To think people take their DC to the doctor too often?

[MrsTawdry]

AIBU? So many people I know are always off to the docs with their DC. "Oh he's been coughing and sneezing for the last two days"

Or "Oh she's not eating her dinner and sleeping badly..." that one was about a teething toddler by the way.

I didn't even take my DDs when they had Chicken Pox!

Was that bad of me? I just gave them some over the counter medicine and applied calamine and some other stuff the chemist gave me for the bath.

Should I have taken them? Am I lax?

The DC I'm talking about don't have impaired immunes or asthma or anything...

My step-brother would have died as a baby if his mother hadn't fought the receptionist to get an appointment when he had kidney failure. Don't you know "all babies cry"?

While he may have grown up to become a twat, he deserved the chance great ormand street gave him over 40 years ago.

Sorry if his existence upsets you OP.

That's probably me you're talking abut but I am paranoid and anxious that something will happen to DD3 for some reason.

I always say to the doctor 'I know you think I am neurotic' and he always says he'd rather see me and put my mind at rest than me worry over whether he thinks I am neurotic and not take DD and DD be really poorly.

YABVVVU. I was about to comment much further with our experiences but I saw the OP's name and remembered they are usually behind snarky, inflammatory comments, so I'm not feeding it.

Landrover so sorry for your sad loss.

Ive been a few times with DD now nearly 3.
At 6wk check
i worried that she had squint so we were referred she now has glasses (thought i was wasting time)
She had uneven fat band on 1 leg so possible hip issues referred for scan all fine.

At under a yr she was still pooping like 8 times a day, which did seem excessive plus, i thought allergy due to other unsettled behaviour - told fine just keep bf
A few months later possible reflux and tried gaviscon, no change.
I eventually worked out it was a soya allergy.
Possible ear infection as would cry whenever put head down - no
Rash on back - CP no, must have been some other virus.
Now a query about flat patch on head from when 11m as i was worries it related to eyesight changes, no but they could see why i was concerned.

1 visit to a&e for eating wild mushrooms- watched her for a few hours (advised to go by 111).
And a call to 111 re her eating soap.

She has mostly been very healthy (ebf to 6m and on to 14m) lots of colds and some D&v so apart from a horrible first 11m where she wouldnt lie down almost at all.
Its so hard to distinguish what wrong with a toddler down what with colic, reflux, teething, allergies.
We also had some awful nappy rash - nipple cream works best.
It is sometimes hard to trust drs, after all some things are rare.

I am a bit confused about people visiting wherever for standard d&v.

That's what doctors are for. Stick your beak back in and allow parents to check whether their kids are sick - great for everyone / or really sick and in need of urgent medical attention. I am personally incredibly relieved that I didn't listen to your sort when my small child had pneumonia and as a tiny baby septicaemia or she would be dead

I take DS often. He has very complex medical issues that aren't public knowledge. Not all children might be as healthy as yours

I am a nurse , so when it comes to my own children I am very much of the paracetamol , ibuprofen , fluids and rest type of parenting . However I have lots ( well a bit ) of knowledge and understanding of how illness works and what helps . I realise that most things that cause illness in children are virus related and so are untreatable in the main by modern medicine , other than the things that I would ordinarily do to alleviate the symptoms .
BUT and this really is a big but , within my circle of friends , parents have been fobbed off or assumed to be slightly hysterical when in actual fact their child was seriously ill . This has resulted in hospital admissions which could have been avoided if the parent had been listened to in the first place .

The main thing though is that all human beings are different , what works for my children may not work for others, especially those who have underlying conditions . I imagine that most GP's would rather see 1000 possibly over anxious parents than lose 1 child to a preventable cause .

landrover

I see lots of the parents you have described and have also worked on a 111 type service assessing symptoms and giving advice and forwarding on to other care. Very few parents set out to block appointments from other more worthwhile patients. Parents come into parenting from many different backgrounds and life experiences and this shapes how parents respond to events such a childhood illness. It is never wrong to seek help if you are concerned, I do spend a lot of time exploring coping strategies with parents, educating parents on how to care for sick dc and exploring red flag symptoms. This part of my job, I enjoy doing this.

The very tiny minority who attend multiple times with dc with very minor reasons generally still have a need but it is usually the parent who has a need.

I have several friends whose ill children were fobbed off for months. They had cancer. Some of them are now dead and their parents will always wonder if they had been listened to at the outset, would their child still be alive?

It was not often we took our children to the doctor, it's nothing to be smug about. They were relatively healthy.

Up until our eldest developed a rare and aggressive form of leukaemia and was dead less than 8 months later.

I think when it comes to children, most Doctors would rather risk having their time wasted 3 times a day, than risk a child getting sicker or worse.
When I took DD in with the nappy rash, the Dr I saw was lovely, I went in feeling ridiculous and like I was wasting time. I was reassured that I definitely did the right thing bringing her in... She needed something stronger.

We are not all paranoid timewasters. We do know our children. I know when my children are poorly, I know when they are a tiny bit poorly, and when they are very poorly and you can be damn sure I will make use of our free NHS care if and when I need to.
If you don't need to then bully for you, congratulations on having perfectly healthy children, some of us aren't so lucky

for those who have lost children

YANBU!

