Coughs, blocked noses and sore throats are among the complaints
HEADACHES, blocked noses and sore throats – just some of the trivial reasons nearly 2,000 people went to A&E in Greater Manchester last year.
NHS statistics reveal sheer numbers of people wasting medics’ time with petty health complaints.
The data, which covers April to November 2017, includes 30 records of people attending A&E because of a blocked nose.
The list also included at least 825 headaches, 613 sore throats and 522 coughs. There were at least 1,990 cases where people went to casualty with trivial complaints.
It is the first time the NHS has released figures of this kind, which provide analysis of A&E visits to NHS hospital trusts, broken down by chief complaint.
Not all trusts provided data, meaning the figures are incomplete – only three out of seven hospital trusts in Greater Manchester are represented.
It means the number of people actually going to the hospitals across the region for minor problems is most likely far higher.
While in some instances these complaints can be quite debilitating or the symptom of a more serious problem, in most cases someone with a headache, a blocked nose or a sore throat should be visiting their GP rather than going to A&E.
Experts were quick to point out that people going to the hospital with minor complaints were not the main source of pressure on A&E departments.
Dr Adrian Boyle, chair of the quality emergency care committee at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “The number of patients presenting to the emergency department with these complaints is relatively low and crucially these patients are less time consuming to treat and do not require admission. Many of these patients have responsibly tried to seek medical care outside the emergency department before arrival, either by seeing their GP or phoning NHS 111.
“The real pressure on our emergency departments comes from the increasing number of patients with multiple and complex problems patients who need to be admitted urgently but very often face long waits due to inadequate bed numbers.”
Across hospitals in England, more than 272,000 people were left waiting in A&E departments for more than four hours in February alone – 15 per cent of all attendances.