Is this normal "child health care" in Europe? (Luxembourg specifically)

[NannyR]

I'm a nanny with 15 years experience of working in the UK. I've recently started working in Luxembourg, my first overseas job.

In the past few weeks I've had to take each of my three charges to the paediatrician with clear runny noses, little bit of a nighttime cough, no temp, still eating well, well enough to go to school and generally running amok around the waiting room. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with them that a couple of early nights, calpol and cough linctus or honey and lemon wouldn't sort out.

However being a professional nanny, if mum has concerns about their health then I take them to the appointments she arranges. What really shocks me is each time we have come out of the doctors with prescriptions for two different kinds of nose drops, a saline spray to squirt up their nose, anti-mucus medicine, cough medicine and antibiotics.

For the two year old the antibiotics meant a couple of days of diarrhoea and a really sore bum, which I felt was worse than the cold they were treating.

I wouldn't have even considered booking a gp appt in the uk, let alone have expected to get antibiotics for such a minor cold.

Is this normal, what European parents expect with regards to child health care? Are parents and kids in the UK more stoic, i.e. do we consider runny noses to be a normal part of childhood to be put up with rather than cured?

It just seems to me to be really over the top, as well as potentially harmful (in terms of developing resistance) to be giving "well" kids antibiotics

kreecher my swiss-resident brother does the same - absolutely forbids the consumption of anything but tea with cheese fondue.

I can almost see the logic behind the oranges not being good for you at night, seeker. They really wake up your palate. Perhaps that stimulates the neurological system or something. I'm trying to remember if the night this week I couldn't sleep, I'd had an orange after my dinner. Interesting.

Caffiene and cheese aren't good at night time either.

That is presumably why they are not generally eaten as the last courses in posh meals

I lived in lux for 5 years, two babies toddlers, what you describe was not my experience at all, I think you should change doctor. I was really happy with health care there.

[grin]@sardine queen

Hmm - no, would have to say my experience in France is that they do not dole out antibiotics readily. Not paed, but efficient village dr who has never got it wrong.

However, serums, dry cough/loose cough tinctures, you name it are prescribed in their hundreds.

DH would love it in all these places. First sign of a sniff and he rushes to boots and buys bagfulls of lozenges and linctuses and sprays and syrups and god only knows what.

I think it has (almost) everything to do with paying for doc appointments. I don't live in Europe, but in South Africa, where most working people have some form of private medical aid or hospital plan. Most of my friends take their children to peadiatricians only, even for slight colds. Anti-biotics are commonly prescribed. It all has to do the medical industry being one big money making trade. Most women on a private medical plan would go to gynecologists for smear tests, and gp's (never mind midwives!!) seldom deal with pregnancies or births. My dd doesn't have a peadiatrician and I don't have a gynea. My friends all think I am slightly odd. The NHS is one of the things I miss most about Britian.

The oranges thing has reminded me of when I lived in Spain, and my friend and I wanted to do a posh dinner party for some potential shags nice boys and we went to the fruit shop and the woman refused to sell us a melon because if you eat melon after 7pm you die.

I was told recently in Central America that the reason why I had a cough was because I did the ironing before I had a shower. Apparently my body was taking in all the heat from the iron and then I was getting cold as I showered.

I didn't point out that I don't actually iron myself and my shower water was warm :)

Normal for France, Belgium and Switzerland - I've lived in all three. We are undermedicalised and they are overmedicalised. And what's with the suppositories guys? I'd be interested to know the rate of anti-biotics use in Europe...my guess is the UK comes out very low. Sometimes it's frustrating (like when my 2 year old had salmonella and the formal advice was to let her fight it herself - I struggled with that one but actually the advice was right).

Suppositories are brilliant. I never thought I'd ever say that, but they're so much easier than struggling to get some sticky syrup down a wriggling baby.

But otherwise yes, it drives me dilly here in France the way people rush to the docs for the slightest sniffle and then come out with a shopping list of meds.

We are France....my biggest bug bears are:

-- children walking around the house without slippers will catch hypothermia in any season

-- draughts cause colds. Never, ever, ever open a window in anything other than high summer. I was once in a restaurant in June on a hot evening and we were seated near terrace doors leading to a door leading into the garden. It was so hot people were fanning themselves with the menus but when my DH opened this door, several people rushed over and started going on about "courants d'air".

-- children must have balaclava style hats covering head, ears, neck, cheeks and chin in any temperatures below 6* C

However, I am converted to suppositories! Point is, an analgesic needs to be delivered into the bloodstream. If you take a paracetamol orally, how does it help a headache? By being absorbed into the bloodstream of course. Suppositories work faster because there are many capilleries up there so the drug gets into the bloodstream very quickly, much more quickly than by digestion orally. Official, I am now French!

