To be annoyed at friend for taking her kid to A&E so often

[sellotape12]

We live at the top of a road and at the end is our local hospital. I have a fairly new Mum friend from preschool. A big personality, (possibly her Spanish roots) and quite the drama queen. I feel myself getting very very mildly irritated because she literally takes her kid to A&E every single month.
In the past 2-3 months she and her husband have taken the kid to A&E for

• A fever. Hospital sent them home and said just use Calpol and get rest.
• A bad repetitive cough. She was sent home for bed rest
• A graze on her nose after she fell from a scooter. Could’ve been treated at home with basic first aid.
• “Pains in her leg”. A&E doctors said it was growing pains.
• fever from the injection site after having preschool jabs.

Each time we get the full story and I think she expects a flurry of attention. This isn’t a panic or anxious person who suffers from hypochondria. She treats the hospital as if it’s a walk-in GP clinic because of its proximity.

I’m pretty sure that in every single case she could’ve just googled it or used the helpful NHS website. I feel annoyed that she’s wasting the resources of actual urgent medical cases, but I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable in having this eye roll! How would you feel?

I think it’s probably a cultural thing. I was a bit shocked when I moved back here from the US where we’d had a named paediatrician, an on call nurse you could talk to during office hours, a nearby 24 hour urgent care clinic where you could always see a GP within a few minutes for very little cost and then was confronted with an incompetent health visitor who wanted to come to our house to do nothing but wave a questionnaire and was always hours late…

Short of not listening to her, it's really nothing to do with you how often she goes to a&e to be fair. Either cut contact or switch off when she starts rambling

100000% this !

I’m originally from Eastern Europe, and over there everything healthcare related works so differently.
When you have children, you’re automatically assigned a paediatrician. During pregnancy, you see a gynaecologist regularly, and doctors are always the ones who deliver births and handle the process etc.

P.S. I’ve lived in the UK long enough to be used to how things work here now, but yeah… it’s still quite a contrast compared to the system on the continent.

I live in Spain and am on Spanish healthcare - it runs differently from the NHS, specialists ONLY prescribe within their specialism, so a Family Doctor would not usually see a child patient, they would be seen by their pediatrician.

But yes, her British DH should be explaining this.

She has a family doctor and is registered with our local GP practice. I think they don’t want to wait for the admin and time it takes to ask for a doctor’s appt. So when kid gets an ear infection, they take her to A&E for five hours rather than make a routine appointment. Or they call an ambulance. But like I said, husband is a Brit so it’s not 100% a cultural thing, they just want to be seen same day.

Having read the sad story on the news this morning about Jessica Brady, I don't blame any parent for getting the help they need if they have concerns about their child. Getting a Doctor's appointment is nearly impossible these days and a telephone call with the Doctor is not the same. Our local A&E has a children's section and when I went there with my child - they never made me feel that I was wasting their time.

I treat our local hospital like a walk-in clinic and I'm not a hypochondriac or particularly health anxious.

Our GP is so shit that you can't get an appointment if you ring after 8.31am. You're told to ring back the next day when you still can't get an appointment. Essentially they hope you'll go away. My older child was sent home from school with wheeziness, which turned out to be difficulty breathing, and I rang the GP but was told no appointments available. It worsened so we headed to A&E, where it became apparent he was having a severe asthma attack.

As far as I'm concerned, my children are entitled to prompt medical treatment whenever they need it, and as their parent that is my judgement call to make. If we can't get the care they need through primary health services, then we're heading to the hospital. I'm not over-anxious but for toddlers and babies especially, who can't communicate what they're feeling, I'd always play it safe and get them checked out.

It's probably a mix of different cultural norms and being an attention seeking hypochondriac.

On the one hand, no, you shouldn't be going to A&E in any country in the world for the type of problems you describe in your OP.

On the other hand, part of the reason why A&E is so overwhelmed in the UK is that people can't get seen by their GP for minor problems.

I live in France and if I phone the GP's surgery at 7:30am because someone in my family is unwell, they will usually manage to fit us in that day. A couple of months ago I phoned for an urgent appointment because I had a really bad cold that seemed to be getting much worse rather than better. They fit me in that morning, my GP listened to my chest and prescribed me blood tests (to be done separately at a lab) and a chest X-ray, and signed me off work for the next three days. I went straight to the lab for the blood tests, got the results back about an hour later, then went to the nearest radiography centre for the chest X-ray, which confirmed that I had a bad pulmonary infection. So then the GP prescribed antibiotics using the app, which I picked up from the pharmacy that afternoon. Three days later I still wasn't feeling better so the GP prescribed some stronger antibiotics and that sorted it.

I have never had to wait to get a GP appointment or felt the need to go to A&E to get seen for something that wasn't an accident or an emergency.

And back in December when both my children were sick during the night right before Christmas, we managed to get a double out of hours GP appointment at 5:30am in a town about a 15 minute drive away. By 6am we were back home with a prescription for antibiotics.

