When Nicole Murphy says many patients currently treated in A&E could be dealt with more easily at home (The Argus, January 6), while I do not disagree in principle, I wonder if she has considered the logistics of it.
If a pensioner has a urine infection, of course a nurse could administer the antibiotics needed in their home, but how would the ailment be diagnosed?
Would telephone answers from an elderly patient confused by pain ensure an accurate diagnosis?
Surely, before any treatment can be administered at home or in the hospital, the urine would still need to be analysed by a technician in a laboratory, as happens now in A&E?
And when little Johnny has an asthma attack at 2am, he will be fine if mum makes the correct diagnosis on the phone and all he needs is nebulising - but if not, trained staff will have to attend, which means they have to be somewhere on standby, ready to respond, with vehicles and the correct equipment.
Once the doctor or nurse has arrived and stabilised the lad on the nebuliser, what then? Do they sit around drinking tea and watching telly with the parents while the treatment takes effect?
In A&E, once the nebuliser starts, mum sits in the cubicle with her son while the doctor treats other patients in nearby treatment areas.
If this treatment is administered at home, does the doctor then leave for a couple of hours in the hope nothing gets worse and pop back later to collect the equipment.
What about patients in rural areas - Storrington and Henfield, and farms in the middle of nowhere? Try finding them in the black of night, with or without satnav.
Can you imagine the poor doctor trying to stitch up a nasty cut?
At present, the patient is placed on an adjustable trolley beneath a bright, adjustable, overhead light to illuminate the wound.
Picture the doctor kneeling on a lounge floor, stitching the same wound by the light of a 40-watt bulb, with the patient on a six-inch-high futon and the family dog sniffing the dressings and equipment laid out on the floor. If it were not so serious, it would be funny.
Where will all these trained staff, and the equipment needed to treat all manner of problems now treated in hospital, be based?
If Nicole seriously thinks this is feasible, I would be interested to hear how, as would the rest of the potential patients of Sussex.
Wendy Taylor
Manor Road, Lancing
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