"Our opinion of the 111 service"

My Father in Law could not pass urine sometime during the night. We called NHS 111 to get a Doctor out to see him.

This Doctor cathaterised him and also said that he had a slight fever and also that blood was present in his urine. This doctor left us early that evening on the next day. Through the night we had to call the district nurse out due to complications with the cathiter.

Again on Sunday we had to call the district nurse out due to our concern with my Father in Laws condition. After checking him over this nurse noticed that he had an hernea. With this plus still not being able to urinate without the help of the cathater and his continuing temperature the nurse said that he should go to hospital. She made him an urgent case and said to us that a Doctor would call within the hour.

We had to call 111 some 2 hours later as we had not had this Doctors call. At this point we were fobbed off. A further call to the district nurse expressing our concerns, lead to the nurse again expressing her concerns and again saying that this was an urgent case finally lead to a call from a Doctor. After questioning us he agreed that my Father in law needed to be seen by a Doctor and said that one was on the way.

Eventually after approx 3 more hours a Doctor turned up. He seemed very ambivalent to our views and appeared to want to go as quickly as possible. He had to be persauded to replace the cathater into my Father in Law having first said that his stomach was not distended, Funnily when he finally agreed to replace the cathater my Father in Law passed through the cathater approx half a pint of fluid and continued to pass urine in this way for quite some time. This Doctor did not seem to have my Father in Laws best interests at heart, in fact, he appeared to want to go as soon as possible, even saying that if he decided to go through the process of admitting him to hospital, he would not get seen because it was late at night and that he would probably pick up more bugs in hospital than he would at home.

Finally my Father in Law was seen by his own GP the next morning, who phoned the hospital to get him admitted and seen by a surgeon. The paramedics who came to pick him up were very good indeed.

I am of the opinion that we have been very badly let down by some elements of the 111 service. In particular the person who took our second call and more especially by the Doctor who finally came to us. Through my experience with this service I can understand why people refuse to deal with this service and ring 999 first. This is certainly something I will probably do if we are unforunate enough to need your help in the future