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The problem with that is that at least some some eye A&E's don't allow you to just go in, you need to be referred by either a doctor, an optician or go to normal A&E first.Thanks for the reply. The second Dr I saw said that if it gets worse, or the antibiotic eye drops do not work to go to the local one. They have their own A&E dept.
My dad has had all sorts of problems with his eyes over the years and we've had to play the "not me" game with doctors and opticians before, with the doctors surgery going "oh you need to see an optician", the Optician going "you need to see a doctor" and the eye A&E going "we don't see people unless referred".
IIRC we ended up getting a number from the optician to the opticians specialist version of 111 who then gave the optician a reference to get him ASAP, the optician then IIRC referred him urgently to the hospital having spent about 3 hours with increasingly senior opticians at the practice looking at him (I think he said they fully did the tests 3 times). The local Spec Savers really earned a lot of good will with us that afternoon.
When he had an issue a few weeks back that the NHS site said was possibly signs of a detached retina we rang 111 who instructed us to go to the local normal A&E so they could look and see if he needed to be seen by the eye A&E at the other end of the hospital.
The ophthalmology and ophthalmic departments at a lot of hospitals are I think very severely understaffed, more so than most. In my dad's case he is meant to get 3 or 6 monthly checks but even before covid if the consultant said "I want to see you in 3 months" it was usually closer to 6 with the appointment coming often with only a week or so of notice*. The local optician was horrified last year when he realised my dad hadn't been seen by the specialist for ~3 years (it was meant to be a 3 month appointment, but covid hit about month 4), the GP did an urgent rereferral after we checked (again) to make sure that he hadn't missed an appointment or anything, and was due one last week (after a 5 month wait), which is now delayed to May.
I don't blame the NHS for this, as it's got massively worse in the last 10 years and the only thing that has changed has been a constant decrease in real terms funding and staffing which a decision by the PM, health secretary and the Treasury.
The actual staff are absolutely brilliant, the first incident I mentioned when he finally got to see someone, they looked at his eye saw the problem and basically did a minor op using laser surgery within minutes as the equipment was free and the specialist was trained in it so got the go ahead. Something that was both very welcome and sensible as it saved everyone a lot of time and meant he was able to see much better by the time he walked out (I basically had to walk him in, as it was affecting his "good" eye and he was more of less blind).
*With an absolute scramble to arrange transport, as I'm his normal driver and I was booked to be away that day, very fortunately it was a Saturday and I was able to get my sister to give up the day to take him (his appointments can take anything from 30 minutes from the appointment time, to 3 hours or more** if there is an emergency requiring surgery/treatment on the day). I learned to pack thermos's, snacks and a couple of good books etc 25 years ago..
**The record was about 6 hours, apparently they'd had a major emergency case come in via A&E requiring a lot of the staff.
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