to think that no wonder the NHS A&E depts waiting time is bad, there are so many timewasters.

[CalicoBlue]

I just spent the afternoon (3 hours) in Urgent Care/A&E with DS. I have not been to A&E in over 12 years and was really surprised at all the reasons people were there for. Granted if it had not been the weekend I would have gone to my GP, but my son's condition meant he needed to be seen today.

We were sat very close to the welcome window, so I heard every new person come in. There were so many people there who should not have been. The nurse kept asking people if they had seen their GP, so many said no.

One girl said that she had been there last week had been given antibiotics for a water infection and it had not gone so she wanted to see the doctor again, the nurse said that she should have made an appointment for her doctor and that urgent care was not to come to instead of the GP. There were at least two that had lost prescriptions given by their GP so wanted UC to replace them and would not take no for an answer. It went on an on, another person came in with his father who had an ongoing leg problem, the nurse tried to explain that he needed to see his GP, but he did not have one as he was on holiday and wanted to get his leg sorted before he went home again, they did tell him that they would not see him and he would not get the operation he said he wanted on the NHS.

I estimated that at least one third of the people coming there could have been seen by their GP. There were lots who did need to be seen, and lots of sick kids, but they had to wait so long. I felt quite guilty for being and taking up the doctors time.

YABU with my GP it takes at least 2 weeks to make an appointment!!! 2 weeks!!! There's no walk-in centre or anything I can go to either. I'm sure many people wouldn't go to A & E if they had another alternative. But in many cases they don't. A lot of things can't wait 2 weeks or even 3 days even if they're not urgent on the face of it.

Fucking ipad. The research. Wtf rother search?

Very true mariamin. I actually recorded the end a recent croup attack ds had to show his consultant him when he is bad - the consultant told me I should have taken him to a and e but as compared to what he normally needs a and e for croup I didn't think it was that bad. Will think twice next time and will be more likely to go for moderate attacks

I had the UTI thing too, walked in with belly ache and shaking (my dad drove me there) and got called through straight away.

Cue the tutting from the lady with a poorly leg.

That stopped when I projectile vomited on her.

If she hadn't have tutted I would not have been looking in that direction!

Seven days on a ward with IV antibiotics and a catheter, sent home with a two week supply of oral antibiotics.

To be fair I probably looked like a teenager with a hangover but my days, I was much more poorly than even my Dad thought.

QOD I don't think that was a stupid reason to go, paracetamol is really easy to OD on and I don't think I would have taken the chance with a tiny baby.

Well, blame Dishface and Gideon for closing the walk in centres.

m.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24852768

We had the need to consider going to our minor injuries today possible scratched cornea. First time we have needed to and discovered its only open Mon-Fri 9-4:30! In the end we opted for pharmacy and advice and wait and see. Opening times are not going to help A&E at all.

gunpowder

I kind of agree with you about people being too willing to go straight to a&e but the main issue is that the system itself is broke, e.g. no-one being able to get appointments. lack of ooh provision, etc

my dilemma
DS (18 months) has an ear infection, has done 5 days of week long course of anti biotics, I'm not sure how the infection is doing but the pain has certainly got worse.
Lots of crying, screaming at being touched, rolling around on the floor, screwing up face & toes in pain, screaming oww. I literally cannot comfort him. neither can my mum who is a peads nurse or mil who raised 5 kids, distractions dont work, chocolate and treats cannot distract from the pain even for a second. Calpol doesn't seem to touch the pain.

i have been unable to get through to ooh, if you were an adult in this much pain you would go to a & e wouldnt you??

I went to A&E last week had severe cheat pains 36 weeks pregnant and has fallen on my tummy. I only has to wait a few mins and got rushed in que someone behind me grumbling behind me who id over heard had come in because of a runny tummy... Yanbu

We are fortunate here.

If you think you need to be seen on the same day at the GP you ask for a same day appointment and a nurse will call you back to triage your call. If it is urgent they book you a same day appointment. If you need a non urgent appointment you can usually be seen within 48 hours by the next available GP or if you choose to wait to see your own GP you might have to wait for up to 2 weeks.

When you go to A&E you are met at the door by a nurse who asks a few brief questions to triage you. You are then either sent to a minor injuries waiting area, a more urgent area or (as often happens to DD) sent straight through for immediate treatment.