Some people , yes. Completely agree.
Colds , coughs, scraped knees.
And don't start me on unnecessary visits to A £ E

Thanks Elmer and all the other posters xxx It means a lot, even after all these years, people still care and thats lovely xxx

I'll hold my hands up and admit I've not read the whole thread so apologies for that! However, many of the schools in my area will class any absence for illness as an unauthorised absence unless you have a note from the doctor which compels many parents to see the doctor for things that previously would have meant using a bit of common sense and a couple of days at home with Calpol.

Personally I refuse to subscribe to this and use my own judgement as to whether my child is well enough for school - if they have upset tummies for example I will keep them off ( the schools own policy says this actually!) and I won't take them to the doctors and therefore waste an appointment slot to get a note confirming this!

Of course the other side of this is the parents - mainly pfb - who over react. My youngest son is admitted to hospital a lot because of a long term condition and I see so many parents on the ward with children with things that I would have treated at home with tlc and judicious Calpol and this can delay treatment for children who really need it. However these parents get sent to the ward for assessment as they are paranoid and panicky and the GPs don't want to deal with them. They then get sent home with the recommendation that they employ tlc and Calpol and by that time have delayed treatment for children who actually flaming need it!!

Ahhh, I don't know.

I once took my pfb when she was a few weeks old because she slept most of the day without crying She was usually awake a lot, and crying, so I assumed she was lethargic and ill The GP was lovely to be fair, and did check her over well for me.

Just a few weeks ago, my third child, who is 3, cried everytime I lay her down for bed, she said her neck was sore and was very distressed. Her temp was 39. I ended up ringing out of hours and getting her seen, to be told she had a minor ear infection - she did get an antibiotic and it was a Friday eve, so perhaps I did do the right thing, I don't know. However in my head I was thinking sore neck, symptom of meningitis.

It is hard to know sometimes.

I know people who take their children just so they get a script for things like paracetamol etc that they could buy over the counter. That way they get it free.
I think I have been brought up not to go at the slightest thing so others may seem to go for more because I leave it ages for serious things like dislocated joints! I dislike it when ppl give medicines for no good reason....like they are grizzly so give them some paracetamol; or using cough medicines when it is completely pointless.

I didn't even know until recently a Dr can prescribe calpol!
Like Whippy33, I hate it when people use medicines when it is not necessary. Calpol for minor things. If for nothing else but the fact that continued use builds up a tolerance, meaning that when it is really needed, it doesn't have the effect it should.
I rarely take any painkillers, and I only give them to the kids when they really need them. I've had to throw away bottles of calpol that are out of date, where I've not used a lot of it. No point in me buying the big bottles they sell.

As Idefix says, parents bring their own life experience to parenting their own DCs.

I panicked the other morning when ds1 was in agony with stomach pain on his right side. He'd had pain there the previous night. I had peritonitis as a child and worried it was his appendix.

It's the same in all areas of parenting. You get parents on here who had a shitty time in state education who want different for their own dc, even if the likelihood is it won't be as bad for them. You get Steiner educated parents who don't want the same for their dcs-the list goes on.

My own DF died from a rare cancer when I was a child. The entire process of his illness and my grief warped me utterly and it wasn't until a breakdown and lots of therapy in my early 30s that I realised how odd my perception of illness was.

Anyway, here's your badge OP for impeccable judgement. YABU too btw.

And to the parents on here who have lost their children - I'm so, so sorry.

I know people who take their children just so they get a script for things like paracetamol etc that they could buy over the counter. That way they get it free.

Hooray for NHS Scotland! You tell the chemist you need children's paracetamol they hand you a bottle. Mind you, it is not a brand name bottle, and evidently doesnt taste as nice as the brand name, at least my ds opinion. Seems he would rather continue feeling miserable than take it! He may outgrow the dosage before we empty the bottle.

we had to register with the chemist, i suppose so they can ensure people dont abuse the system somehow, but that was just filling out a firm with name address and dr surgery.

My sympathies to those who have lost children.

DH used to be more prone to wanting to take the DC to the GP than me. He comes from North Africa and two of his siblings died in childhood so his perception of risk is different.

DS2 had a lot of GP visits when he was young for chronic tonsillitis, since his tonsillectomy he hasn't been for years. I did badger the Dr when DS1 was about 7 months because I was convinced it wasn't just a virus, he ended up in hospital for several nights.

I hate the Friday afternoon toss up - DS is ill, but on any other day I wouldn't take him to the GP, but if I don't get in on Friday and it gets worse over the weekend it's really hard to get to out of hours now, and you spend ages in A&E for something that A&E shouldn't be used for.

So I err on the side of caution and every time I've done this the GP agreed with me coming in and gave me a precautionary prescription which I only fill if he gets worse - and 'worse' is usually quite specific list of symptoms. 2 out of 3 times I haven't needed to fill the prescription - but I've been so grateful those 1 in 3 times that I have had the prescription to fill quickly when it has got worse.

Probably, you can't possibly know all the symptoms and what has lead to them being in the hospital. When my ds was last in a@e he looked fine apart from a small bruise on his face and was playing quite merrily. Turned out he had cellulitis and narrowly escaped eye surgery. Looks can be deceiving.

Yanbu. I think the exception is with babies, who are difficult to diagnose and very fragile. However a normally healthy child who has a cough/cold/chicken pox does not need a GP appointment. I know some parents who go to the gp for any minor ailment, demand unnecessary antibiotics etc, then moan about the nhs and difficulties in getting gp appointments

Yanbu my best friend is a gp, she gets sick of parents bringing in children with colds, of course she doesn't tell them this.

You won't get much support here as s people will go on about a few anidoctals.