Author Topic: Useful advice  (Read 4461 times)

ACE

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Useful advice
« on: January 07, 2015, 18:45:20 »

Bill Door

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2015, 13:28:01 »
wow all that good advice and no mention of Twiitter, Facebook or texting.

So it is only advice that the older generation will understand or be able to action.  I doubt there are many young people that know there is a GP surgery never mind a pharmacy.  I can't bring myself to think about those that don't know about self help.

Oh it also requires people to understand what they are suffering from (or perhaps know they are suffering from something).

Funnily enough the one bit missing is arrows going from all the others (except self help) to A&E or 999.

regards Bill

Ace I agree with the information and really do appreciate the effort but it is the recipients of the information that are the problem and the system needs to be changed to take that into account.  May be better to leave the A&E or 999 as is and change all the rest to "Self Help".

kGarden

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2015, 18:07:15 »
wow all that good advice and no mention of Twiitter, Facebook or texting.

Its from the NHS "Choose well this winter" campaign, and its on Twitter too e.g. https://twitter.com/NhantsResponse/status/551765259649024001 along with other useful "chart" advice such as

https://twitter.com/EMASNHSTrust/status/552456201624375298

also on facebook e.g. https://www.facebook.com/nhsnwchoosewell

Bill Door

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2015, 19:21:22 »
Thanks KGarden.

Sorry I did not make myself clear.  We have to remember that there are many people that now communicate with Twitter, facebook and texting.  Limiting the method by which everyone communicates a problem to 999 or 111 may be counter productive.  I just think that we have to thnk smarter rather than work harder.  So potentially having people responding to twitter or facebook messages may be productive.  I don't know how it will/should work but I think something needs to be done or at least discussed.

Recent reports by the news media has indicated that up to 30% of people going to A&E had no need to go there. So obviously the great advice that has been put out is not helping or giving people the right steer.  This includes the older generation as some do not go to A&E when they really need to (resorting to self-help).

As the old proverb says "you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink".

Lets hope that together we can resolve these problems.

Bill

Like many people I have seen our local A&E closed and the two nearest hospitals to me (each about 40 minutes away) are both doing badly in dealing with A&E and meeting the targets.  I don't know if that is a cause or not.

tricia

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2015, 00:21:08 »
But many of the elderly don't use social media anyway!

Tricia

ACE

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2015, 07:18:49 »
This is not aimed at the elderly, most have younger relatives or carers who will see this advice. Those that are capable of looking after thereselves are quite aware of what degree of sickness they have and will avoid doctors and hospitals as much as they can, trusting the old time remedies their mothers gave them. It is the youngsters that rush to hospital with the slightest ailment.

Hospitals to me are very unhealthy places, bugs, sickness and even worse are easily caught. I only ended up there last year because the doctor sent me. 

I do believe they should scrap NHS Direct as they don't want to be held liable for the wrong diagnosis and get sued. So they send most of the callers to surgeries or walk in centres which does nothing to ease the situation the hospitals are in now.


kGarden

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2015, 10:23:12 »
Recent reports by the news media has indicated that up to 30% of people going to A&E had no need to go there

My take is that the current problem is caused by changes to GP surgeries and the like.  People are confused as to whether their GP will, nowadays, come out in the middle of the night so choose to go to A&E instead; or maybe the "phone and chat through symptoms for a diagnosis" solution has resulted in more "get yourself to A&E" answers?. Either way, rather than hospitals increasingly failing in some way, I think that demand has been increased instead.

I'm not convinced that there are a rash of folk in A&E with trivial symptoms;  this has come up in another forum and a number of people there said they had been to A&E recently and didn't see anyone else with trivial symptoms, so might well be the Press flogging papers by latching on to an issue that is not be as widespread as described.  Folk here will be familiar with Daily Express annual November forecasts of "Worst Winter for 100 years / generation / ever" :)

For me the acid test is: how many people, with trivial symptoms, are willing to queue for 4 hours to be seen?

My other take, for which I have no answer, is that a free service always results in some people using more than their fair share.  Obvious answer to that would be to require payment for the service (backed by insurance payouts or whatever), but I have no idea how that would work in practice - so many issues of low income folk, unemployed, etc.  I think only 25% or so of prescriptions are actually paid for? strikes me that that must mean a huge amount of admin, and thereby cost to taxpayer, for the other 75% that are "free".  I don't like the American system, but I don't suppose its the only other system in place in the rest of the world?! I do think that something needs to change though; we could spend an infinite amount on healthcare, the expectations of the nation increase over time, but there comes a point when we can't afford what we aspire to have.

Paulines7

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Re: Useful advice
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2015, 10:31:43 »
I heard on the TV a couple of days ago that "walk in centres" are counted in with the statistics for A&E, thus making the hospital emergency visits seem far more than they actually are. 

I think a lot of the problems are that people are unable to get appointments with a GP.  My husband rang up to get an appointment at our local surgery as he had severe earache that had been going on for three days or more.  He was asked if it was an emergency.  He said no, but he needed to see a GP in the next day or so.  The receptionist then said that she couldn't fit him in for three weeks!  Eventually she agreed to put him on the list to have a telephone call from the doctor later that day.  A GP rang about 4.30pm and after speaking to my husband, gave him an appointment straight away that evening.  It's not surprising that walk in centres are busy.  I have had to use them in the past because my local GP surgery couldn't fit me in. 


 

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