To be annoyed at friend for taking her kid to A&E so often

Our expectations on healthcare are too low. I’ve lived in France, Germany and Belgium. The level of care in the UK is terrible in comparison. I’ve had a child in Belgium and a child in the UK and the levels of care are just not comparable. It isn’t wrong for us to want better or for people to expect better care than we receive. We’ve been gaslit into believing the NHS is fantastic. Individually the doctors and nurses who work within the NHS are good but the entire system they operate within is broken.

@sellotape12 I think this is part of the problem. The UK has (in my opinion) one of the most hands off approach with regards to health. In other countries kids are seen regularly for check ups by paediatricians and often if the may have a cold and flu just to rule out something more serious. So there might be an adjustment required there. But having said that taking your child to a&e after fever due to jabs or not seems a bit extra as the kids say 🤭 but you do read/hear such horrible stories about not being able to get gp appointments or just being constantly told it’s nothing or they will grow out of it - sometimes you panic.

Same here, being Spanish. You only have to read the thread posted by a lady here yesterday with a very poorly child and being fobbed off by her GP to be concerned when you are not taken seriously bu health professionals.

Personally, the only way I 've managed to have my children referred to a paediatrician is by going to A&E. It had to be an A&E dr that told me to do something about my daughter's recurrent tonsillitis, and another one to have her referred for joint swelling.

I wouldn't say anything. Sounds like the cultural difference plays a part.

Sometimes though, you also don't know what is best. Unexplained leg pains can be a symptom of cancer and I can understand why a parent might panic and want them to be checked in that case.

See on the one hand I’d never post it on social media (I mean fgs) but a couple of christmasses ago I went to a&e for antibiotics at like 8pm on a weeknight for a skin infection, I was busy at work and knew I’d struggle to get a GP appointment because of the time of year and I was busy working. It was a long wait and I was expecting it, but it was easier than my alternative. It was absolutely FULL of people. Groups of atleast 2 and I couldn’t tell which one was the patient. Both parents with 2+ kids and I don’t know why they all needed to be there. Eavesdropping on conversations I heard one person tell someone they saw who they knew/got friendly with that they were “actually between jobs atm” so I don’t know why they were there at 8pm. People bringing their friend/partner and speaking for them and saying they’d not been able to keep anything down for 24+ hours not even water, who I then watched order stuff out the vending machine. Parents bringing kids and putting them in wheelchairs because they were so ill and had additional needs and couldn’t be expected to wait as long as the regular people who gave up and went home without being seen. At one point they called security because it was standing room only and they were trying to get people who weren’t patients to leave, suddenly everyone needed a carer (I saw an Asian lady say she needed to translate for her mom, security said they could get a translator and she then said well I’m her carer I’m staying, after that the white British people said the same and security just sort of sighed and left).
The NHS is a sorry state, but tbh I pay a decent whack of tax and you literally cannot beat them so sometimes you have to join them. Some of the care I’ve received in the past has been disappointingly shocking. I’m amazed at how they managed to convince them to send an ambulance for a graze though, I had a 4 hour wait for an ambulance when I thought I was dying (called 111 and suspected kidney stones) and I literally couldn’t move, couldn’t get off the floor and in too much pain to cry but I did feel sick and faint.

Totally.

I really miss the laughter emoji 😂

To be honest, a gp recently tried to tell me ds petechial rash was eczema. Thankfully I took him to A&E and they ran bloods straight away and did a chest X-ray which found a bad chest infection.

My ds suffers from recurrent tonsilitis. Whenever I take him to the GP for it, they mostly refuse to give antibiotics. He almost always gets a petechial rash with it and now whenever he has it, I always take him to A&E due to the rash and they have always prescribed antibiotics. All times he has pus spots on his tonsils but the GPs seem to go against NHS guidelines and don’t prescribe antibiotics.

Your example of an ear infection is wrong as they are also meant to be treated the same day.

My ex is a GP and the horror stories I used to hear from him alongside my own experience with them makes me dubious of them. He had failed his exam many times but was still working as a trainee GP.

I also saw one who tried to tell me I had health anxiety whilst being referred to the oncologist for a suspected cancerous ovarian cyst. I ended up in A&E the following day with a ruptured cyst and was on the operating table within hours of arriving.

I say this coming from USA healthcare…be assured if you have clocked how many times she has accessed a&e for non urgent care I’m quite confident the clinicians at your a&e have clocked it too and have their ways of letting each other know her usage is outside of normal.

sounds a bit like you're jealous tbh that she's settled in and has friends/acquaintances already that are interested in her life.

How on earth did you reach that conclusion??!!

