they are cleaned throughout the night about 3 time by the cleaner and well stocked. There is 1 unisex toilet and 1 disabled toilet. The handles of the doors were cleaned, however all the seats in the duration of the time I was in were not sprayed/cleaned once in all the hours I were there (well not even the seats that were empty, I know they cannot expect to clean them if people are sitting on them at the time the cleaner comes around, but i do believe the seats should be cleaned between people sitting on them. The floor of the waiting room was not cleaned/mopped either all the hours I were waiting in there only in the morning around 7am and even then it was just a sweep.
The doors between the ED patient waiting room and ED cubicles are locked, the only way to go through them at any time is if (vary rarely) a nurse or someone else walks past it and you manage to get their attention. They only open if you work at the hospital and have a access card on you and tap it on the control panel next to the doors – knocking on the door windows will not alert someone on the other side to open them , nor pressing the light switch next to the doors open them (they just turn the waiting room lights on and off and this happened all throughout the night when various people turned the lights off in the waiting room thinking this was a switch to open the doors instead)
The TV in the waiting room on the wall is tuned to Virgin Media one and overnight there is no programmes it just replays the shows coming up on Virgin Media one over and over again … all night and becomes as boring as waiting for hours in the ED – you cannot hear the TV either and there is no subtitles on the programmes (not being petty but the monotony of waiting in the room whether patient or accompanying a patient you might just like a TV or music to break up the boredom of waiting in the ED for hours on end.
A bit of comedy throughout the night to break up the monotony is watching people trying to get out of the EXIT doors of the waiting room to the outside … everyone and I mean everyone after pressing/waving hand over switch will try pulling the door (which has to be pushed) you will see absolutely every person struggle with these exit doors throughout the night even if they have gone out of them before – ah sure its a bit of craic watching people embarrassingly trying to get out and the door not opening (happened to me too LOL ) – and of course trying to watch people work the vending machines – well actually they are not vending machines they are actually rocket science and even I am into gadgets but they flummoxed me even and someone come over to help me … it still didn’t work – if I had a euro for every time throughout the night the machine said “pay with another card” then I might have had more than the required euro’s for the car parking charges!
I was asked to remove the part in this blog that I wondered if xrays were actually done overnight in SUH and also point out that the x-ray department in fact DO in fact work 24hrs in the hospital – It was purely me speculating that my GP had already told me I would need a chest x-ray and yet I did not get one until 9.30am the next day and seeing 2 people with their arms in slings all night I just jumped to conclusions that they did not do x-rays overnight and just kept people waiting overnight who needed an x-ray, that’s why I was saying you are maybe better of going in the daytime if you have a broken bone and needed an xray – I would have thought in triage it is decided if a xray is requested but now I guess the official score is maybe no-one gets an xray unless the doctor requests it … which is why my doctor requested it the next day for me and that I had to wait further in the xray department for it to be done .. when all that sitting around in the middle of the night doing nothing then maybe I could have had my chest xray done then?
Most of the night as a patient it seems you are just left on your own in the A&E dept waiting room to just get on with it – there are 2 security camera’s on the ceiling’s by the doors between the waiting room and examination cubicles – whether anyone looks at them to see if anyone has actually keeled over and died in the waiting room I really don’t know. There is a window to the “book in reception” to the waiting room but the blind is down all the time. so the people on reception cannot see into the room anyway. – If you are lucky the odd time you might see a security guard walk in … or a rare doctor or nurse venture out into the ED waiting room … that’s when you have to pounce and make your move if you want something LOL .
I think this is about as much as I can recall, this blog post is not meant to be a dig at doctors or nurses and staff who do a sterling job . Maybe its to do with the management of the Emergency Department , maybe if they read my blog at any time (haha oh look a flying pig!) they may pick up on some of the points I raised and just make it a bit more comfortable for the patients (and the ones who come in with them) to make it a little bit easier – I am not saying that the experience of waiting in the A&E depart that there are improvements to be made to make it just a little more comfortable experience .
Please do feel free to leave a comment below on the issues I have pointed out or noted or if you have anything to add or your experiences if you had to visit the ED department at SUH hospital in Sligo at any time and want to share your story.
Most of the night as a patient it seems you are just left on your own in the A&E dept waiting room to just get on with it – there are 2 security camera’s on the ceiling’s by the doors between the waiting room and examination cubicles – whether anyone looks at them to see if anyone has actually keeled over and died in the waiting room I really don’t know. There is a window to the “book in reception” to the waiting room but the blind is down all the time. so the people on reception cannot see into the room anyway. – If you are lucky the odd time you might see a security guard walk in … or a rare doctor or nurse venture out into the ED waiting room … that’s when you have to pounce and make your move if you want something LOL .
I think this is about as much as I can recall, this blog post is not meant to be a dig at doctors or nurses and staff who do a sterling job . Maybe its to do with the management of the Emergency Department , maybe if they read my blog at any time (haha oh look a flying pig!) they may pick up on some of the points I raised and just make it a bit more comfortable for the patients (and the ones who come in with them) to make it a little bit easier – I am not saying that the experience of waiting in the A&E depart that there are improvements to be made to make it just a little more comfortable experience .
Please do feel free to leave a comment below on the issues I have pointed out or noted or if you have anything to add or your experiences if you had to visit the ED department at SUH hospital in Sligo at any time and want to share your story.
Andy Robus - My Blog 
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