Given my advanced years and profound wide ranging knowledge, it wasn't until I took mum to A&E for something minor not too long ago, that I'd ever heard the word triage.
Now I find that if you want to make an urgent appointment at the doctor you also go through a phone version of it.
God, how things have changed in the few years we've been away.
Just in case you don't know, and please forgive me if you do, triage is, to quote the dictionary, 'the assessment of wounds or illness to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients.' I understand why its used in a hospital A&E Dept. but I was a bit surprised to see it in use at our local doctor's practice.
If you want an appointment that day, for man flu and the like, the receptionist will get a doctor to call you back who will go through your problem and then decide if you can have an urgent appointment. Actually, I quite like the idea. It would hopefully stop hypochondriacs cluttering up the surgery, or people with a bloody cold, when there might be more urgent cases, like man flu.
It's all a bit different to calling the doctor in France when it was more a case of 'when can you get here and can you bring a plastic bag for all the medicine I'm going to give you?'
Indeed so about France! And also "can you pop along to the pharmacy 10 meters down the road. If that's closed there's another 10 meters further down".
ReplyDeletePharmacy is the business to be in, in France. As you say they're all over the place and most of them sell absolute rubbish, as well as the medicines. Herbs and potions for every know and yet to be discovered ailments.
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