To be really sick of various posters advising others not to use A&E?

[QuestionableMouse]

Seen it so much lately. A poster with concerning symptoms will post and there'll be a rush of posters telling them not to use A&E because it's "for emergencies only"

This is when the NHS advises using A&E.

People advising others not to go is going to end up killing someone and I'm genuinely getting sick of seeing it. Part of me wishes MN would ban these threads.

My chemist always seems to have long queues. It would have to be very basic things I would ask about as they have zero time.

Taxi is fine if you have a nice neat injury that isn't at all messy.

If your body is trying to evacuate itself at either end or you're bleeding though - you know, actual emergencies - good luck finding a taxi to take you or getting yourself to public transport. And favours which are easy to ask for in the daylight hours are suddenly really big asks between 11PM-6AM when people may not even have phone sound turned on.

So yeah, they might find a way of getting there themselves. They might wait in agonising pain for a few hours until they can get hold of someone with a car. Or they might try driving themselves out of pure desperation and hope they don't crash on the way.

Because pain screws up your head and makes it hard to make good judgement calls. And a variety of other things can mess up your brain and again makes it difficult to make good decisions so you need someone else to bounce off.

I know when I'm feeling really really bad I get overwhelmed easily, so the list of "Should I go to hospital? I mean I probably should but that means calling someone for the kids and I don't know who to call and I'm scared and who will tell work tomorrow and the cats have no-one to feed them and I don't think I can get dressed" can get so big that I can't deal with it so I want to panic and stay put. I'm lucky enough to have good friends who will make me call in emergencies and then talk me gently through the overwhelming list of Stuff That Needs To Happen. Everyone should have that kind of friend but sadly some people don't.

Shout out to a local - and yes I can confirm that North East does not triage ambulance first.

What you're missing here is that in some areas 111 can be really really crap. Like, really crap.

Calling 111 because you know you're having a gallstone attack and just want a walk in appointment for decent painkillers and having them insist it counts as chest pain and a potential heart attack and you're getting an ambulance is no fun. Having the ambulance you begged them not to send turn up and basically tell you off for wasting their time because "it can be a long time until you get gallstones out so you need to learn to live with it" is less fun. When you realise 12 hours later that oh shit, this is actually really really bad and maybe you do need an ambulance now after all guess how reluctant you are to call without checking with someone first...

They really need to add severe abdominal pain and sepsis to that list.

@sarahc336 because some people think something may go down on it's own etc.

Recently someone my DP knows had a pain in his arm, assumed he pulled it from lifting a heavy box at work.
Asked to be taken home as he walked in that day. They found him collapsed and he is now blind. He actually had a stroke.

He's been in hospital for months.

I'll always say to someone if they feel they need to be seen in A&E just go. I'm sure A&E will asses and tell the person if they need to be there or not.

Yep.

And whilst someone was insisting diarrhoea is not a medical emergency.. I mean it can be. Sure, a little bit of D&V probably isn't but severe pain accompanied by severe D and/or V can be a sign that your appendix is about to go or already popped in which case hours can make a difference.

And people who ignore slowly worsening symptoms because they can't get an appointment and then finally it hits critical and they wind up in A&E... yes some are time-wasters. And some, unfortunately, are about to get their terminal cancer diagnosis. A devastating amount of people get that in A&E because A&E is where you wind up when it can't be ignored any more.

Have you used 111? I've never found it to be helpful unfortunately.

I have. Twenty years ago it was actually helpful (correctly caught what I thought was bad food poisoning but was actually a rupturing appendix and sent me to hospital). Now it’s… variable. Helpful with things with a very clear cause (small child nearly knocked a tooth out bouncing on a bed and needs an emergency dentist, other small child fell on his face and needs a couple of stitches. Less helpful when you roll onto a script and activate what they need to say, such as when they got down my gallbladder attack as chest pain.

It’s very foolish to ask for health advice on a site like this.

Many times I’m amazed at the incredible confidence of posters who offer advice on anything from septic shock to subarachnoid haemorrhage without having any ounce of medical knowledge. So many know-it-alls.

Flat-out wrong advice on medication is also common.

No actual well-trained ethical health care
professional (from an evidence-based discipline…….) is offering advice online to someone whose history they don’t know and whom they can’t examine,