Swine Flu and NHS Direct

[NHSDirect]

Hi guys,

We registered earlier today in the hope of being able to answer some of your questions about swine flu, and your comments and complaints about how NHS Direct are dealing with the health alert. It seems that since there are so many SF threads currently open here, another one probably won't go amiss.

I collated a lot of your feedback throughout the day and have passed it on to the appropriate departments within the organisation. I'm sure you appreciaate that these are busy times for us, but all being well, I should be able to give you some responses by Friday, if not tomorrow.

In the meantime, we will continue to provide health advice and information via our website - www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk and to deal with urgent health enquiries (as well as swine flu) on 0845 4647, 24 hours a day.

Take care

NHS Direct

Wouldn't it have been better then to have not actually posted at all until Friday, and then posted with some sort of statement/answers to questions then?

At least while 'on hold' on the internet you can go and do other useful stuff, I suppose.

And really, you should go look at the Twitter stream - it serves no useful purpose whatsoever, even for Twitter.

Greeny I am in the 3rd week of it too
God it is dull

I agree re these mixed messages of whether one has to have a fever or not. That needs to be publicised. It was identified and reported in the US long ago. And backed up by my GP this week who said that in their practice meeting they were told that a significant number of cases have been confirmed in people who presented with no fever.

one report of it here for eg

I have still had rigors etc
Just no temperature (or if I did have I was controlling it as I have been taking paracetomal and nurofen at regular intervals to try and stop feeling so awful)

I'm not disgusted just rather baffled as to its purpose and use of public funds that I think would be far better spent at grass roots level.

CD have you had nightmares/hallucinations? I have, and it's very weird and unpleasant

this virus is a tenacious bitch, isn't it?

Oh on the issue of whether NHS Direct itself is a good thing I have mixed feelings. It does seem rather like yet another buffer zone between the patients and the people who can actually DO anything

I was responding only to the complaints about reaction time - it would be daft to expect an immediate response to anything at the moment.

whomovedmychocolate, thanks for the info about vaccinations. Will try and see if the health authority have released any dates here.

My big fear is that things like mennigitis will be missed whilst this is going on.

I actually feel quite sorry for them, they were set up to be a receptionist service, advice only, not allowed to diagnose anything, you go to the gp, you go to hospital, you treat yourself etc.

Another pretty pointless exercise by the government trying to get waiting times at A&E down.

Now SF has hit they are inadequately resourced on the back of the government campaign to scare the hell out of people.

fluquestion,

it's menningitis and pnuemonia that it causing the deaths of people with swine flu, so if anyone does get sick that should be a constant consideration to look for.

Unfortunately the government are saying 'underlying health issues' and have come out and said the Dr didn't die of swine flu, when he alledgedly died of pnuemonia, which is caused by SF!

I agree atlantis; NHS Direct cannot cope with the volume of calls at all.

And even before all this Swine Flu they would either tell you to wait until Monday or call out of hours GP service or dial 999.

We haven't bothered with NHS Direct since dd2 has been ill, we have just called the out of hours local service, or the GP if in opening times.

The NHS Direct website has syptoms etc on it which is easier to look at than waiting for hours on the phone.

Now I remember reading in the contigency plans that they were going to introduce an automated phone service which would issue a reference number for Tamiflu without need for nurse intervention. Has that actually happened?

That was supposed to be in august wasn't it? Once everyone has had it.

Yeah, August next year

no greeny
no hallucinations
dd and dh haven#t got it yet
(i have been scrupulously steering clear of them and washing hands and using hand anti germ stuff)

The BBC are still saying that a fever is the most important symptom;

" A fever is the most important symptom of swine flu - that is a temperature of 38C (100.4F) and over. Then there are other symptoms such as a cough, runny nose, sore throat or chills.

There is reportedly little standard seasonal flu at the moment, so the chances are that if you have a fever and other symptoms you do indeed have swine flu, experts say.

"Basically go out and buy a thermometer. If you have a temperature and two of the other symptoms you have flu, and should get treatment. If you're well enough to go to work, you don't," says Dr Holden. "

Which is basically why the whole country has gone down with 'not swine flu- flu'.

Hi all,

OK, lots of feedback and responses here. Thank you for bearing with me. I can see that some of you are justifiably angry and concerned, in particular Mumindisguise. Certainly a traumatic experience, and one no parent (myself included) would wish to go through. I hope your son and husband are recovering well.

Please be aware that I cannot engage in any clinical discussions. I am not medically trained, and cannot comment on specific cases or the actions of GPs, A&E staff etc.

I will, however try as best I can to respond to all of the issues raised regarding NHS Direct...

Our role now, as always, is to assess a caller?s problem and advise on the best course of action to take.

If they?re feeling unwell, the caller may be told how they can look after themselves at home, or we may recommend seeing a pharmacist.

If it?s something more serious, they may be advised to see another health professional, such as their doctor. If the problem is very serious, we can help them to access the ambulance service.

Dealing with swine flu:

NHS Direct is following official guidelines set out by the Health Protection Agency and The Department of Health to help with swine flu. Our nursing staff will not diagnose swine flu (or any other illness for that matter) but rather refer a caller to the appropriate health service depending on their symptoms.

In the case of swine flu, if a caller is suffering from a number of flu-like symptoms, including a high temperature, or they are in a particular high-risk group (such as asthma sufferers, expectant mothers, children under five etc) then we will ask the caller to phone the GP surgery. In this case, we are not advising people to visit the GP surgery so as to avoid spreading the infection.

