Anyway this was a completely different thing & seemed to get worse as I went about the daily process of getting up. I couldn't bend over the wash basin to wash my face. I couldn't move the dining chair close to the table to eat breakfast. I couldn't bring the spoon to my mouth to eat cereal. Every step was very, very painful. If I did something wrong I did literally scream with pain.
Why do these thing always seem happen at the weekend? It really is s... law.
Anyway my brain wasn't affected, so I Googled what you are supposed to do in these situations. (Typing wasn't easy). Apparently now you dial 111 - I think this replaced the old NHS Direct.
This is a "triage" system - "assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties". Someone asks you a script of questions, some relevant, some not, to decide what the next step should be. In my case it was a call within half an hour from a doctor.
The call was quite prompt & he also asked more or less the same questions & decided that I should be referred to the local "on call" doctor who would call back within 2 hours. I did wonder if he had a record of my answers to the triage questions on his screen. If not why not? I asked if a prescription for Co Codamol, (on my repeat medication list), could be sent to my local pharmacy because I didn't have many left. He could, but said that no local pharmacies were open till Monday.
The local doctor phoned well within the 2 hours. She also asked similar questions. She decided that I needed Diazepam as well as the Co Codamol & all the other pain meds I normally take. She said a local pharmacy was open at 10.00 so my daughter could pick both meds up.
So the system worked. It took some time, during which I was in a lot of pain & was very disabled. But the drugs came & worked within a reasonable timescale. Unfortunately the Co Codamol wasn't the soluble one, which I have on repeat, but that's not the end of the world.
There is obviously a strict protocol in place to deal with patients in situations like this. People were efficient, helpful & sympathetic. So I'm not complaining at all. I'm very grateful.
I just wonder if the process could be less dependent on so many people & therefore quicker & cheaper. For example, could the triage questions be avaiable on line & on an app, so people could answer them themselves? Could those answers be put on the NHS system & be accessible to all medics involved? In a case like mine, could the patient be referred directly to the local on call doctor from the triage respondent?
I don't know whether there are good reasons why my suggestions wouldn't work. But I do think that the NHS could learn quite a bit from listening to a patients journey through the system as it is.
The bottom line is that, whatever its imperfections, the NHS is wonderful & we are very lucky to have it. I hope the politicians get a grip & give us the Health Service we all deserve.
Poor you - back pain is pure hell. I'm glad the system worked for you. I only wish I could say the same. Dialling 111 didn't work for my husband when he rang it on a Sunday after a suspected stroke. It wasn't a stroke, and obviously the operator decided it wasn't and pushed him to the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the queue. The doctor was supposed to phone within 6 hours. No call back until 27 hours later, from a nurse, who told him to get it checked out in hospital. By that time I'd got him an emergency appointment with GP who'd sent him to hospital where heart syncopy was diagnosed. I will NEVER use 111 again!
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