to think that A and E / Walk In Clinic is for acute illnesses and injury ?

[LIZS]

Just after lunch dd crushed her fingers in the door frame of our french doors as she closed it. Cue screams of pain and 3 misshapen fingers. Decide to go to the hospital Walk In rather than gp as may need an xray. Duly register and get triaged and join another child in the children's waiting room, boy aged about 13, with his Dad. No obvious symptoms and he kept asking if they could come back another day which I thought was odd.

Eventually a Nurse Practitioner comes along and calls them , by which time we've waited over an hour and half and them longer. Turns out the boy had hurt his knee over 2 months ago, not got any treatment at the time, was not currently in pain or limping but it was a bit bigger than the other one. Nurse Practitioner had a brief look as the range of movement then gave them fairly short shrift and suggested they got a gp referral direct to Orthopaedics instead, quite rightly imho.

Fortunately dd got seen straight afterwards (although the nurse was fairly short with us possibly exasperated by them) so at least it didn't delay us signifcantly. She doesn't seem to have broken anything just very bruised and swollen

Aah Moondog, do you want the funnies or the shockers???!!!

Both please. {grin]

I suppose the knee may ahve started swelling there and then? Sometimes it is dealyed, could even be childhood arthritis 9both my sisters have that in their knees)

Sunds more like a miserable nurse than inappropriate walk in, they're forever suggesting waslk in for contraception, advice etc on health programmes, thats suppsoed to be the point- issues come when they share services with A&E and nigh on become merged for resources etc

tbh I wonder if the department is misnamed as it is basically part of A and E not a clinic in its own right. The hospital is well out of town so you have to make a trek there. It sounds like many others are based more locally so can offer drop-in care for acute and inconvenient conditions, not requiring hospital facilities, during regular surgery hours.

our local urgent care centre is kind of odd really- they encourage you to go in with anything as it needs to prove to the local PCT that it is needed or else it will close.

I can kind of see the logic behind this, as it is a good resource- but going because your child has a snotty nose seems odd to me- but they welcome it as its another 'foot' through the door

I do sometimes wonder how they triage patients. I have had to take DS3 to A&E twice recently because of unexplained severe stomach pains. Each time, there has been a notice up stating that at busy times they will priorities chest and abdomen pains. On the first occasion, we were taken straight in and dealt with very efficiently.

On the second occasion, with DS3 sometimes doubled over in pain, we were forced to wait 2 hours whilst they dealt with toe injuries, etc. DS3 is 9 years old. That was not acceptable.

click here

Last time DS2 was in A&E was after a school rugby match where someone had managed to tread on him just above his eye. He was triaged within 2 hours - presumably to assess whether he had an eye injury or merely a bad cut/bruise, but was not cleaned up (reminder - next time I shall bring my own first aid kit). After five hours he saw a doctor who decided he needed stitches, but there was no room in the paediatric part of A&E to do this (he was assessed in the corridor). When I arrived there straight from work I had to wait at reception behind a gormless couple who wanted treatment because the woman had a headache and they weren't registered with a GP and didn't have any paracetemol. A&E suffers from a combination of massive underfunding/understaffing and work overload.

Sorry Moondog, only just got on the puter, you'd better make a fresh cuppa!

I loved working in A&E but it was incredibly frustrating. People who couldn't be arsed to wait a day or two to see a GP would come to us with completely non A&E problems. I appreciate that it can be hard to get a GP appointment (I now work for a GP surgery!) but if you insist then they can't refuse you. Alternatively turn up at the surgery and tell the receptionist that you are going to sit there till someone sees you (but avoid doing this between about 12 and 3 as the GP is usually out on their home and hospital visits).

Anyway here are some I have had on my shifts:

The bloke that had been hoovering naked and got the hoover nozzle stuck on his willy.

The bloke that had been decorating naked, fallen backwards off his ladder and got the spout from the teapot stuck up his bum.

