'I feel that patients are a nuisance for all the NHS' - Your views online

NHS Lothian’s warning earlier this week that patients should only come to A&E if their condition is “life-threatening” brought in a bg response from readers. NHS Lothian chief executive Calum Campbell warned that the health board was in a “serious situation”.

Chief executive Calum Campbell says NHS Lothain is facing a ‘serious situation’

Kate B-g: I feel that patients are a nuisance for all the NHS

Vicki Boudali: Get the doctors to start seeing patients then. Doctors need to function as normal again to reduce the pressure on hospitals and allow patients to be seen for some serious medical issues. Sending pictures to them is ridiculous.

Louk Mc: A&E doesn’t mean “Anything & Everything” – it’s there for genuine emergencies, not because GPs won’t see their patients! 111 will direct you to the most appropriate place. People with serious issues like chest pain, etc should continue to follow the usual emergency advice.

Rachael Hay: You can’t get through on the phone to 111 – no wonder people are heading to A&E. Something that may not be life-threatening may still be agony – ie a suspected broken bone or a wound bleeding profusely. Perhaps the minor injuries units should be open longer hours then people could access them instead of going to A&E. Most people are turning up at A&E because they don’t have anywhere else to go if 111 calls aren’t being answered within a reasonable time.

Pauline Downie: Instead of telling us what we haven't to do, could they please tell us what we can do if we are unkucky enough to fall ill as doctors don't want us in their surgeries.

Anne Cook: I called 111 a few weeks ago. I had to wait 90 minutes before speaking to someone. I then spent about 20 minutes answering their questions and told them which number the doctor should call me back on. After all that they called me on the wrong number so I didn't get the call. Surgeries are too quick to tell patients to go to hospital when you call.

Claire Caballero: If they want us to use the 111 service then they need to employ more clinicians and call handlers. I had to hang up after 40 minutes and take my daughter to A&E.

John Smith: The NHS privatisation process is going according to plan then! Pandemic or not, lack of access to frontline GPs will overburden A&E departments, giving the impression that the NHS hospitals are buckling. Very clever – the financial vultures are circling.

Anne Evans: I work in a GP surgery and they are extremely busy. They are still seeing patients but their workload can be doubled as they have a telephone conversation and if they feel the patient must be seen they give them an appointment on the same day. We have lots of patients in our surgery on a daily basis. They also have a lot of work to do behind the scenes but people don’t see this.

Helen Lee-Keenan

I dont think anyone is saying they are not busy, what people are saying is that in the majority of cases they are not seeing their GP and in some cases this is costing lives. It would also be good if, like hospital staff, they worked weekends. That would alleviate some of the problems.

Shonagh Gorman: Please stop blaming GP surgeries, this problem has been building for years and Covid has pushed it over the edge. I am a nurse and work in both settings – GP and hospital – and both are pushed beyond limits. The surgery I work in is open as normal. I see up to 40 patients a day, the doctors are doing normal clinics, minor surgeries, steroid injections, fitting coils and implants as they were pre-Covid. We live in such a terrible blame culture. I have never seen such an all-time staffing crisis in nursing, in over 20 years of being a nurse. Morale has never been so poor. The only people if any to blame are the government for not putting enough funding into the NHS years ago, this was always going to happen.

Ian Simpson: They did a survey at a major A&E department last week and 70 per cent of those attending had minor ailments and should not have been there in the first place. Every one takes up valuable medical, nursing and administrative time and possible X-Rays, scans, lab tests, treatment and medication . Some people assume it's “our” NHS so they have every right to demand immediate attention and resolution of their problem, however trivial.

Michael Burns: Where do they want us to go? A florist? Don’t worry petal, you'll be okay.

Brenda Turner: So we now have to become doctors and decide what’s wrong with each other. When do we start doing thing like stitches?

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