It sounds a lot like my medical experiences with my son while we were still in the U.S. When I moved to the U.K., to be honest I was a bit shocked at the lack of things like "well visits" (check ups for children every six months) at the GP. RXs for nasal sprays, antibiotics, etc are dolled out like candy by U.S. docs.

There are a lot of ailments that send shivers down the spines of my fellow Americans and would send them running to the GP at the drop of a hat (hair lice, chicken pox, sinus infections) that are just part of everyday life for children growing up in the U.K.

Why would you take a well child to the doctor every 6 months? Do they ever find anything?

A friend of mine takes her children for their annual check up (despite the fact they've usually been at the docs on a weekly basis for the previous 52) on their birthday poor little blighters.

"On their birthday? But why" says me
"For their 4 yr/5yr/6yrcheckup durrrrrrrr!" says she.

It's like, if she doesn't do it actually on that day, the sky will fall in.

(I am the mother btw who gets bollocked by doctor for not having done an annual check up with dd since she was 2 (she is 8) and for always but always being late with the vaccinations (which are also done the day the child reaches the relevant age) The vaccine woman really shouted at me for taking dd for her wotever-it-was when she was about 5.5 yrs and said she should have had it done at 5. I pointed out the big poster on th wall saying "between 5 and 7 yrs of age" but she was still very chuntery with me.)

(I don't think the bonkers anxious hypochondriac parents is all furriners btw, my cousin's wife is at A and E at least 2x a month for various non-illnesses)

Wow. I have a 16 year old who has been to the doctor three times since and to casualty twice and a 10 year old who has never been to the doctor and to casualty once. Can't decide whether that makes me neglectful or super mum....

When I was an au pair in France they had to immediately have homeopathic pills and creams if they had a minor bump, even the sort that would leave a mark. The fact that no mark was left was proof that the 'medicine' was working.

When one of them had chicken pox I had to apply a bright pink cream to the spots, which made it look a lot worse, and seemed a likely way to superinfect the spots...

DH's relatives (Czech) all believe that a child should not be allowed outside in cold weather until they are about 5 or 6, then they are basically wrapped up and sent out from dawn till dusk no matter the weather. However, illness can be caught from being too warm (so must sleep with windows open even in -15 degrees winter), and too dry, so all radiators have humidifiers on top of them.

Also, breastfeeding past 6 months will be bad for the immune system, as the child should be on formula (and tea) by then - luckily DH's cousin's wife is 'batty' like me and bfed her DD until she was 3 - but her DD has multiple allergies (has had them from birth, poor thing), which is seen by other people as evidence that bfing caused it. Sigh. Poor DH has to make excuses for his mad British wife quite often :o latest is potty training, as not training by 2 is bad for the child, will result in some undetermined chronic ill health. More sighing.

I haven't had cause to go to the doctors over there yet, but DH is very unimpressed with UK GPs and dentists not immediately giving out antibiotics no matter the ailment, so I would guess it used to be like that in the CR, at least when he used to live there.

Its very much the same in South Africa too

I live in the UK, DS1 had an awful chest infection when he was about 1 yo and we kept going back to the doctor for at least a month before anything was prescribed, at my doctor's surgery, I think they have 'it will pass' as part of the diagnosis

In South Africa, on the other hand, they prescribe antibiotics straight away, and for literally anything, my poor nephew's milk teeth were in an awful state due to all the antibiotics he was prescribed and all the sugar in them.
My South African friends' children always seem to have broncio this, -litis that

Breastmilk goes sour at 6mths here in the south of Italy.

Another (American) friend of mine was shouted at for knowing the word "meningitis" and knowing about the glass-rash test. Her ds had a dodgy rash, she did the test, it didn't disappear so she went to the hospital and explained all this and the doc was "who told you that word?where did you learn about that? That's something only doctors should talk about"

Yes OP, completely normal for Luxembourg (where I grew up) or France (where I live).

I don't bother with all the medicines personally, but obviously if you are a nanny you do need to go along with your employer's usual practice, especially if that is also usual local practice. What nationality is the family you are working for?

I have never known anyone leave a doctor's surgery in France without a prescription for AT LEAST 5 items. A friend of mine was once prescribed an Evian spray among a lengthy list of medicaments. Now we are living in London among the French I have to listen to their moaning that they have taken little Olivier to the GP and come away with NOTHING!!!!!!.