HED (Hospital Emergency Department) or NLP (Overnight Medical Assistance)? Where to call if your heart palpitations suddenly worsen, your baby's body temperature increases or your stomach ache keeps you awake? In an average district clinic, doctors and nurses finish their work around 6 p.m. Anyone who gets sick later has to seek help elsewhere.
When we check in to the doctor in the morning, we are not surprised by the fact that he is working for example from 4 p.m. and we understand that the appointment cannot take place sooner. If we feel unwell in the evening hours, we call the Night Medical Assistance (NLP) and expect the doctor to show up immediately.
If it turns out that he can reach the patient in a few hours (because he has many sick people), we give up waiting and call an ambulance for a common cold or sore throat. Meanwhile, there is another possibility. It is enough to go to the night clinic and seek medical advice on the spot. There is no zoning in NPL, so you can go to the clinic closest to your place of stay. However, this usually does not happen.
The rescuer is not a doctor, he cannot give you a prescription
There is a belief in the public awareness that an ambulance, preferably with the entire specialist team, should come to every call. And it does happen a lot. When the dispatcher hears that help is needed for a child who has breathing problems and a high fever, he sends an ambulance as a matter of urgency.
On the spot, it turns out that the child is 20 years old, with a runny nose and a temperature of 37.4 degrees C. This is a call for a trivial illness and, in addition, the patient - although the ambulance will come - will not receive the help he expects, because a team of paramedics comes with the ambulance.
And the paramedic is not a doctor, he cannot write out a prescription for medications or issue a medical certificate. If such a patient waited for the arrival of the NPL physician or he arrived at the clinic on duty himself, he would be examined, he would receive a prescription and a sick leave. The ambulance call did not solve anything, because the next day the patient has to go to the clinic anyway to get a prescription and release.
In big cities, the problem ends with the unnecessary spending of money, because the ambulance leaves a lotit costs. In small towns, where there are few rescue teams, a really seriously ill person may not receive help on time due to a trip to a minor illness.
ImportantAn ambulance instead of a tablet
Doctor Grzegorz Borstern, a specialist in internal medicine, talks about his experiences:
I have been working in the ambulance service for 32 years. Every day we travel to high blood pressure, menstrual pain, pain that occurs due to degenerative changes in the spine, pain after tooth extraction, etc. erka, i.e. the best-equipped ambulance that our rescue system has at its disposal.
I do not deny patients the right to fear for their he alth or life. However, I cannot come to terms with the lack of imagination and the lack of basic knowledge about my own disease. It is probably the fault of doctors who devote too little time to their patients. If someone has high blood pressure, they should ask their doctor what to do when it rises and get a prescription for an emergency medicine. If even Erka goes to such a sick person, there is nothing more than the patient can do - give a pill that lowers blood pressure.
30% of patients coming to the HED do not need immediate help at all
Such an event may also take place according to another scenario. The paramedic may decide that the patient needs to be taken to a hospital emergency department (HED). If the patient's ailments are not life-threatening, he goes to the so-called green SOR, where he waits in a line (often for many hours) to be seen by a doctor.
Everyone who comes here must have tests that will explain the cause of the ailments. This duty of the hospital reveals another absurdity of our he alth service. The data collected by the Supreme Audit Office shows that long queues at primary care clinics and specialists mean that SOR is treated by patients as a better way to quickly reach a specialist and perform tests.
30% on average patients reporting to the HED do not require a life-saving procedure. In the Bielany Hospital in Warsaw, out of 160 people admitted daily, 40 people require immediate assistance. In the Provincial Hospital in Zielona Góra, 80 percent. patients who have been admitted and diagnosed should not go there at all.
Why do we call an ambulance instead of going to the doctor?
Where is the SOR load from? There are many reasons for this. Most often people go to a hospital emergency department or call an ambulance because they have been looking forward to seeing a specialist for months becauseThey ran out of medications and there is a long line to see the doctor at the clinic.
Another reason: many he alth problems, especially in the elderly, were once taken care of by community nurses. Today, this institution is also almost non-existent. In the past, nurses used to visit seniors, now rescuers.
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