in thinking that some/alot of people go to A and E without a good reason

[ghostspirit]

im just wathing 24 hours in a&e and a mum took her child to hospital because he has hayfever. also i see loads of posters at bus stops it says things like have a back ache, see your GP do not do to a&e. seen a few other similar things. is this because there are a lot of people going to hospital when they don't need to or is it just a general thing to make people more aware.

The one and only ambulance we've ever called was when DH found me screaming in pain, doubled over and delirious (paramedic thought ectopic, but was a cyst rupturing, so not a bad guess).

I definitely needed A&E, and if I'd been coherent I could have told DH to drive, but I wasn't, and he panicked. From the sounds of this thread I guess they'd have been glad to have been called for someone who was actually ill at all.

We've also used A&E for "child fell and bashed abdomen, which is now sore and kind of purple", and Minor Injuries for "baby dropped from greater than his own height". I think that's it.

The Calpol bottle says that if you've been giving your child Calpol for three days in a row you should go to the GP. My friend obeys this advice so it's not surprising they're so busy.

The points above about access to more appropriate services are very pertinent. Lots of people don't have a GP (particularly vulnerable people) so A&E will always be their first port of call.

I have only ever used A&E for the DCs, never myself (I have been lucky I guess!) Never called an ambulance for them though.
DD1 aged 3 had such a constant cough she literally couldn't get enough breath. She was put on a nebuliser and ambulanced to the nearest city hospital with paediatric services.
DD2 had a head to toe non- blanching rash that turned out to be a reaction to a virus. Ditto journey to city hosp.
DS about six weeks ago- slipped on lino and faceplanted, splitting his lip wide open. That needed a next-day journey to said city hosp for a general and stitches.
Our A&E is tiny and constantly under threat of closure. It is always rammed. The council are greenlighting the building of hundreds of new houses all over and around this town. Where the hell are they supposed to go if they get hurt? They have already closed the children's ward and the maternity unit

I once went to a&e with what turned out to be an ear infection. I was horribly embarrassed but in my defence I had a brand new first baby and had been so preoccupied with her I hadn't noticed it until it was so bad my whole face was swollen, it was a Saturday night and I was in agony. I was on antibiotics and strong painkillers for a week.

Some people do treat it as a walk in GP surgery, I think. A friend of mine actually received a letter from SS as she took her ds to the local A&E 37 times in 9 months. I always tried to persuade her it wasn't worth a hospital visit, but she always countered it was 'being on the safe side'.
The answer to this is education of parents and families, individuals etc and also for a better triage system in hospitals. As it stands currently, if you attend A&E, you must be attended (no matter how long the wait). If they adapted the triage system so that when you arrive, if you simply have a sore throat, or dc have scraped their elbow, they should be told to bugger off go home.
The only problem with trying to address these issues, is that if someone is sent home, and it turns out that they were coming down with a severe illness (or did have a fractured tibia etc etc etc) then the NHS is liable.
So how to save costs and stop wasting A&E resources?

People who block up GP appointments for inappropriate things cause the A&E problem. My DP's inhaler stopped being effective but there were no appointments for 5 weeks - whilst waiting he ended up at A&E with major breathing difficulties, taking up a bed overnight whilst his oxygen levels returned to normal.

This must have cost the NHS a fortune to treat because he couldn't get a timely GP appointment to prescribe him a £25 inhaler. No wonder the finances are in such a dire state.

Sometimes it's lack of knowledge though, my ds has ASD and is always having accidents. One occasion, he cut his finger quite badly, stitched up in A & E, sent home quite happily. 2 days later a horrible stench starting coming from his wound, you could smell it from the other side of the room. I assumed it was infected and rushed back to A & E,(head full of thoughts of blood poisoning or other horrors) of course there was nothing wrong, and it's normal for severe wounds to smell, but I didn't know that

Hayfever? In December?

EatS*Derek... at 4pm is very lucky, my dd eczema has started to really play up and is so broken at the moment it starts bleeding during the night. On Monday I telephoned for an appointment at 8:30am and was given an appointment for next Tuesday at 4:20pm. I do think we can manage in the meantime, but if it was something urgent, I would really be ringing 111. (I was told by a 111 line advisor that if you call them and it is non-urgent, they will tell you to seek for non-emergency treatment by a primary health care professional within 24 hours. Call the GP and say 111 told you you need an appointment and magically a slot appears the same day)

Also how many nurse appointments do you think get taken up by women constantly having to check in to re-order birth control? It's a right pain and I bet the nurses have way more important things to do than fill in a couple of tick boxes saying yes still happy with bc, no I haven't turned into an alcoholic/chain smoker/morbidly obese in the last 12 months - like actually listening to people who aren't happy with their bc for one!

I recently discovered that Lloyds pharmacy will let you order up to 12 months of your current bc with an online "check" with a doctor. All totally legit and a massive time saver for all involved - I really don't understand why there isn't more of a move to this.

There's no single answer because there's no single reason...

In our case with hindsight I realise we didn't need A&E but at the time with a distressed child its a difficult judgement for a parent to make.
Our 16month old had been poorly but coping with calpol for nearly 4 weeks, cue a panicked call from grandma at 4pm that she'd been crying solidly for 3 hours which is very unlike her. I try to call GP, they say that she needs to be seen but they are shutting in 30 mins so they can't help. But because technically they are open I am not able to phone the out of hours service. Call to 111 but because I am not with my daughter they won't even talk to me. Eventually get home, daughter is still crying and doesn't stop. We're worried because she's been poorly for so long but nothing urgent - now thinking something is causing her great pain and we've been idiots and caused a problem by not taking her to gp before now. Our only option is A&E at this point. Get there - and she stops crying but is still miserable. We get transferred to the childrens A&E with all the bright colours and toys and she magically perks up and does the most horrendous stinky runny poo imaginable. By the time we see the doctor she's fine...
I felt terrible for going to A&E but how was I to know that she wasn't seriously ill - and that a dodgy tummy or as the doc nicely gave it a medical title of gastroenteritis and associated lactose intolerance can be expected to take 6 weeks to sort itself out in a toddler.
I've been so conditioned to not go to the gp (and its bloody difficult anyway) that when something happens outside gp hours you are so worried that A&E is all that's left. Looking back I probably should have taken DD to the gp, but calpol was working well enough so I didn't want to waste their time and in the end probably wasted the more expensive A&E time...