Ear infections should be seen the same day so you can get started on antibiotics asap. You don't want to muck around with them, they can lead to hearing loss/permanent balance issues, as well as being painful and debilitating.

I also nearly died of sepsis after calling 111 and being sent away from A&E multiple times - they literally laughed at me over the phone and told me that if I called again they would just repeat there was nothing wrong with me.

A close family member also nearly died of sepsis in hospital and family caught nurses faking his obs when he was actually going into septic shock. If family had not stayed by his side in shifts he would have died of negligence/malpractice.

I think NHS standards are shocking and for some reason we are expected to not complain and be nothing but grateful even when we are permanently harmed by poor care. I have friends from other countries who fly home for care.

I haven’t heard of this before, but funnily enough experienced this recently.

Our next door neighbours are Polish. They flew back to Poland for a month to visit family this summer during the kids school holidays.

When I asked what they had planned they listed out a load of appointments with specialist doctors for each member of the family. Probably around 4 different doctors for each family member, so around 16 doctors appointments in total.

I presume the appointments would all be paid for privately. No idea what medications were given.

I think this may be cultural. I was recently on holiday in Spain and DD got an ear infection. Took her to the local doctor expecting the usual prescription for antibiotics. He insisted that she must be seen at the hospital and referred her to a hospital 40 mins away, which took up an entire day of the holiday and at the end of it we got… a prescription for antibiotics. No idea why the first doctor couldn’t have done this but perhaps in the Spanish system it’s the norm to refer children to the hospital doctor for whatever is their ailment.

I’d agree this is a cultural issue. In the UK, it’s a fight to see a GP - who will then most likely fob you off. In other countries, doctors see sick kids. It’s the UK that’s broken.

NHS is utterly broken but somehow most people accept it as normal. A parent should be able to have their child seen by a doctor if they are worried.

It's partly cultural I think. I know someone from Eastern Europe locally who goes to the doctor every time she has a cold or upset stomach, demands antibiotics and rants angrily on social media when refused. Apparently in her home country the doctor still does home visits and always prescribes antibiotics so she thinks that is the "correct" way.

But calling an ambulance and going to A&E for a grazed nose strikes me as someone who is very self important or has serious health anxiety, not just a different cultural background.

I have Eastern European friends that do this constantly, and yes it’s very annoying! They have to pay for it there so obv can go for a sniffle - here it’s actually costing lives.

It's annoying if people are abusing A and E like that. It costs us all money in the long term and means the wait is even longer. I went to A and E once over my two kids' childhoods and that was after a traumatic accident needing stitches.

My brother emigrated to New Zealand.

healthcare there is mostly private but the government funds it for children under 18.

one of his kids was ill and needed to be off school so he took them to the doctor.

he was genuinely gobsmacked that the child was seen within two hours and they got a follow up call the next day to check how they were.

nhs standards of care are incredibly low, by comparison with most other countries.

As someone whose child was actually dying & sat in a&e waiting room for 18 hours to be sent home with no tests despite very clear signs of DKA to then have to be diagnosed by their GP and then blue lighted to hostipal.
It pisses me off to no end that they are filling a&e with pointless shit that doesnt need to be seen in a hospital- maybe then the doctors & nurses can actually get their heads together and have time to diagnose & treat correctly.

This. The UK approach is actually the weird one. Babies can go downhill very quickly and it's always better to be safe than sorry.

The UK is not weird.

The NHS is evidence based. It is responsible in it's prescribing of antibiotics. It is conservative in it's use of tests, particularly in children because they are traumatic for children and not usually helpful.

All parents should have prepared for having children and have the ability to care for minor health issues - as described above - none of those need seeing by a health care professional.

Parents should be able to treat minor cuts and certainly a child with a cold/fever/stomach upset.

It's time for the NHS to start charging people because it is being massively abused due to it being free.

Individuals such as those described are making it impossible to actually see and treat sick patients and are wasting tax payer money. I'm quite happy for them to seek private treatment and to pay for that.

Have you explained to her how good your GP practice is and that you'll almost certainly get a same day appointment?

I would certainly give that advice to someone going on about going to A&E with minor things, if that were the case re the GP.

And if your GP is rubbish and you couldn't tell her that it's easy to get an appointment as it isn't true, then I don't blame her for falling back on the hospital.

Spanish here. Just to add that you mileage may vary when using the Spanish health system as it is a competence that has been devolved to the regional goverments . At any rate, I understand your frustration with your friend. Maybe someone should give her a proper dressing down.

I have a Spanish mum friend and she loves medicine, visiting the drs, covering her kids in stuff. She flies back to Spain if she can't see a specialist here.
Her kids have everything all the time.

It would be good if we had diagnostic centres. Somewhere between a GP and a&e. You could go and get a scan / blood test etc same day but not waste a&e time.