Stop telling people to go to A&E!

[Miriad]

I see it on here a lot. Someone is getting fobbed off by their GP and not getting diagnosed. So they get told to go to A&E, where they have the ability to do blood tests and urine tests and scans to figure out what’s going on.

I’ve been sobbing in agony for three weeks and my GP isn’t helping me, and I can’t get another GP appointment for a fortnight, so posters advised me to go to A&E.

I waited six hours only to get yelled at by an angry doctor, saying my condition is neither an accident nor an emergency. According to him I don’t need urgent treatment even if I’m crying with pain - because pain isn’t urgent. If I’m stable and not at risk then I need to go home and see my GP.

A&E can not be used to bypass a useless GP and access tests and scans. They will not diagnose you or refer you. Their job is to give you the minimum care to make you stable so you’re not at risk, then send you home.

So stop telling people to go there. Maybe in the olden days you could go there for help if your GP was rubbish, but not any more.

This is insane…the uk is going to shit! I’m In Ireland and I rang my doc at 9:20 on Monday morning for my dad and got her an appointment at 10:30! And before anyone asks no I didn’t pay as we have a GP visit card!

I think some people dismiss 111 too easily. There's quite a lot they can do in terms of directing patients to appropriate care.

I rang 111 once because I couldn't get a GP appointment for unwell DC, they rang my GP surgery and made them squeeze us in as an urgent appointment. We've also had them book OOH GP appointments at 3 am.

Sometimes you get sent to A&E anyway, but at least when the overworked doc asks what you are doing there you can say '111 sent me' and they can see in your notes that it's true.

Exactly this!! This is an emergency. My grandmother had a blood infection for MONTHS just kept getting fobbed off with antibiotics. Ended up after about 6 months going into septic shock and almost died. Massive kidney stone.

When my son had a boil type thing that needed to be lanced the GP required him to go to A&E (it didn't feel like an A&E thing to me) and the hospital did handle it fine in our case. There needs to be a kind of intermediate place for things that are causing massive problems but may not kill you (in my son's case I think there is a risk the infection CAN kill you so I suppose A&E was appropriate but a skilled nurse with a knife could just have lanced it at the surgery.