To suspect that the usual mumsnet attitude to a&e is going to end up dangerous if there’s a strep outbreak

[Swg]

Because we’ve all seen it a million times and know how it goes don’t we? Someone is going to show up anxious about their child who has a high temperature and sore throat and be told “that’s not an emergency don’t go to A&E”.

Call 111 (which will have a wait time of over an hour to get through and then may well insist on sending an ambulance no matter what causing more guilt)

Go to urgent care (if you have one)

Go and see your GP (it might take a month for an appointment but hey)

Lambast the poster for asking on here (because they’re not sure whether they have health anxiety and they’re worried about taking a sick child to sit 12 hours in a&e and don’t have childcare for their other kids)

Tell the poster that if they’re not prepared to sit forever in a&e their kid is clearly not that sick (or in a reverse, say that people who can survive sitting 40 hours in A&E are clearly not sick enough to be there)

Do anything at all other than admit the health service is broken and that is no one individuals fault.

AIBU to suggest mumsnet comes up with a blanket response to these threads now before someone dies of bad advice?

Mumsnet is not NHS or Public Health. People will say stupid stuff on here no matter what messages are pinned to the top of the forum.

I mean. There are two topics already on Strep A at the top of the forum…you could have posted your public health announcement in there, but you just had to have your own thread didn’t you @Swg ?

YABU.

If your kid dies because you asked on fucking MUMSNET whether to go to hospital or not, and worse, you actually listened....how is it anyone's fault but your own?

Don’t take medical advice off random people on the internet who have no qualifications, or any way of proving their qualifications to you is generally a good rule.

Bloody hell @FatimaHatima, that's harsh.

No, because it's not up to Mumsnet.

Actually @FatimaHatima does have a point!

Peoples attitudes to those symptoms will change with the strep A situation becoming more apparent, same as it did with covid

before someone dies of bad advice?

anyone who takes advice from an anonymous internet forum instead of advice from proper channels should be given a Darwin Award

Yep. I mean I have such a big tendency to start threads. Start them daily in fact. Desperate to be internet famous.

Or you know, I start maybe one in six months if that and I’m not enough of a dick as to sideline someone’s clear health anxiety into a policy discussion. Very sorry if your eyes had to do a whole two seconds extra work on another thread though. I’ll try harder shall I?

It proper does my head in on here when posters get slagged off for leaving an and e waiting rooms. There’s always a chorus of ‘well you clearly weren’t sick enough to be there if you were well enough to leave’. Sometimes it’s just unbearable sitting for hours on end on a metal chair in a boiling waiting room with those horrible lights that give me migraines. My oh sat waiting for 11 hours (and got told it would be at least another 4) with a big shard of metal stuck in his eyeball, before giving up and coming home. Luckily he managed to get an appointment at an actual eye hospital a few hours later and they saved his eye. Sometimes it gets to the point where you just can’t stand it anymore and you can’t help going home.

If posted in the health topic MN clearly say at the top of every thread:

'Mumsnet hasn't checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you have medical concerns, please seek medical attention; if you think your problem could be acute, do so immediately. Even qualified doctors can't diagnose over the internet, so do bear that in mind when seeking or giving advice.'

Oh look we’re onto “lambast the poster for asking on here” already. That was quick.

I've seen far more of the opposite in fairness.

And nobody should be asking on MN about whether to call an ambulance or not. Though some posters clearly get off on doing so. There's a current long (and very tedious) thread with someone dragging the aunties along with her "health" dramas.

@Swg you post a thread then just slate a few selected replies?

I think people still think that if you are having an actual medical emergency in an A&E waiting room someone will notice and prioritise you. I sat eight hours in an A&E waiting room this year and ended up politely approaching the nurses desk (on the panicked urging of a doctor friend who was keeping an eye on me via messenger) to inform them that yes I was triaged several hours ago but I was now having new signs of liver failure.

Still didn’t get me seen quicker. Was hospitalised for three days though. Was genuinely scared I might die in the waiting room without anyone noticing.

Alternatively people will die because there are hundreds of worried parents clogging up A&E with DC with a standard sore throat. It is always going to cause issues when a normal childhood bug becomes serious. It makes it so much more difficult to know when to really worry.

There's a thread that's just recently posted re a child with a sore throat etc. every response says get it checked, call for advice , best to be safe etc.

I’m on my phone, and replying gradually (and about to go tromp about in the garden at which point all responses will stop for a good hour). Are you invoking some “must reply to every post” etiquette?

Of course it was quick, its the obvious and sensible response! What the fuck would you be doing asking MN if you should bring your sick child to hospital? A random group of strangers who can't see your kid, have (in the main) no medical knowledge, and half of which can't even tell the difference between bought and brought?

It's like asking a clatter of cats where to invest your life savings, only stupider and with worse possible consequences.

Bollocks to what mumsnet thinks if I was concerned enough about my child I would seek urgent medical.attention,and anyone who relys on the collective opinion of mumsnet to deceide wether to take their child to A&E is foo!into say the least.

It’s not quite that simple though. Anyone whose read MN for years will have heard hundreds of times how A&Ebis only for if you are dead of your leg is hanging on by a thread. That sort of message sinks in. It would be quite easy to look at a sick child, decide it’s not actually an emergency and can wait until tomorrow and be quite wrong.

i agree,
i would not go near mumsnet if i was that concerned

Unfortunately I suspect what will happen is that people will die, full stop, because A&E is understaffed. And then the government will blame it on people not acting responsibly (without acknowledging that whether someone acted responsibly in hindsight usually depends on the outcome). Meanwhile the people you absolutely want to turn up for help will avoid it because they feel guilty.

Much the same as many cancer sufferers aren’t diagnosed until it gets really bad because they’re scared to be a bother.

So your child is sick. You’re scared but trying not to panic. You are a) sitting on hold to 111 as you have been for forty minutes trying to soothe your child with one hand whilst you hang onto the phone, b) waiting for an ambulance which has been two hours so far, c) sitting in an A&E waiting room as you have been for six hours feeling guilty for dragging your sick child out or d) have just been offered a GP appointment in January.

But I mean obviously whilst doing those things the one thing you’re never ever going to do is look for reassurance online.

If every parent with an unwell small feverish child takes child to A&E then A&Es will be overwhelmed. Please don't stir up anxiety on a website already heaving with worriers.

Love this and it’s 100% true. Honestly, exactly what level of responsibility do anonymous strangers on the internet have for your child’s health? And why on earth would somebody make their decision based on Mumsnet as opposed to say, going on the NHS website or any other medical type site? Or god forbid asking someone in RL who can, y’know, actually see the child? Or ringing the NHS advice line?