real bad rant (long, sorry)

[nightowl]

dd was refusing feeds all day and ended the afternoon screaming and screaming in what appeared to be some considerable pain. she just could not be pacified. this had gone on for hours. my friend heard it on the other end of the phone and agreed she would be worried aswell. i phoned the out of hours doctors number and they asked me to take her to the clinic. they then said our local one was closed. (the second time they've done this) and could i take her to one 15-20 miles away. i said no, i cant drive and have no transport. so then she gets a nurse to ring me back. the nurse said the same and again i told her why i couldnt get to the clinic so she said reception would ring me back to arrange a home visit. reception rang me back and after asking if i could get to the clinic again, they then said a doctor would be with me within the hour. some time later the doctor rang me, said he would like to see her and could i get to the clinic? i told him no, he said our local one was open...then oh no it wasnt but theres another one close...oh no, thats closed aswell. just keep an eye on her tonight. i was in tears by this point. i phoned nhs direct and sought their opinion, the nurse told me that i HAD to get my daughter seen and could i get to the clinic. i practically wailed that i couldnt and she basically was very severe with me and told me that i should catch a taxi, that it was important and it was my responsibility, and that home visits were not carried out anymore. whilst still on the line i became worried about dd's breathing. she looked awful. so the nurse called for an ambulance. we were took straight to our local a & e, dd was checked for breathing and we then had a two hour wait, by which time she was fine, if a little bored. the a & e dept was rammed full of people and i couldnt help but wonder how many of them were not really ill enough to be there, but like us, just could not get to see a doctor? i think this is disgusting. is it just me? is it now like this everywhere?

Our surgery shuts pretty promptly, but we do have a mobile doctor service called ShropDoc (Shropshire Doctors, very snappy), and they will come out for an emergency home visit out of hours.
And seeing as the doctors get paid £750 a night to do this, I have every intention of making them work for it, should I need to use them.
Your clinic sounds appalling.
Is your dd OK now?

she seems to be (fingers crossed) im just so bloody angry. how can they do this? my friend has four children and cant drive either so if one of hers is ill has she got to pay a £30 round trip in a taxi, with four kids, late at night, to an area she doesnt know and possibly cant get back home from? but who on earth could i complain to? this is terrible and there must be so many more in the same situation, plus the fact we could be clogging up the a & e dept so to speak. i just cannot beleive it. they scrapped these home visits years ago but we had a clinic quite near which they then moved to the local hospital further away, which they have now closed.

what makes me feel worse is that my ds used to have asthma attacks and go downhill very fast...i think i do perhaps check dd more carefully because im now so aware of what can happen in a short time. its frightening to think that if it should happen again there's no-where i can go.

Not that it is right, but in defense of doctors, I think it's the new GP's Contract that has made a mess of everything. The practice manager at my gp's recently explained it to me. They used to be open on a Saturday morning and the doctors/nurses/staff would do it on rotation. Before the contract, if someone called an out of hours doctor, the surgery would have to pay for it, so if they were working and an out of hours doctor didn't need to be called, it cost the surgery less money. Now, I think they have to pay for the out of hours doctor regardless of whether they are open or not, so it doesn't pay for them to be open out of hours.
As a consequence, I took my kids to the local a&e a few weeks ago as I couldn't take them to the gp's.

By the way, I think that if you are getting wftc you are entitled to have your travel to and from hospital reimbursed.

i dont blame the doctors...i dont know who to blame. i just think its ridiculous. all its doing is making staff in a & e more overworked than they are now because we didnt have anywhere else to go and it wouldnt have got that far if she could have seen a doctor

Blame central government who keep making policies that can't be carried through at the local level because they are fully funded/thought through.

Nightowl, look up your local Primary Care Trust in the phone book and complain to the chief executive. Or there are Patient's Forums in every area which are supposed to represent us and should help you make a complaint. Agree that was an appalling way to treat you. Sadly it seems often impossible to get a home visit in many areas now. The new GP contract that has just been brought in means your own GP is no longer legally responsible for you out of hours. Instead it's the local Primary Care Trust (used to be called health authorities) which runs out of hours centres and is supposed to ensure home visits for patients who need them. How on earth they think people who don't have the money in their purse for a return taxi, or don't have a portable car seat, are supposed to get to clinics is beyond me, frankly.

Nightowl, it's like that too in Oxforshire.

Oxfordshire, even

Nightowl

I've always been told to call for an ambulance for asthma attacks. As you say, you can deteriorate very quickly during an attack.

but thats the thing slinky, it wasnt an asthma attack or anything like one. the breathing was slow but it only went like that after two hours of tryng to get a doctor out. if it was ds i would know the signs but in dd i dont know. she hasnt got asthma yet but theres a lot of it in my family. if we could have seen a doctor it wouldnt have got to that point. agree that an ambulace crew once said "just call us out because the doctors are useless"!