NHS Direct: A life saver...literally! (NHS Direct)

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	NHS Direct
Date:	27/06/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy and quick, saves a long trip to A&E unnecesarilly.

Disadvantages: They can't see your injury so you have to be clear and concise and truthful!

A couple of weeks ago my little brother was staying with me for a few days, when he and my husband went off to the park, they were having a kick around and my brother fell funnily on his leg and he couldn't walk properly, and it was looking funny and he was in pretty bad pain. I was about to take him to A&E not liking to take chances and thinking that something could be wrong with it, but then I thought of NHS direct, I have their number in my purse but have never used them before.

But this time, it was either sit in Warrington General for 6 hours to possibly be told it was a simple sprain, or make a quick phone call to the NHS direct helpline, so I took the latter option not wanting to sit in hospital unneccesarily wasting the doctors time as well as our own!

So, we phoned the number, you first get put through to a registrar, someone who takes down all your details and the patients details (if your not the patient yourself), they then ask some basic questions about the injury or illness, with me it was an injury and so they asked me things like where on the body it was, and if there was anything majorly wrong (i.e. major blood loss, or unconciousness) presumably so that they can send an ambulance to you as this is really quite more major than a sore leg....

Once they have established your not actually about to die, they then pass on the details to a trained nurse, and you put the phone down and told they will phone you back. When he said this I just thought oh god, it will be hours until I hear back from them! But no, just 5-10 minutes later we got a call back from them with a nurse on the end of the phone, once again we went through all the symptoms, he asked me lots of questions about the colour of the injured part of the body and the state of the patient, this call took around 10 minutes, and in the end he established that there was nothing wrong and that it was more than likely a bad sprain which could be very painful but wasn't anything to worry about, told us that if it got worse or the patient felt faint etc to phone back. But it saved us a long trip to hospital, and saved the hospital unnecessary costs to treat him.

The service we got was excellent and very helpful, and I wuill definitely be using them again! And I would recommend anyone who is unsure if an illness or injury requires medical treatment to phone them! They will also send out a doctor if you need one :)

The number is 0845 4647 and is available 24/7 which is excellent!!! :-D

Summary: A great service I will definitely use again!