As Pharmacists are being pushed as a service (rightly), maybe A&E's should have a 24 hour pharmacy inside them (something like a Boots or a Lloyds) where people who have been triaged could be sent whilst waiting, then given the option to go home if they just needed Piriton or whatever. Then over time people might just use their local pharmacy more.

I once went to A&E for a stomach ulcer. I had gone to the GP, got pain relief. Got an emergency appointment the following day due to the pain relief not working and spending 24 hours wriggling on the bed and yelling with the cramps that were coming. Got stronger pain relief. It was the weekend.

Stronger pain relief didn't work, went to OOH, got stronger pain relief. Didn't work. Went to A&E coz OOH were shut who finally gave me strong enough pain relief to get some of my missed two nights of sleep and cope with just existing. Was told to go back to GP who told me he could have given me the stronger stuff all along and usually does but knew I had 3 young children at home and didn't want me to be 'out of it'.

That is a very good idea, Mrscog!

Thanks SDTG that's probably used me up of good ideas for a few months or so now :D

A bit part of the problem is that doctors (here in Ireland at least) rarely do house calls anymore. If someone in the family becomes ill during the night you have to contact a 24 hour service who might tell you there's several hours wait for a doctor. In that situation, if you have someone in severe pain or they have a bad cough and you're not sure if there breathing sounds a bit funny or something like that, you often feel you have no choice but to bring them to A&E.
If GPs provided a better service, people wouldn't panic and go to A&E for not emergency situations.
That, of course, doesn't excuse idiots going in with broken finger nails or minor complaints that could wait.

I have been to a&e numerous times with ds, never have I been told off for it. I've never called an ambulance though, and always gone through nhs24 who made me an appointment.

3 of those times he'd had a head injury, once he got his finger trapped and pulled the entire finger of skin off and once when he had a serious chest infection and needed urgent antibiotics in the middle of the night, plus various other things.

I have only been once for myself and that was due to a scaphoid fracture which needed an xray.

We don't have a nearby ooh practice, the closest one is 15 miles and since I have no transport after the bus stops at 6 and the hospital only 5 miles away, I will almost certainly be directed to a&e if it needs seen straight away. There is only one ooh practice in the whole place too, which is insane given we have a population of approximately 70k

Reading this thread, I feel quite embarrassed by how often my 2 DDs have attended A&E. But almost every time they have been referred there by either our normal GP or OOH GP. Once I phoned GP to get an appointment and they told us to go straight to A&E without even seeing us. DD1 had fallen and bashed her head one afternoon and then woken up vomiting the next day.

I still have doubts about the one time I chose to go to A&E, which was when DD2 was a toddler. She suddenly started holding her arm awkwardly and not using it. Didn't seem to be in much pain, but refused to bend or move the arm- and couldn't explain what was wrong. We weren't aware of any fall, but as a toddler she did trip regularly so we assumed that she must have hurt it and would need an X-Ray. I'd be interested to know what others would do in that situation. (They did X-Ray it, but it turned out to be celluloid so only needed ABs).

I fell in the street in the main street of a big town, of course and couldn't move. A passerby called an ambulance on his mobile and the depot conversed with me presumable to ascertain how 'ill' or 'injured' I was. Security people who obviously knew what they were doing then heaved me up and helped me into a shop to sit down. I could not move my arm and waited. And waited. The man with the mobile became cross and started to criticise the ambulance service. I told him that there might be something more urgent to deal with. Of course, if that were the case, there should be either (a) more ambulances or (b) fewer people with b all wrong with them.

It took 25 mins for an ambulance to come and mobile man ranted a bit at the two medics. It turned out that they'd had to attend a heart attack somewhere.

It transpired that I had a broken arm. Thank you to those passers by who helped me so much.

BuzzardBirdRoast you can be allergic to different types of grass and tree pollen so it is possible to get hayfever all year round.

Yes some people are silly but some because they cant get an appointment for weeks.

Every time I've called NHS 24, they've made me an appointment for OoH, which is next to our hospital, and I think they've offered me an ambulance to my OoH appointment! I've always said no, because I could afford to get a taxi there, and I know how much pain I can cope with while sitting in a taxi, but they get really worried.

i should count my blessings I have the hospital 15 minute walk from home... although to go to the OOH I have to get a bus for half an hour... which when you are feeling really grim from bacterial tonsilitis and it's a saturday you have to do as the GP the day before said 'it's a virus' when you are 40yo and know what is coming and really need antibiotics...
ahem... but i didn't go to A&E for that

I find it frightening when I hear about people, or read threads here on MN, who have serious, valid health concerns about themselves or a relative (e.g. a non-responsive child). The message that A&E is only for the most serious cases leads them to feel they can't seek medical help. I do wonder how many people are frightened of using A&E inappropriately and so seek help too late, requiring more serious and longer treatment when they eventually access help.

I do wonder how many people are frightened of using A&E inappropriately and so seek help too late, requiring more serious and longer treatment when they eventually access help.

Quite a few, I think. It's true that untreated issues can get worse.