Readin this has actually made me really sad
Firstly, can I jsut say that I hope your wife and baby are doing well.
I'm T1 since childhood and had a very stressful and worrying pregnancy with my 3 yr old daughter, who has, thankfully turned out perfect, until around 2 years old with tantrums etc, but I won't go into that tonight :wink:
I've been working as a Call Handler in NHS24 (the Scottish version of NHSDirect) for just over 2 months and I'm still in my training (with an experienced Call handler plugged into all my calls for guidance, as per our protocols on patient safety). The first thing I want to say about that, is that I have had many jobs in the past and lots of training, but none as intensive as this one! Everyone in my training group either has a degree or has clinical experience (though not qualifications), or both. So I take offence to this comment:
"not to mention anyone that defends them as doing the right thing when they quite clearly hire staff that do little more than complete an nhs symptom checker." Yes we do use algorithms - very complicated ones, which we have had 8 weeks intesive training on, and continued 1-to-1 monitoring for many weeks after. I can assure this poster that he would not be able to assess a patient using the software without a good bit of clinical training, as simply as he would an online symptom checker. These are created my vast teams of consultants with literally thousands of years diagnostic experience between them. It would not be possible for every caller to speak to a diagnostician on every call, so they have used their expertice to create these tools to help Call Handlers do their job, which might I add, is very difficult, and not everyone makes it through the training.
@lightwolfe I would urge you to use the link given to tell the patient liaison in your PCT about your story. If people don't complain, then these systems carry on without change. I dont know how your local service works, so I can't say what happens there, but in our Health Boards, there are teams of people who get every last peice of information and trry to work out a better "patient journey". When they work it out, changes are implented.
In my job, I do get particularly concerned when it's diabetes, I've been there and obviously have a bit more knowledge in that area than some of my collegues.
Please don't start throwing rotten tomatoes at me here, but I'm going to tell you the protocol form the little I know.
Firstly 999 is for emergency, when the public call, what people call an emergency varies from person to person. Your wife's symptoms were picked up by a clinician (DSN?) who said she had to be admitted ( I don't know, did she said urgently / emergency)
If she deemed it "immediately life threatening" then she has a way of contacting ambulance service directly, without 999 or "which service please?" operators. She has 2 sentences to speak and your address & name. Ambulance will then be dispatched immediately, without even needing to speak to you or your wife. This is only for people who are UNCONSCIOUS OR NOT BREATHING.
the next catagory is for URGENT, which is second behind the Immediately life threatening, and covers things like cardiac symptoms and breathing difficulties (among other things) and if an EMERGENCY 1 as above comes in before this has been dispatched, then this would have to wait (it rarely happens). again, the dsn can arrange this
The categories start to descend from here in order of seriousness. Then it becomes issues of mobility and transport, which as classed as non urgent - that is not to say they aren't urgent, its just the category!
In your wife's situation, there were many serious factors, including ketones, pregnancy etc and she did need to be admitted, but it would be a NON URGENT ambulance, as her life wasn't immediately in danger. If she had developed new symptoms or the existing symptoms got worse, she would be regraded, but they can only go on the symptoms presenting at the point of the call, not what might happen if she doesnt get help, if that makes sense??
Now everyone on here knows how serious DKA is, so that feels a bit like banging your head of a brick wall, cos you know what can happen! very frustrating!! :evil:
because you couldn't afford the trip to hospital, nhs direct should have arranged patient transport - whatever that is i your pct, but its not arranged through the ambulance service, even if its them who come and get you. Some PCTs have a taxi service as its way cheaper than ambulances for non urgent / transport / mobility.
As for the time she was in A&E hypo and given insulin, that gross misconduct! Did you make a complaint? I would have because that is not on! Something like that cannot happen on a phone service, as every word and key stroke is recorded and scrutinised constantly, and if patient safety issues arise, things are changed - quickly!
And it's **** that in this country drunks are treated quickly enough, but the A&E etc are not there to judge who has self inficted illness/injury, they treat symptoms by severity and nothing more. they are a patching up service, and the public who get themselves into that state are completely to blame, not healthcare workers who can't pick and choose which patients deserve treatment.
I really hope you do decide to speak to the patient thingymabob, only good can come of it
Sorry for the War & Peace and the typos - I was only reading in passing, but got quite upset at someone presuming to know that we were all call centre brainless folk with no qualifications. I work with nurses, dental nurses, a&e dr's and all sorts, and I'm highly trained and skilled in my job :crazy: and have a rough week at work, so it's nice to know there are so many out there who can do my job better than me.... btw, Recruitment is open again - would be nice to see how many of you pass the application process and 1st 2 interviews - gruelling doesn't cover it. !,500 applied for 150 posts, they only took 44 on, and have reopened the application rather than going back thruogh the old applicants, that must suggest something surely?
