Little girl dies after being turned away from GP for being late
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-n...wales-43196732

According to this report this child was five minutes late for a GP appointment and was turned away and not seen. She died later that same day.

I don't care what the argument is, and yes the NHS and GPs are busy and people should be on time for appointments. A CHILD SHOULD NEVER BE TURNED AWAY FROM A GP APPOINTMENT.

I am ****ing appalled.

A lot more to this story than just the headline....

This is awful, I know surgeries have to draw the line somewhere when patients can't be seen, but with a child who has asthma this seems particularly heartless, particularly as the receptionist would have been aware that they were catching a bus

What a disgrace

How come they didn't take them to the ER? I'm confused

I doubt the doctor would have known that later that night the wee girl would have had a fatal asthma attack

if this is what people somehow think?

Well maybe he/she would have known if they didn't cancel an emergency appointment for a girl with a history of asthma attacks? :umm2:

I dont think it works like that, i expect the advice would have been the same, its just very unfortunate the girl had a fatal attack on that same day

I love how they tried to defend her being the first person that the surgery has ever turned away when they had an emergency appointment by saying her mum was lying that they were 5 minutes late and they were actually 18 minutes late

An extra 18 minutes cost her her ****ing life. Trash.

If I took a child to the doctors and they were not seen I would take them to A&E

If she was fatally ill, why would you not take her to A&E?

I do wonder about that as well, if you feel your child is unwell you wouldn't just give up if you didn't get a GP appointment, but then the mother said she had seen her worse so maybe thought she would be okay, either way its tragic

I assume the mother didn't see anything that seemed worthy enough to go to A&E hence she went to the doctors in first place.

This is really sad, especially as we're meant to be one of the most developed countries in the world. Of course I think if they knew she it was that serious they would have made time to see her, but most people that die you don't they're going to die until they're dead :(

"Recording a narrative conclusion, the coroner Wendy James said: “From the evidence before me, it is not possible for me to determine with certainty whether an earlier intervention would have altered the outcome for Ellie"


So not much to see here I am afraid. All ifs and buts

Well if the mother didn't see anything seriously wrong that required immediate attention, why is the GP surgery getting all of the flack?

If you're so late that the actual time to have an appointment has past and they have other patients waiting having booked their own appointments, I don't see how they can be blamed for this.

I know people die suddenly all the time, nobody can be blamed it's just one of those things. Terrible.

We all like to blame something when we have no other option. I would say the fault lay in putting the responsibility of assessment on a receptionist rather than any 10 minute late rule. It's a qualified doctors responsibility to evaluate the health of a patient, not a pencil pusher. It could well be that the little girl would have died regardless, she clearly was very sick, but this system of shifting responsibility on to those least qualified needs to stop

Bloody arseholes.you turn up at most surgeries 10 mins early to make sure you are there and you are still sitting there 20 mins later!!!! so to turn a child away because she was 5 mins late is disgusting.

I agree; they didn't have to give them a full appointment if it was deemed not necessary, but a medical professional's quick opinion should at least be required before sending someone away. Especially a child. It would take less than a couple of minutes.

It may well be the case that they wouldn't have seen anything of immediate concern and the attack that lead to her death couldn't have been predicted, sadly these things do happen, but we'll never know I guess.

It's a child, a child should always be seen.

If her mother thought she was poorly enough for an emergency doctors appointment then no question the doctor should have checked her.

A parent is not a doctor, you might realise your child needs to see the doctor but not realise it's serious enough for A&E. That's why you ask a doctor.

I'm a bit 50/50 with this. The child should not have been turned away in an ideal world and certainly not.on the say so of a non qualified receptionist but there are other alternatives too, most towns have walk in centres if you are not sure if you should be attending A&E, plus this sounds like a severe attack and could have struck any time. A very unfortunate series of events and my heart goes out to the parents

Isn’t there a number you can call to check symptoms like 111 and if they think it’s servere you have to be seen by a medical professional

They would stay open late to make sure a methadone user got their fix.