It has nothing to do with her being Spanish, but if she’s from a wealthy family she probably relied on private healthcare and doesn’t grasp the difference? A bit like when tourists think they can just rock up at any hospital on holidays and don’t actually check their insurance (I’ve had a few friends have issues with this).

She’s probably an anxious parent.

I will say though, when DD slammed her toes so hard they looked broken, i was very surprised they told me to just get a taxi (UK). I don’t drive and live on a third floor, getting her to the hospital was a nightmare. Maybe the expectations and availability are just different.

This! While I wouldn't go to A&E with any of the symptoms, moving to the UK was a huge shock for us in terms of availability of healthcare and generally health advice.
My friends' live in Europe, their child fell out of puschair on their head - they called an ambulance to see the child and the ambulance actually arrived! The child was completely Ok.
In comparison, I went to A&E in the UK one time when my child fell from quite a height and felt stupid for coming, my understanding now is that unless the child is unconscious for a couple of minutes or has other concerning symptoms, I shouldn't come.

But you know sometimes (and I'm not justifying all these visits, something happens and you're just not sure. Dd woke us once in the middle of the night , crying in pain. No temperature, no reason for the pain.. I suspected she needed the loo and it might have been gas but me and hubby' just didnt know what to do so we ook her to a and e in case it was serious. Well of course it wasn't. An hour or two after being there she went loo and pain was gone. I felt awful and embarrassed but she dedo doesn't usually cry like that.. im just wondering if on these occasions maybe she thought something was wrong. P.s I did not post the event on social media and never would, I was too worried my child was either dying or had trapped gas 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I think it depends on how long she'd be waiting for a GP appointment. Maybe it's quicker to go to hospital, maybe she worries but doesn't tell you and needs to get her child seen too asap. I'm very impressed at UK system for an ambulance for grazed leg, you nearly have to give an organ here in Ireland to get one, my unconscious DD who was having a tonic clonic seizure waited nearly an hour for one and that was fast.

Accidentally voted YABU meant to put YANBU

None of these things are an emergency so after being triaged she must be spending significant amount of time waiting. I'm sure she will tire of this eventually I'd explain how 111 works as well to try and cut her visits

I’d be annoyed too but you just know if you said anything she would kick up a fuss. I’d actually expect the hospital to say something to her about this to be honest. I read somewhere that frequent trips to A&E get flagged to social services - not sure how true that is mind.

They just want to be seen same day. Yep, this is the problem with ED these days. Hardly any are having any kind of emergency and should be at the GP or walk in centre. It's literally the name "emergency" department.

I am so confused why you get irritated about it?! Like you have to wait for hours in the A&E or something 😂 Let the lady do what’s best for her kid. I have 3 kids, I never took 2 of them to the A&E but let me tell you I had to take my middle one 6 times in a month because of various accidents! Every kid & parent is different!

That is true for genuine life threatening emergencies. Not so much for accidents that are bad and immobilising but not life threatening.

I broke my hip and was too scared to go to the hospital as I thought they'd try and make me sit on a horrible chair for 12 hours. So I laid on the floor not moving position for 24 hours until I relented and got in an ambulance.

So some people can and do postpone treatment, either because they don't know what's wrong or are scared.

When you're in that much pain the idea of the paramedics moving you with no pain relief bar gas and air is quite daunting. And that's before you even get to the a&e!

That sounds good. I just remembered going to an A&E in a small town I considered to be virtually a village, it was pretty much empty and I was seen immediately. This was about 25 years ago though.

I guess I'd better move before I get in desperate need of urgent emergency care!

My Italian friend was confused that she wasn’t allocated a named paediatrician for her perfectly well baby, but then she was impressed by our midwife system rather than the interventionist approach to child birth there and that she was allowed a home birth completely free of charge.

My foreign mother in law was horrified I hadn’t had a caesarean when I was a week overdue. Also that I didn’t have (or want) an epidural. Different expectations. She’s always having an operation for this and that IMO!

Problem is no one wants to pay to invest in it so we have a poorly organised service that actually costs more to run and tries to avoid actually treating people or caring for them. It off loads on to less qualified staff such as physicians assistants and nurses so it can be done on the cheap. Nursing is then off loaded to healthcare assistants again and so it goes on. Cleaners and porters are outsourced so they don’t get the same rights and benefits if employed by nhs and everyone is surprised they are unhappy and do a cr@p job. Those healthcare systems in Europe and US aren’t free they pay way more money into them than UK does. The insurance based system pay out on tests so there’s an incentive to overtest and overtreat. We voted for our underresourced system when we voted for 14 years of Tories. The aim of free market capitalism is to dismantle the nhs so big US corporations can turn into an American insurance based system which is highly restricted.

In an absolute emergency of course you don't. But some injuries can wait a while. Obviously if you break your ankle on Monday, it would be unwise to wait to the following Sunday.