to think that A and E / Walk In Clinic is for acute illnesses and injury ?

[LIZS]

Just after lunch dd crushed her fingers in the door frame of our french doors as she closed it. Cue screams of pain and 3 misshapen fingers. Decide to go to the hospital Walk In rather than gp as may need an xray. Duly register and get triaged and join another child in the children's waiting room, boy aged about 13, with his Dad. No obvious symptoms and he kept asking if they could come back another day which I thought was odd.

Eventually a Nurse Practitioner comes along and calls them , by which time we've waited over an hour and half and them longer. Turns out the boy had hurt his knee over 2 months ago, not got any treatment at the time, was not currently in pain or limping but it was a bit bigger than the other one. Nurse Practitioner had a brief look as the range of movement then gave them fairly short shrift and suggested they got a gp referral direct to Orthopaedics instead, quite rightly imho.

Fortunately dd got seen straight afterwards (although the nurse was fairly short with us possibly exasperated by them) so at least it didn't delay us signifcantly. She doesn't seem to have broken anything just very bruised and swollen

[totaleclipse]

Perhaps the boy had only just told his dad about the injury,and he was just being over protective and wanted it seen to................anyway hope your dd recovers soon.

[sohappyicouldcry]

2 months !!!! That IS a recent injury compared to loads of things that people call a 999 ambulance for !!!!

Unfortunately, not everyone has common sense.

[LIZS]

I always understood that it was within 48 hours of injury for access to A and E and Walk In, no wonder you have to wait so long if this is the norm.

[amidaiwish]

i see A&E and walk in centres as quite different imo.

i would go to the walk in centre if DD has conjunctivitis and GP is shut for example - then i can get drops v quickly. i have done this and it seemed perfectly acceptable.

if anything seems serious the walk in centre send you off to A&E anyway, like earlier in the year when DD2's temp hit 40 and we couldn't get it down. The doctor there was worried and sent us off to A&E where he had phoned ahead.

[moondog]

I know a nurse who works in A&E.She says she has had folk come in with paper cuts.

Barking

[sohappyicouldcry]

An ambulance recently had someone who had called 999 as a spot they had picked was bleeding. They got a rapid response car as well as an ambulance because it was bleeding to the neck !!!!!! A plaster and it stopped

[Weegle]

I thought walk in centres were precisely that - nothing urgent, just need to see a doctor but it's on a first come first served basis. A&E different story entirely and is for emergencies/acute problems. If we had a walk in centre I would take DS for things I might call an out of hours doctor for. Maybe I have misunderstood them??

[TotalChaos]

agree with amidae - that the walk in is for far more trivial injuries than A & E. I would have thought that if the knee had waited 2 months, a week or so more (worst case scenario) for the GP would have made little difference...

[TotalChaos]

Walk-ins afaik also operate a triage/prioritisation system.

[Peachy]

OOh poor D- i crushed my finger in Tesco door as a child, excruciating (note that I was so clumsy tesco kept a first aid box with my anme on, and the A&E kept my file on front desk at all time.......)

[pinkteddy]

Weegle you are absolutely right. Walk in centres provide a service that complements the local GP and hospital. They are supposed to have links with all GP surgeries to ensure continuity of care for their patients. They are also supposed to relieve pressure on A&E departments by giving patients a more appropriate alternative. HTH

[Tommy]

I'm always amazed that anyone would choose to spend 3 hours in A&E if whatever thay had could wait until they saw the GP

I was in there once when DH knelt on a paint scraper (ouch) and there was a whole family- including 2 grandparents and various brothers and sisters - there with a boy of about 10 who was spposed to be the patient. He has no obvious sign of injury and was running around the place moaning that it was taking so long

[LIZS]

Ours seems to be all one unit in reality , so the same doctors are stretched across both types of cases. Walking wounded/unwell enter via the Walk In entrance, more serious Accidents and Emergencies into A and E direct. So if we go through Walk In we get taken around to the Paediatric waiting area while adults are left to wait at the front. We left (best part of 2 hours after arrival) and passed many of the same people waiting.

For something like conjunctivitis out of surgery hours I'd agree that Walk In is appropriate but we tried that when we suspected ds had an ear infection after Easter and the waiting time was so long that they sent him home and we dosed him up on Nurofen instead.

[newlifenewname]

We really shouldn't judge. I read an article ages ago which mentioned a woman in A&E getting yelled at by a man who had been waiting for ages. The woman could walk, she was conscious, she had no obvious injury but - as the nurse pointed out in the article - she was losing her unborn baby as she walked across the waiting room.

[XcupcakemummyX]

only did a and e in emergencies, dd did visit a few times once with me putting a sling on her first
with illnesses with dd and ds we were advised by doc to go
a and e is an important service but so overstretched

[alipotter]

agree with newlife. you just don't know circumstances and in the relatively few times i've been, all cases are assessed when you arrive and are dealt with in order of priority. there are signs up in our a&e that state just that. it's awful when your child is ill or injured and i thank my lucky stars we have a health system that can help. getting frustrated with the system/staff is being a bit unreasonable imo.

[raspberryberet]

Our local walk-in centre is a nurse-led facility for minor ailments, and I was under the impression that all NHS walk-ins are like that. They change dressings, treat minor illnesses and injuries, give out advice, dispense emergency contraception.

I would have thought that it was the ideal thing for the boy you saw - not an A&E case, and maybe suited them better to walk in and wait than to wait for a week to see the GP.

[legalalien]

DS has been to A&E twice this week (head injury from falling over and fall off playground gym thing) - and both times was seen within 15-20 mins, staff polite. Two different London hospitals.

I was pleasantly surprised.

[LIZS]

Wasn't judging them really , just thought it odd that they would choose to spend 2 hours waiting on a summer day rather than make a 10 minute gp appointment and get a follow up. Perhaps the son had whinged about it to get out of doing something and dad felt enough was enough ! Was also slightly baffled that the triage nurses had even let them wait when they were obviously so busy. We were happy enough to wait our turn, one or two cases which I would expect to get higher priority came in just as we were leaving. I'm sure we also got eyed suspiciously on the way out as by then dd was skipping as the Nurofen had kicked in !

Thanks Peachy , she seems back to her usual self (another dose of Nurofen before bed though I think) and she is starting to use her poorly fingers again.

[WigWamBam]

Perhaps their GP's surgery is like ours, and it takes three weeks to get an appointment!

[Sidge]

I used to work in A&E and could tell you some tales ...

We had a bloke bring his 3 year old daughter in at 0400 - he had woken her up, got her out of bed and brought her down then as he decided that the queues would have been too long at 1000 when she originally injured herself.

And the paramedics telling us that they got called to a woman supposedly having a heavy bleed - when they got there she was having her period and had run out of tampons!

And many many more...

[amidaiwish]

well exactly!
i have what i think is a stye (sp?) developing on my eye. it is bloody sore. just pulled out a couple of eyelashes round it which i'm sure hasn't exactly helped.

anyway, just been out for dinner, saw the walk in centre was still open - was tempted to go in (instead of ring all morning tomorrow trying to get through to doctors for appt sometime) but went for dinner instead. regretting it now.

any advice for styes? (or shall i start a new thread?!)

[amidaiwish]

well exactly comment was made for waiting three weeks for GP appt! x-posts.

[moondog]

Tell us more |Sidge...

[unknownrebelbang]

A&E, and the 999 system get abused/misused all the time.

It's shocking when you hear/read about some of the poor reasons behind 999 calls.