raging with this doctor!!

[Brokentopieces]

dd aged 6 had an accident about 40 mins ago. She cut her leg on a jug which broke in the bath. I quickly rang my dad, threw some clothes on her and my dad drove us to the doctors because I had to hold her on my knee as she as still bleeding, crying etc. So we got to the doctors and there was a woman coming out as we went in, dd was wrapped in a blanket and towel with blood coming through. when I got to reception the nurse said the doctor had just left and wouldn't be back so I would have to wait until the out of hours service for the area opened in 30 mins, she looked at her leg and said he would probably need stiches, so i'm now waiting for out of hours to open but I could waiting a couple of hours to be seen. Luckily the bleeding has stopped and dd is watching tv happily but I am fuming.
This doctor is filling in for the local doctor who is on holidays, i'm just shocked she would walk past a child she could see was hurt, bleeding etc.

How on earth can you say the local doctor would have waited?! You don't know the situation! The doctor could have had an urgent appt at the nursing home... Maybe someone was dying and needed palliative pain relief.. So many possibilities that would be more urgent than your daughters cut which a nurse could see could wait. You can't see past yourself! If a doctor should have stopped everything for your situation then the situation should have been taken straight to ed/ ambulance called if ed too far.

Another one here recommending a BLS & First aid course - to everyone. I feel so much better knowing that I know exactly how to use the AED that I can see from the window of my flat should I ever have the need, and how to deal with each stage of the process, and how to deal with cuts like this in order to minimise the risks to life and future health.

Key suggestion: the child should quite possibly not have been on the OP's knee in the car, she should possibly have been lying down with her leg up on the OP's lap/held by the OP, while the OP applied pressure to the wound.

Me too Still
2 hours if you have severed an artery - unbelievable . yes I know the OPs DD didn't sever an artery

Stillwish, I wasn't trying to be competitive, I'm just saying, in less populated areas, things are done a bit differently. In the country, GPs stich wounds (really well) and occasionally throw sick kids in the back of their cars to get them the help they need.

Everyone who has anything to do with children - whether they are parent, an uncle, aunt, grandparent should learn basic first aid and have a simple first aid kit in their house.

IMO anything less is irresponsible.

It is usually possible to stop the bleeding, wash and dress the cut, assess the injury and proceed in an orderly fashion. Unless the child was playing with a saw or an axe or something, it is very unlikely that even an injury that subsequently needed a couple of stitches would be life threatening.

A glass jug in the bath sounds a bit risky TBH.

Hope your DD is ok now OP.

Thinking about this.. ..are you lot absolutely sure about this stuff ? What about air ambulances, like they have in other inaccessible areas like the alps and Australia.

The response times are still the same elsewhere, but the 8 minutes is for very specific situations. That doesn't change the fact that if they're 25 mins away or there isn't one, there's not much they can do

There's maybe 2 ambulances to cover 5500 square miles and 2500 calls a day - plus limited by weather and night time

I think the OP has been given a hard time here. She was cross because she was left with no Dr when the practise was open for another 30 minutes. That is not good practice, there should have been a Dr on duty. I used to be a vet nurse and there always had to be a vet on duty during opening times, after which the OOH service took over. She stated in her OP that the bleeding had stopped and DD was happily watching TV.

The better course of action would have been to go to a walk in minor injuries but her nearest A&E was an hours drive away. I think i would have felt the same as the OP although her anger is possibly missplaced. Why not be posting on here? Her DD's bleeding has stopped, so not a life threatening injury otherwise im pretty sure an ambulance would have been called.

Maybe a first aid course would be good OP, but I have been on a first aid course and that didn't stop me from going into panic mode when DD nearly bit her tongue off.

I find the lack of responsibility shown in the ops posts quite shocking. #clutchespearls.
No responsibilty for glass in the bathroom, no responsibility for not knowing what to do with a cut, no responsibilty for not strapping her child in the car (I presume that would have been someone else's fault had you crashed), no responsibilty for going to the wrong place. Oh no, raging at the doctor who was (presumably) rushing out to an emergency and for a nurse wig checked and pointed you in the right direction.

Competitive about what ? I am really struggling to comprehend that a 1st world country and EU member state can't transfer critically unwell patients to hospital in a timely fashion. But I freely admit to being a born and bred Londoner. Both my dcs were born and I work in a London teaching hospital so as I said my view point is scewd (sp) by that.

Too many calls, not enough ambulances. It happens all over the country including london

Sister Juliene, quite easily, they have opening times that allow for home visits. I would have thought especially important in an out of the way community.

I have never seen a child with suspected meningitis driven to A&E by a GP. They call an ambulance and the paramedics call ahead so we have the resus bay ready with drugs and fluids ready to go. It really is a situation where every minute counts.

Maybe it depends where you live, my old GP would have dealt with it. Even if he had been off on calls he would have stopped just to make sure it was safe to leave it, afterall if you can see blood coming through the towel you don't know what is going on under the towel.

I was in the surgery one day when a young single mum was clearly at the end of her tether. GP took the baby off her, said she was going off duty so would look after the baby so mum could go home and have a sleep. I bet not many GPs do that, my current surgery would go into shock at the idea.

I've just checked and the air ambulance (singular) is based in Athlone and would take 50 minutes to get here but the transfer from here to the big hospital would then only take 7 minutes. However, the website reassuringly states that it usually takes that long to cut someone out of a car, so they wouldn't be waiting too long.

If they ring for an ambulance though, and it's rural, the crew are on a cardiac arrest. Do you wait for them or set off?

LEM, the idea of BLS/First aid courses is that you go over it enough times that you are able to do better than a person with absolutely no clue, even when in a blind panic. No-one doubts that it's difficult to deal with your own child suffering a serious injury (or just an injury involving a seemingly large amount of blood).

Just thinking about it, why didn't the nurse dress it?

No of course it wouldn't, but it was effectively closed wasn't it - there was no dr on duty. The Dr should not have left until the time when "surgery" finished. Had it been half an hour later the OP would have either made an appointment for OOH or got taken to A&E, instead she went to the place where she thought she would get the fastest medical attention. This surgery left a window of time where people were unable to get to see a Dr which imo is unacceptable. This is aside from the fact that the OP probably should have gone to A&E in the first instance, there may well have been other patients who needed to be seen and will now have to go to A&E when a Dr's visit would have sufficed.

Smilla - that is a fair point. :)

If the OP's DD had severed an artery, she'd have bled put in about 5-10 minutes, so it's unlikely either doctor or ambulance wold have been able to help.

*bled out