Just want to say a huge thanks to the lovely A&E nurse we saw this afternoon...

[JingleyJen]

She used her initiative!!!
She advised us that we could stay and wait the 2 hours to see a doctor, but if we decided not to wait and to go to a pharmacy and get some steristrips we could save ourselves the time as that is what they would do to seal up the deep cut on DS2's eyebrow

Then she said.. infact as it is bleeding quite a lot (it was bleeding but not lots) she could put some steristrips on for us so that he didn't bleed all over the place whilst we were waiting for the doctor... and she could give us a head injury leaflet to read whilst we were waiting...

but she also needed us to know that we were under NO obligation to wait..

so we arrived at about 6pm and walked out at about 6.15 with DS2's head cleaned and steristripped with all the info we would have waited 2 hours for

Brilliant!!

The only sadness is we can't write to the hospital to say thank you because she didn't follow proceedure and I don't want to get her in trouble. So if you read this (I think you mentioned you have kids so it is possible) THANKYOU!!!!!

Oh I hope she hasn't got in trouble, she just called here asking some questions as someone had asked why DS2's paperwork wasn't filled in.

thing is, if a bash on the head breaks the skin, it is policy to X-ray

sorry to rain on your parade, but she sounds totally unprofessional

He fell over in the kitchen and banged his head on a kitchen chair it was on his eyebrow abut 1 inch long really clean cut - if I had had steristrips at home (which I will tomorrow after a trip to boots) I wouldn't have taken him to hospital, he wasn't distressed after the initial shock and was happy for us to touch it with out him screaching.
TMMJ I know what you mean but from the way he was acting she made it clear that they wouldn't be sending him for an xray and even if they could see the bone the doctor would call her to put strips on so it really did feel like we had saved time as opposed to cut corners IYKWIM

In practice, though, tmmj, the doctor just talks you through the head injury leaflet and tells you to come back if your child starts displaying any of the listed symptoms.

Most kids with head injury are actually not xrayed at all, it depends totally on the circumstances eg; if they conciousness, she wasn't unprofessional imo she was drawing on experience of these situations, giving the parents choice, stay or not stay.