If a caller is in need of urgent healthcare that?s not swine flu related, again, our nurse advisors will respond accordingly, whether that means advising a visit to A&E, or arranging for an ambulance.

Again, I reiterate, I cannot comment on the subsequent actions of any GP, walk-in-centre or A&E department staff.

In spite of the increasing number of swine flu calls, we are still helping patients with other urgent health enquiries and urgent calls are being dealt with in less than 20 minutes.

As an aside, roughly 60% of swine flu callers are given to self care advice, and 30% are advised to speak to the GP.

Telephone call costs:

Calls to NHS Direct are charged at a local rate and cost a maximum of 5 pence per minute from a BT landline. Yes, the cost of calls from mobiles and other networks may vary.

Calling 999:

I would hope that, as a parent, I would know when to phone 999 for a medical emergency, as did Mumindisguise. NHS Direct provides health advice and information and is not the same as the 999 emergency service.

Everything that I?ve said in this message can be found online, either at the Health Protection Agency?s website www.hpa.org.uk, the NHS health website, NHS Choices: www.nhs.uk, or at our own website www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk.

These pages are particularly useful for answering your clincial questions:
Latest information:
www.nhs.uk/AlertsEmergencies/Pages/Pandemicflualert.aspx
And Q&A:
www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Pandemic-flu/Pages/QA.aspx

We are also encouraging people who are concerned about their symptoms to use our online flu checker at bit.ly/4UULY to help take pressure off GP surgeries and NHS Direct.

Hope this goes some way to answering some of your questions. Feel free to respond here, on Twitter or via our website.

Best weishes

NHS Direct

I wondered wether NHS direct was a troll until I read this:

"Our role now, as always, is to assess a caller?s problem and advise on the best course of action to take."

That IS NHS direct's role. It isn't actually to give out medical advice as such, it is to advice whether the problem should be treated at home, needs a quick trip to the GP or needs urgent hospital admission. That's why it can be so frustrating if you ring NHS direct and expect to get given medical advice.

"That's why it can be so frustrating if you ring NHS direct and expect to get given medical advice." - but then you kind of wonder what the point is.

I could pop down to the pharmacy to get self-care advice, I can google for general symptoms advice or see my GP or dial 999. 99.9% of the time I can figure out which option is appropriate.

Credit where it's due, the NHS Direct website is fairly good, particularly with the body key searching, but the phone service seems to just give you an extra step to go through before you can get medical assistance.

"Please be aware that I cannot engage in any clinical discussions. I am not medically trained" - but you earlier said "I collated a lot of your feedback throughout the day and have passed it on to the appropriate departments within the organisation." - no medically trained people in any of those departments?

What point exactly is there in coming onto Mumsnet and giving us exactly the same information we can find everywhere else? Are you taking any of these issues on board and escalating them so they never happen again?

Rubberduck - yes I agree, but that is their remit. Although certainly I don't think that is well understood. They are for example not meant to diagnose (although sometimes they do)- they're just meant to tell you whether you can self treat/see your GP or need to see a doc urgently.

So basically they should have a new tagline. "NHS Direct: less helpful than your pharmacist"

ha ha - yes perhaps.

But they always err on the side of caution, understandably, so they say [before this SF thing anyway] 'if you are worried see your GP' I think it is a huge misuse of public funds unless people are really so stupid as not to know when to go to the doctor or not. My thud was for this:
'Everything that I?ve said in this message can be found online, either at the Health Protection Agency?s website www.hpa.org.uk, the NHS health website, NHS Choices: www.nhs.uk, or at our own website www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk.'

Rather pointless, no? Well intended yes, but pointless, rather like NHS Direct.

LOL rubberduck.

Not sure if this is directly relevant. But I will give my opinion anyway.

In my opinion what I think we need is clarity on what to do in the event of someone suspecting swine flu. I began to rapidly feel rough last night, and realised that I didn't actually know if I needed to notify anyone for statistics purposes etc.

I also see regularly on this board peolple saying "my DS has symptoms blah blah blah. I think I will take him to the GP". We need a clear government organised national advertising campaign using various forms of media to get a clear and accurate message across.

And do you knwo what - I think that will have the biggest impacton the burden on hte NHS direct staff. I know it is on the website - but people get flustered (even I got flustered as my temp was rapidly rising last night and my occupation means that I understand - at a medical level what to do/look for etc.) and can't always think straight...assume you need to get medical advice, etc.

If we had an advertising campaign indicating exactly what the possible symptoms are; self help information; when to call GP/999/NHSdirect (or not) I think it would help tremendously. People need to understand that if self help is keeping symptoms under control there is no need to clog up the various phone lines just to be told to keep fluids up/paracetamol/ibuprofen etc. (obviously some people need to get further help, but I am guessing mostly it is basic advice you are giving). A clear message from teh government which is regularly aired (by all media forms) will stick in the mind (a 100 times more so than the leaflet which most of us have lost/not read/thrown in the bin).

If the government can get teh message accross more clearly (like the Stroke "fast" campaign for eg.) - less people will ring you for basic advice (which by the sounds of it you are limited in giving - just because it is not within your role).

It will free up the lines for those that do need further help- which they will get quicker as there is less of a queue - as will those that are not suffering with Swine flu (which are the ones I worry about TBH).

Bottom line (despite waffly post) - the government needs a campaign which will REDUCE the (in some cases unnecessary) burden on NHS direct/GPs.