Patients urged to only attend A&E if absolutely necessary

This is dangerous. It gets put out every year and will discourage many people who need emergency help not to seek it.
There are many more emergency and life threatening situations that require a visit to A&E or 999. Stroke, pregnancy complications, scalding, sepsis, broken bones, the list could go on. Narrowing down the reasons to seek emergency help into four bullet points is impossible and to try is totally irresponsible.
It’s beyond me why this gets published here every year when it is clearly so wrong.

Helping reduce the risk of infection is everyone's responsibility. Germs can be brought into wards and units by anyone and they can be spread to other people.

Good job we have people without medical qualifications and no experience of working in the NHS to correct the highly qualified and intelligent doctors/ other professionals who have advised Macc hospital.

Do you have any advice on their surgical protocols ? I am sure they would really value your input...!!

A&E should ALWAYS only be used for emergencies? The clue's in the name! Too many people are abusing the NHS which is why it's in the state it is. I have come across incidents like turning up with a grazed knee (the sort we always used to get as children!) and the lady who brought her child in because she had a hairbrush tangled in her hair and mum couldn't get it out.....

Matthew: I have direct experience of family being admitted to hospital with life threatening issues without the ’qualifying’ four bullet points of this poorly conceived press release.
Are you going to phone 101 or go to the GP if you have a broken limb? Anaphylaxis? I don’t think so. And how much blood loss is enough to go to A&E? How are we supposed to know? Sending people to the GP with A&E issues is just moving the issue elsewhere.
There is some merit encouraging people with colds and sickness to dial 101 or seek GP appointment, but this press release is clearly misconceived.
The vast majority of people who use A&E need to use A&E and should not be discouraged. The minor injuries unit at Congleton do not answer the phone and is rarely staffed. If people need treatment for injuries where else can they go?

The NHS website says the following:

”An A&E department (also known as emergency department or casualty) deals with genuine life-threatening emergencies, such as:

* loss of consciousness
* acute confused state and fits that are not stopping
* chest pain
* breathing difficulties
* severe bleeding that cannot be stopped
* severe allergic reactions
* severe burns or scalds
* stroke
* major trauma such as a road traffic accident

Less severe injuries can be treated in urgent care centres or minor injuries units. A&E is not an alternative to a GP appointment.”

So you can see from above that the local hospital has cut down the list (which is not complete anyway) removing several life threatening issues.

The above list does not include life threatening pregnancy related complications for example. So to cut it down further is just plain wrong.

You don’t need training in surgery to see that the message these managers trot out every year is more about managing hospital budgets (ignoring GPs) that saving lives or providing treatment when and where it is needed.

@Oliver.....your ability to use google clearly puts you streets ahead of medical professionals who have worked and advised the NHS for years. We should ignore the advise from Macc and just listen to you.
Maybe you should offer your insights directly to the hospital rather than just on this comment board ? I am sure your lack of medical qualifications and no medical history is just what they are looking for.....

Cllr Oliver Romain

To avoid any confusion, the NHS Helpline number is 111, not 101 as you repeatedly mentioned.

101 is the infamous room George Orwell wrote about where your worst nightmares come true.

However, I can understand the mistake given Thursday nights election results for your Lib Dem colleagues.

Cllr Mark Goldsmith
Residents of Wilmslow

F.Y.I. 101 is the none emergency ( since this year free of charge) police phone contact number ... & not a direct line where you can order a certain breed of pedigree dog!

Beat me to it Matthew with the responses to the silly comments.
I have always assumed that the clue is in the name "Accident and Emergency".
The sooner we can get the 70% plus of GPs who don't to work full time like most of the rest of us the size of the problem may be reduced.

As a relatively recently retired hospital consultant with 37 years experience in the NHS (I haven't worked in Macclesfield), a cancer patient and the mother of a junior doctor I'd just like to say some of these responses are just plain unfair to our hard pressed NHS staff. It seems entirely reasonable that an NHS Trust should warn people that waits are very long in A&E because of high demand, mainly because of very high rates of respiratory infections at the moment. The NHS is also hugely understaffed with 10,000 doctor vacancies and 40,000 nurses short. You can't grow highly skilled health care professionals on trees.....5-6 years to qualify as a doctor and a minimum of a further 5 years to be a GP and a further 10 or more to be a consultant. Nurse training is 3 years and then it can take many more years to achieve the level of skill that we expect of them; senior nurses and other health care professionals take on more and more very highly skilled tasks that used to be the preserve of doctors. Implying that 70% of GPs "don't want to work full time like the rest of us" is nonsense...if you worked the kind of 12 hour plus highly stressful day where you barely have time draw breath that most GPs work you might choose to cap your working week at 48 hours even if you do that over 4 days. We have an ageing population.....we knew this was coming decades ago but no action was taken to plan for this massive demographic change. When I qualified in 1981 we rarely saw patients over 80; by the time I retired people in their late 90's were frequently admitted to our wards. Many of these people are extremely frail, with multiple and complex medical and social problems, and it is often difficult to discharge them home partly because there is an absolute crisis in social care. That is NOT the fault of the hospitals. Of course the NHS is not perfect, but you'll definitely miss it if it goes. Please spare a thought for hard pressed medical, nursing and therapy staff, all the staff at your GP practice, the pharmacists, the 111 staff, the managers (yes they work very hard too...contrary to what you read in the papers), the paramedics, the porters, the catering staff and all the other very many people who contribute to a service that keeps many of us alive....without handing us a bill. Give them a break....and wish them a Happy Christmas....a great many of them will be working, day and night over the holiday, as they do all year round.

Pippa it would be reasonable for a hospital to warn of long waits, however this is not what they are doing. This hospital trots this press release out every year, its not a response to unforeseen or one off circumstances.
Seems an underfunded hospital is pushing people away from using the A&E dept for its intended purpose due to financial concerns.
A&Es all over the country are under huge pressure because of the lack of funding for the NHS, not because in a minority of cases people attend for the wrong reasons.
The NHS is an amazing thing and employs great people, however, the people behind this press release have got their messaging wrong and it’s not for the first time.

I think it entirely reasonable that the overstretched NHS should remind people that A&E is a precious resource for people with life-threatening conditions.

It ought to be common sense, but unfortunately common sense isn’t common these days.