Being vile to 111

[111hell]

Can anyone shed light on why people are so awful to 111? It's a triage job to assist you in getting help. That's it, yes the questions may feel stupid but the tool rules out possible outcomes. I have never been spoken to the way I have working for 111. People are just vile. Honestly it's soul destroying

The 111 service is broken, why can't we go back to the days of the family doctor having an on call system. Years ago my mum had a massive haemorrhage after a gynaecological operation, I rang our doctors at 9.30pm & had a doctor come out to see her within 15 minutes, she was on her way back to the hospital within an hour where the surgeon who had done her operation was waiting to take her back to theatre. Ds regularly has to ring 111 for his dad, who is severely disabled with MS, he can be waiting anything up to 4 hours to speak to a doctor & then waiting anything up to 12 hours for an ambulance, several times this has been for sepsis.

This is exactly what people are finding frustrating.

I get your job is not easy. But when someone explains to You why it is frustrating you can take it on board and sympathise or you can ignore them and be sarcastic. An “I know” goes a long way.

the system doesn’t always work, that’s a fact. I was told to go to a specific pharmacy for antibiotics for something. The pharmacy didn’t offer that service. In fact the antibiotics I needed couldn’t be prescribed by a pharmacist.

if a service is poor “you are lucky to get anything in the first place” isn’t the right answer. It won’t make it work better.

It’s a different world now and for many reasons the services are overloaded. I don’t think GP services will change now - the present system seems to be the way forward since Covid.

I wasn’t going to reply anymore but I had a notification of a thanks (again!) to one of my posts on this thread.

I am not a troll and I am a call handler on 111.

14 hours is a good turnaround, 111 in different regions deal with thousands of calls a day. It’s not perfect but the service is over subscribed due to the NHS being overwhelmed. Also I do find some people wait until out of hours is open these days rather than try their GP. I can understand that, but yeah, more pressure on 111.

If you’d got me you’d have been assessed with sore throat as your main symptom and if you had said something like you were immuno suppressed on the call I would have got clinical advice before putting you on the call back queue.

If you’d mentioned the anti biotic course you had already taken and a fever of 40c I would (and I hope the call handler who took your call did) would have put that in the notes.

The call queues are reviewed by clinicians through the day who then call you back for a further assessment of your symptoms or decide to send your call straight over to the out of hours team. So no I don’t make decisions about people’s health care it’s not my place to.

If you had called your GP at 8am and they offered you a 6pm appointment same day would you complain it took 10 hours to get an appointment?

Anyway this is my last post on this topic @SummerAndSunPlease I am just trying to explain how things work and why I think 14 hours was a good result.

I used 111 online this week - A nurse called me back within 10 minutes.
Another time I used it I was recommended to see a pharmacist. My local pharmacy rang me and had a prescription ready within 30 minutes.

I would highly recommend using their online form where possible.

that sounds so frightening you must have been terrified 💐

I went to A and E on 2016 with symptoms of meningitis.. they checked me in but I didn't even make it to a chair in waiting room before a nurse came and took me through.. someone then yelled " that fcking bitch only just fcking well got here I've been waiting hours" weirdly except for a nurse putting me in a darkened side room and saying "we understand about the headache " that was the last thing I remembered for over 24 hours .. she must have riled me quite a bit

Sorry, did I just read that right? 'A 14-hour turnaround is pretty good for a Saturday'.
Wow, if a 14-hr wait is considered 'pretty good', the system really IS fucked!

As a call handler, you can of course think whatever you like is a 'good result'. However, as shown here, actual patients disagree with you. Your attitude goes a long way to answering the OP's original question on why callers to 111 are 'awful'.

It's not right for anyone to be horrible full stop.

But as to reasons why - sometimes the service can be quite dangerous. I have experience of a serious paracetamol overdose and the 111 person saying a GP would phone the next day!

I also have a medication that I accidentally ran out of and 111 did not understand that a pharmacy couldn't just supply it as it was a controlled drug.

In general I think 111 is pretty useless.

They just send people to their GP or to A&E.

Twice 111 have told me to contact my GP and twice the GP has been horrible in response and said there was no point me having an appointment

It might be but that's no reason to be rude to call handlers

@Redglitter I think a lot of the time though the call handlers need to realise they're talking to poorly people who are stressed and they need to act a bit more human instead of just going through a questionnaire

You can get antibiotics prescribed at a pharmacy for things like tonsillitis, it’s a service called pharmacy plus. No need for 111.

my partner worked there for a while, he didn’t love it but I don’t remember him being massively upset by it. It did allow him to get a better job in private healthcare though, maybe that’s something to look into OP?

If you have tonsillitis, a fever of 40c after already having one course of antibiotics, and are immuno suppressed, you absolutely do need 111 if you can’t access your GP.

I’ve had 111 be arsey with me when I didn’t know an answer for certain about my daughter 🤷🏼‍♀️

I know this is an old post but I just had to comment.
Speaking from experience, 111 is a sign posting service. Except on very rare occasions the call handler does not have any medical training and can not diagnose. The poor call handler is just trying to do a job!

Exactly - triage that's it