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?

So everyone with a temperature and a sore throat should be told to go to A&E?

Stop scaremongering about the GP and 111. If your child is ill waiting to speak to someone on 111 isn’t a hardship. I actually don’t think I’ve ever waited 1hr on hold.

The ONLY advice is that no one is qualified to give actual medical advice on mumsnet, so don’t, whether that’s telling them to go to A&E or to not go.

No, of course I'm not. But then I wouldn't be doing any of those things. I can get a same day appt with my GP, have an out of hours on call dr service, a minor injuries/ailments unit I can drive to, and a paediatric A&E in the next town.

I also have a brain and can judge for myself when my child needs medical attention. The very last thing I would be doing would be posting on bloody mumsnet if my child was sick enough to need urgent attention!

A & E is a nightmare, my mum was in last weekend after having a cardiac seizure, everyone was coughing & spluttering, no covid tests & separating positive & negative patients. She was there 12 hours before she got moved to a ward, waited 3 days to have a pacemaker fitted & came home with Covid which she has passed on to me.

But this is the problem with people thinking that MN is a tiny, friendly forum where everyone can be trusted, apart from the obvious trolls.

You wouldn’t get medical advice from Reddit, don’t trust it from MN either!

In the stress if the moment it can be much more difficult to decision to make. My Dad has asked me before if she should ring an ambulance for my Mum in a certain situation and it’s very clearly a yes but when I was in that situation I hesitated and was torn.

If the person is asking for themselves you have to remember the more unwell you are the more difficult it is to make a decision especially if you have been fobbed off by doctors. I nearly didn’t seek help for myself when I had developed spesis because I was too ill to think logically.

And honestly I would be quite happy with a mumsnet policy of “health threads go in the health forum, we will actively move those posted elsewhere”. It would keep it away from the hive that is AIBU which people tend to post to just because it’s easy but is also where the trolls hang out.

Basically what I’m saying is mumsnet need a consistent policy that they stick to because their current policy of pretending that their forum isn’t full of dicks who give the same advice of “you’re still breathing so it isn’t an a&e job” to everyone is dangerous

This indeed. I had friends make me call an ambulance earlier this year (fortunately I have friends who are actual friends and not mumsne trolls) because I was so ill that I could no longer process what to do when ill. And particularly as people posting on mumsnet tend to have kids the exhaustion of “but what do I do with the kids” can be overwhelming.

Anyone who takes health advice off MN is a moron, you have no idea who you’re talking to and what their intentions are.

If you have serious concerns for your child who need to speak to a health professional, be that your HV, GP, pharmacist or 111, not Barbara from Shropshire who’s cousins mates neighbour had the same.

I’m happy for you - genuinely. You are clearly living in one of the few areas currently where the NHS is still working.

However statistically that’s not currently that majority of people and lived experience is confirming the statistical reports that actually getting seen right now for most people is not that easy. Or do you think the various people reporting back that they can’t get help are making it up?

Mumsnetters are always telling people to go to A&E, call the police and/or LTB.

Totally agree - the problem is now in my area there is no such thing as urgent care it's just all A&E - 111 send you to "urgent care" but it's nothing more than local A&E no differentiation at all, not even a separate queue for all those kids arriving that just need to see an out of hours GP for some penicillin as opposed to be admitted to A&E. so yes I did leave last week after 6 hours when I was told it would be at least another 3 with my 3 year old with tonsillitis, I had to just dose her up and managed to see the GP for medicine the next day. So I guess what I'm trying to say is there are many people at the moment arriving in A&E that are not sick enough to be there because there's no out of hours service and 111 have sent them there. It's not fair on the people that actually need to be in A&E as well.

This ^

And what the OP is calling "the usual Mumsnet attitude to A&E" is in most cases literally NHS advice.

Depends on the type of health advice. If it's non-acute, MN can be useful - e.g. advice with gynaecological issues, where women notoriously get fobbed off by GPs, told that severe endo is 'period pains' and so on - women with experience can help other posters ask the right questions to get what they need from the professionals. Also, 'I've got X condition/having Y surgery, what do I need to know' threads where people are sharing experiences; people asking what can help soothe minor ailments - all that is useful stuff.

I

Yes peer to peer support can be helpful but I was referring to children's health advice as per the OP.

Sorry wrong thread 😞

111 would direct to a&e if needed.

Why would there be an outbreak of strep?

Strep is around all the time, always has been. This year several cases have made it into the news, but it's not like it's a particularly unusual number of deaths or that they're related or that they had some unusual variant that was more contagious or anything. People need to know the symptoms to watch for, of course, but it's not more dangerous all of a sudden than it has been before, or more likely to spread, or cause serious problems. These things have always happened and will continue to, in rare cases.

It's all ridiculous.
What happened to self deciding? No forums years ago. Anyone who asks strangers on the internet about what would they do wouldn't have coped ffs

Absolutely

Not a dig at you OP , just my response to your post

Hate to tell you this but my mum back in the eighties would run down the road to get her friend (who was a nurse, a psychiatric nurse, but this qualified as the best medical advice) and to borrow a thermometer. Doctors visits were rare and terrifying - I was always under the impression that we were at the doctors so that they would say if I wasn't ill so mum could tell me off.

Before you move to "and clearly those were better days" this attitude was why I had to defy her in my early twenties and seek medical advice against her grumbling (Its a stomach bug, what is a doctor going to do) for what turned out to be a burst appendix. Also, unfortunately, probably a factor in why she delayed seeking help for what turned out to he stomach cancer.

Was it just her? I mean it might just be my family. My aunt called her rather than an ambulance at first when my uncle had chest pains. Somehow he survived long enough for an ambulance to reach him even after mum diagnosed low blood sugar (with no medical qualifications whatsoever) and prescribed cornflakes.

You wouldn't believe how many posts I've seen on social media telling people to call an ambulance straight away if their child has a sore throat

Here's the thing. We all know the daily mail stalk this place like bloodhounds looking for a story. So if and when something awful happens, mumsnet hq, do you think an attitude of "we don't control what people say (while knowing they absolutely say it)" and " well yes the child did die but to be fair posters had agreed already that the mother was a moron" is going to help? Because if not something proactively needs to be done about this kind of thread.

Our GPS surgery has recently sent out clear instructions on what to do if your child is poorly, ie how to bring down temperature, dosage, what to look for and when to call 111.
111 will advise when/if to go to a&e and will let them know you are on your way in.

It seems much more organised than most years.