17 May, 2005 - 8:44 p.m.

1.It is not necessary to call an ambulance for nappy rash

2.Strangely enough, if you do find the need to call an ambulance for nappy rash, your wait will be just as long as if you had driven your nappy rash-ed baby in your own car.

3.Nor is a temperature of one day warranting of an ambulance.

4.Also, the ambulance does NOT drive you home again. Sorry.

5.Oh, and for the record, a temperature of 36.5 is normal. Not a fever. So, yeah, your flushed face and panting breath from running to the triage desk is probably a tad unneccessary.

6.if your child has had one vomit in the past two hours, I promise, s/he is not dehydrated.

7.Funnily enough, after working in a children's hospital for 3 years, I have seen children more dehydrated than your child who has only vomited once in the space of an hour. I also can tell the difference.

8.Although it may sound strange, the baby who is not breathing WILL be seen before your child with an infected mosquito bite.

9.If you have a cat, and the cat has fleas, those red marks on your child's legs are probably flea bites rather than meningoccocal spots.

10.A sore knee for 3 months is NOT an emergency at 4am.

11.Nor is asking how to get your 2 year old to eat his vegetables. Please do not call again.

12.And while we're on that track, neither is the question of how to get your young boy to stop playing with himself. You will find this out if you are talking to our male English nurse who does not put up with this when he is tired and grumpy. You may well get the answer "Look, I'm 30 and I'm still playing with mine, please go to bed."

13.When we have 10 people waiting, and I am on triage, I am being VERY nice if I agree to make your child something to eat while I have a second to spare. So I'd probably be inclined to say thank you after I return not once but twice from the kitchen to apologise for the lack of jam, and to make honey on toast instead. Also, a smile would be wonderful. I strangely enough didn't study for 3 years to become a toast maker.

14.If you see 4 doctors and nurses running into a curtained area of the department, carrying a heavy looking trolley full of scary looking equipment, it is probably not the best time to poke your head around the corner of the curtain to ask when YOUR child is going to be seen.

15.When I explain at triage for the 4th time that there is a very sick child in the department, and that is why you have been waiting a long time to see a doctor about your child's cold, that means that the child inside is probably dying and your child running through the play area is not. Stop asking.

16.When you have arrived with your child with a small cut across the nose, and then you see a blue baby being rushed through the door, you can safely say you have been put on the backburner. IF by some crazy chance you are still seen and out of the door, with a newly glued nose cut within half an hour, you are the world's luckiest patient/parent. So please don't write a letter of complaint to the department about not being able to consult a plastic surgeon (about a cut that did not even require stitches, let alone a plastic surgeon consult), and not having a nurse to help the doctor perform the 'procedure' (to wipe the brow, of course).

17.And for the last time, I do NOT know what your child's rash is over the phone. Can you tell me what colour my shirt is? No. I cannot tell you what your child's rash is.

P.S all of these have been taken from actual events of the past few months....

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