Jigsaw if you can't get through to 111, and assuming that he is dosed up on calpol and brufen I would take him to a and e. Hope he is better soon

Here here to all the comments.
I cannot believe that our gp system is so outdated. We live in a 24 hr society- I myself work shift work- why can't our doctors surgeries? I see no reason why we cannot do this.
That's why ppl end up in a & é - exactly as lady sibyl wrote.

All appointments at are doctors are treated as urgent turn up and wait style. I got there 10mins before opening and was person 28 in the queue and had to wait 3 hours with a 5 month old with eczema.

i made thread like this a few weeks back. alot of people seemed to say they have called 1111 and they get adviced to go to the hosptial. so sometimes its not the choice of the person who is ill its what they have been adviced. but of course you get the people that just turn up as well and i do think there are alot of time wasters.

i wonder what people know they should not be there but think they will get a better service seen to faster so thats why they go.... or if people think they genraly have a good reason to be there.

surely out of hours gp service is more appropriate for severe uti than a&e. I'm fact my 13 y old recently had a telephone appointment with gp for uti. he just prescribed without even needing to see her
(we did drop off a sample when we collected it)

I agree with Sirzy. Having an asthmatic child and being asthmatic myself we would be flat broke in a year. It's bad enough we have to pay for our life saving treatment (inhalers) when others get their medication prescription charge exempt but that's another argument for another thread!

mariamin, the idea that people would die as a result of health service charges. is there any evidence for this? It should be possible to verify with data from other countries who do charge e.g. republic of Ireland. I rather doubt it myself.

Jigsaw - do you have an out of hours emergency GP service you can ring? 111 will transfer you through if needs be, however you know your DC if you're not happy trust your instincts and go to a&e x

Ok at my doctor's you get on the phone at 8.30am using homeline and mobile at the same time trying to get through. If you don't manage to get through by about 8.37 all the appts are gone and you go through the same thing day after day. It is a joke . If you try and explain to the receptionist that you really need to see a doctor because of x,y,x she tells you if it is that urgent go to A&E.
It needs fixing.
I pay privately for optician, dentist, private healthcare. GPs will go the same way I'm sure. Dh's ex employer had a company GP, that will become the norm.

MajesticWhine - You really think people in other countries don't die because they can not afford to pay for healthcare? We already have people who don't get all their medication as thy can't afford the prescription charge.

Prescription pre payment certificate isn't widely publicised enough

If you need 2 or more monthly prescriptions it's more than worth it at just over £10 a month

You have to have the money to pay for that in the first place.

£10 a month is better than £8 per item. Breaks down to 33p per day per month

I'm lucky that my GP surgery is really good and easy to get a same day appointment as long as you ring first thing. If you ring later in the day and they can't fit you in a dr will often ring to advise.

However, I've got a very adventurous and fearless son - we've had to take him to A&E. First time, he got hold of a razor (awful, felt guilty for ages - I had left it on the sink - high up but visible and somehow he got it down and slashed his lip with it). He bled like a stuck pig - called 111, they said straight to A&E, by the time we were seen you could barely see it. We were very embarassed and desperate to leave, but once we had been triaged they said we "ought" to stay and see the dr.

Second time, also his lip, but tripped and put his tooth through just under the lipline. Again rang for advice, said we needed to take him, A&E said he needed to see a plastic surgeon just in case, waited for 5 hours and then - again as everything looked fine - we left against medical advice (they wrote it in big letters on the discharge!)

Last time he got hold of some melatonin tablets, rang dr, they checked it out and said A&E, he was unresponsive in the taxi and I was panicking. By the time we saw the dr he was racing round the waiting room. Then I got a letter from the GP pracitice saying I'd misued A&E and was I aware of other options. I took the letter into the practice manager and explained very nicely that I had gone on the advice of their duty GP...

I've also got a SIL with severe bi-polar effective disorder. When she needs help over weekends the OOH MH service is so stretched that the only advice they can give us is to phone the police and they'll call an ambulance. It's a ridiculous waste of so many services, and having her in a manic cycle in A&E is very upsetting and stressful for her and other patients. She'll make inappropriate comments, invade people's personal space and cycle through behaviours very loudly, so one minute sobbing, the next laughing manically, the next sitting on some poor random bloke's knee and flirting. We can't always take her, the police just dump and run, so she's not easy for the staff to deal with.

A combination A&E, minor injuries and GP sounds ideal, and I'm surprised there isn't that set up in more places. We certainly don't have it near us but surely it's an incredibly sensible use of resources.

I do wonder about the short sighted way everything is tackled in this country. Surely it's far more expensive ultimately to overload A&E than to fund core services. Why isn't that taken into account?