Andrew Vine: Timewasters risk putting our NHS on the critical list

This was the front line of the NHS in Yorkshire a few days ago as dusk fell, under pressure even before the likely influx of casualties as a result of too much to drink as the night progressed.

Yet the waiting area felt and sounded more like a GP’s surgery than a department dealing with emergencies.

For every person nursing an obvious injury or displaying signs of acute discomfort, another was coughing and sneezing.

The cold snap that arrived on Boxing Day sent a friend and I to hospital a couple of days afterwards. A simple errand to buy some milk from the local shop ended with him slipping on an icy pavement and falling heavily, one leg twisting beneath him.

He struggled to get up and another customer rushed to his aid, offering a lift home in her car. An hour later, his ankle had swollen alarmingly and he could hardly bear to stand because of the pain.

The NHS Helpline advised going to A&E for an X-ray to determine if the ankle was broken, and I drove him to one of Yorkshire’s biggest hospitals.

Icy weather always increases the workload of casualty departments, as falls and road accidents bring in both the walking wounded and the more seriously injured, and this afternoon was no exception.

My friend was amongst several people who had fallen, wincing as they ruefully swapped stories of what had happened.

We were plainly in for a wait of several hours, and as the time wore on, conversations sprang up.

That’s when a snapshot emerged of what probably every A&E department in Yorkshire experiences on a daily basis.

Maybe half of those waiting simply shouldn’t have been there. They hadn’t suffered accidents or been taken suddenly and acutely ill.

Instead, there was a sneezing man who complained that he couldn’t shift a heavy cold. There was a mother with a boy of about 10, who had a hacking cough which had spoiled Christmas for him. It didn’t however spoil his absorption in a video game that was occupying the time as they waited to be seen.

Then there was a young man who had an upset stomach and another who’d had a pain in his shoulder for a few days.

Naturally, the sneezing man had plenty to say about the state of the NHS and how no other country in the world would put up with having to wait this length of time, adding that he hoped not to be much longer because he was going out that evening.

When it was my friend’s turn, he was treated with cheerful efficiency and assured he’d done the right thing in coming to hospital. The X-ray showed a bad sprain, not a break, and we went on our way with him on crutches.

By then, a fresh batch of sneezers and coughers were waiting, people who had no business taking up the time of an A&E unit, neither in need of emergency treatment, nor injured.

If they needed to see a doctor at all, they should have been waiting for their GP to be available, not coming here, piling further pressure on already overworked staff by turning up with trivial everyday complaints.

Go home and sneeze. Go and see your local pharmacist and ask for advice. Ask your friends and relatives who all have the same bug, because that’s the one circulating this winter, what they have taken to make themselves feel better.

But above all, go home and stop clogging up the emergency system. Amid the never-ending debate over what the NHS should be, or its future, this aspect of life on the front line is too often overlooked.

It is not overstating matters to suggest that those turning up at A&E departments with minor everyday ailments are actively abusing the system.

What becomes ever plainer about the NHS as the years progress is that it is so finely balanced between being able to cope and becoming overwhelmed, that a problem in one area produces a serious knock-on effect somewhere else in the system.

If a GP’s surgery has many more patients than it can easily manage and there is a wait for appointments, the self-centred head for the hospital with no apparent thought that the precious time and resources expended on minor ailments brings an already creaking system that much closer to crashing.

If the NHS is to be everything we wish it to be, it does not depend only upon its staff and the politicians who determine its fate.

It depends also on the people who use it displaying a measure of common sense and a resolve not to waste its time.