The lady that asked us to help get her husband out of the car as she couldn't wake him up to get him out. He was dead on the back seat . She hadn't called an ambulance when he collapsed at home as she didn't want to bother them.

The bloke whose boyfriend has inserted a Haze Mushroom air freshener up his bum which then needed surgical removal.

I'm sure I'll think of some more later!

lol
Loads of suspicious anal issues then.
Other nurses have told me lots of these.Shame about the old fella though.

oh SIDGE do please add some more...

Oh come on, don't laugh at the injured people. I mean who amongst us hasn't at one time or another accidentally fallen on a pointy object and got it stuck in an orafice? There ought to be more warnings on pointy objects a la McDonalds.

I'm also a hospital worker, and we were once called upon to assist a man who'd been gardening naked () and fallen on a fairly sizeable flowerpot, which had, of course, become entirely impacted in his rectum.

And don't even get me going on how many varieties of vegetable we've extracted from bottoms too.

Um, yes, I agree w/OP.

I've gone to A&E when it's been a real problem and not other times. In fact I was the type that had to be frog-marched there by GP because I didn't want to go.

ex H slipped on ice, split his head open on a decorative brickwork window frame on a town centre building and still insisted it was 'no big deal' when he regained consciousness and found out a doctor walking along to work who saw him slip phoned 999 for an ambulance.

He had a fractured skull and took 39 stitches to close the cut! .

Lived with a trauma doctor for 2 years and a neurosurgeon for nigh on a year.

It no longer shocks me what people put up their rectums and anuses.

Including prisoners' girlfriends who have managed to fit firearms in their back passages to smuggle to their partners.

It was when they went to extract them that they wound up at 'DG' - Denver General. County. Now known ad DHSC.

'Honey, how was your shift?'

'You'll never believe what this gal got stuck up her butt!'

Um, wait, don't tell me where you hands have been, babe, I'd rather not know.

I had to take ds to A&E recently as he broke his arm. We waited 3 hours. There were all sorts there. Junkies who's kids had drunk their methadone (well - two to be precise), an older child with a rash that looked alergic rather than indicative of meningitis, children with bloody head injuries (several) etc etc. I noticed that there were quite a few children there whose parents did not speak much English and I suppose it is more reassuring to get treatment as fast as possible. I don't blame them. Everyone wants to get quick treatment for their child. Paradoxically I had been too blase and thought my son's injury was a sprain so it went undetected for a week.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will insert into themselves in the pursuit of pleasure! Any A&E dr or nurse will have many stories of people that need foreign objects removing. And the hoover-on-the-willy thing is pretty universal, I think most departments get that through the door quite regularly.

Sorry for the thread hijack - regarding the OP I think the lad with the knee problem shouldn't have gone to a walk-in clinic, but I think half the problem is that the NHS has so many different areas of treatment now people do get confused. GP? A&E? Walk in centre? NHS direct? Pharmacy? People aren't clued up as to how they differ and what needs to be seen where, so just pitch up where they think they ought to go and where they will be seen quickest (well quickest in their perception, not necessarily quickest.)

IME gross misuse of services leads to many of the problems. You can't get an appointment with a GP often because people are making appointments for coughs and colds that can be dealt with with a couple of paracetamol and a hot drink. I see patients that only need a plaster on their finger, yet they have made an urgent appointment with me. I appreciate if you don't know how serious an injury is you want to get it checked but common sense seems sadly lacking in a lot of patients.

Some other memorable ones from my time in A&E are:

The 2 year old who had managed to "accidentally" put a pitchfork through his foot and whose parents had to be accompanied in to A&E by the police as they had a history of beating up A&E staff.

The woman who had left a tampon in since her last period and couldn't work out why she couldn't get a new one in at the start of this period - the smell was unbelievable.

Ambulance men getting called out to people who couldn't be arsed waiting for a taxi and calling 999 claiming hypothermia.

Sorry, went on a bit there, I get a bit carried away about my job!