"Poor experience of out of hours service"

I am writing on behalf of a friend who attended A&E in early February.

She is a healthy woman who rarely visits her GP, is fortunate enough never to have needed to attend A&E and the local pharmacy is the first port of call for minor health problems.

So when she noticed a slight facial swelling and a slight redness she went to the pharmacist and got advice. She was given a cream and advised if it got worse to contact the GP.

By Sunday morning it had got a lot worse so she rang the out of hours GP at 9:00 am  and was told that they would get the doctor to ring her, but they couldn’t guarantee it would be the same day.

After debating what to do she headed to A&E, something which caused her a lot of anxiety for several reasons. First and foremost she is a carer for family members who are Clinically Extremely Vulnerable. She has followed and continues to follow all possible precautions to ensure that she doesn’t put them at risk, and to date has managed to keep herself and her family Covid free, so going to A&E was extremely worrying for her. Secondly she felt like a fraud, as she did not think the issue was life threatening and the staff are under enough pressure and she knows there can be very lengthy waiting times in CAH.

As she was heading from the car park into a&e the on call GP rang. On answering she explained she was heading to a&e and the GP response was that you are going to a&e now, ok, and promptly hung up. Had she waited for a response my friend would have asked if she could be seen there instead of a&e.

She was left with no choice but to go into a&e. She has nothing but praise for the staff on duty who were friendly, approachable and despite being under pressure were kind and reassuring. She was assessed, had bloods and various other assessments done, diagnosed and was home with medication within 5 hours.

She apologised to staff in a&e several times as she felt guilty about being there. However they assured her that she did the right thing to get checked out as without treatment she could have ended up with irreversible damage to her eye potentially causing loss of sight.

I understand that every area of the health service is under pressure but i feel it’s unfair on patients, colleagues and health care services if a healthcare employee doesn’t play their part.

Given the recent need for Antrim Area hospital a&e to declare a potential major incident it’s all the more important that everyone plays their part in ensuring the correct use of healthcare services.

The choose well service states:-

GP out of hours is available if you require urgent medical care when your GP surgery is closed

Emergency Departments provide the highest level of emergency care for patients, especially those with sudden and acute illness or severe trauma.

People are asked to use the service appropriate to your need but in order to do this the service needs to be available.