Jeremy Hunt's advice on children's rashes

RASH advice please
4 year old with an all over body rash and loss of appetite . No temperature.
Looks like measles and seems itchy .
Any ideas please ?

I take that point Jess but it is only part and not 'instead of'

Agreed Anya but when the NHS England is under such pressure, and the man in charge, who has been in charge for several years now, and who has no medical qualifications, suggests that googling rashes is part of the solution to the mismatch between supply and demand then that is noteworthy.

My GD had a couple of red spots on her tummy the other day. No other symptoms, she was happy, eating well and sleeping normally. But these spots did not pass the tumbler test. We tried several times. They did not seem to fade under pressure. Meningitis and septicaemia can develop extremely rapidly and is often fatal in babies, so DD rang 111 and an out of hours doctor rang her back. As soon as she said the spots didn't fade under pressure, even though she told him the baby seemed absolute fine otherwise, he said, bring her straight in to the out of hours centre. He wasn't taking any chances. Turned out to be nothing and the spots went within 2 days.

If proper medical advice was available quickly, at all times, and all doctors were as efficient at diagnosing as the best ones, then I'd agree completely.

Don't forget this discussion arose from the death of a child with undiagnosed sepsis. And this wasn't a one- off case. Time and time again doctors, nurses, A&E departments are failing in their diagnoses.

No one is suggesting that looking up a rash, or any other symptom, on the internet is preferable to good medical care. Nor should it be instead of good medical care.

Too many deaths like this have been slipping under the radar. But, by making a public fuss, after the findings that the NHS let them down, these parents have raised the profile of sepsis AND perhaps other parents, when faced with being labelled 'neurotic' when they know something is wrong with a child, will feel able to challenge sloppy medical care at the source, before it's too late.

Meningitis charity not at all happy with him
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jeremy-hunt-condemned-by-meningitis-charity-for-making-a-serious-error-of-judgement-a6847106.html

The point about Jeremy Hunt is that he's telling parents to look at rashes on the internet if they are worried when doctors are always telling us not to go trawling round the internet but to get proper medical advice.

Yes my DGD's allergic type rash with a chest infection (stumped GPs and DIL who is nurse) turned out to be an obscure kind of pneumonia in which the body reacts to the bacteria like an allergen. (the kind of interesting one could do without)

They have frightened people off going to the doctor in case they are seen as time wasters. Only when my daughter called me - she couldn't move because of the pain, did we get her to the doctor as I realised she had something serious. She was blue lighted from the Drs surgery, she had pneumonia, pluresy and sepsis. My sister in laws BiL, (42) died after contracting pneumonia following the flu, he had been ill in bed for two weeks and had visited his GP, who diagnosed flu. When he was in so much pain his wife called out of hours service, a locus visited - who basically told him keep resting, and keep up with fluids, as he had flu. There was no improvement and two days later his daughter found him dead in bed.
So I think it is unsurprising that people are going to AnE because those staff are more used to life threatening illnesses and conditions.

Diagnosing rashes is really difficult. My DDIL who is a paediatric consultant dental surgeon was so worried when her baby son had a rash. She tested with a glass and still rang her GP to discuss things with a doctor. At the time I thought she was over reacting a bit. Now I think she was completely right.

Anya - because some of the things that cause rashes can prove fatal so rapidly maybe?

'Dr Spock' is very old-fashioned - but very good on recognising rashes etc.

Nonnie children can still contract measles if they've had the vaccine. One of mine did so it's always worth double checking.

There was a very good NHA member standing against him, Penstemmon, the one who stopped him closing A&E in a London hospital, I think. A shame she didn't win.

I had my son in 1976, in those days we stayed in hospital for about 8 days. It was March so the heating was on and it got extremely warm. My son developed a rash which made a junior doctor go into overtime, he poked proded ,took bloods and urine. I said to him that it was a heat rash. I'd lived in the tropics and knew what prickly heat looked like. We had to stay in for longer because of this. He finally came onto the ward and sheepishly told me my son had prickly heat. I knew because of experience but had that happened to someone else it could have been a huge cause for concern

Penstemmon I feel exactly the same about my MP and he bats for the other side. I hate him, not to put too strong a word on it. He is out for himself and s** the people he is supposed to be representing.

I just want to make it clear..whilst JH is my MP it is not my fault, it was not my vote!

Jess I disagree. If you read my post I did not say what you infer. I said we would know whether to call a doc or not. That would be based on all sorts of observations including putting hand on forehead to see if it was necessary to take the temperature. Of course if we didn't recognise the rash, for example chicken pox when it is going around, then we would suggest calling the GP. I didn't call the GP when 2 of mine had CP but did with the third because he was clearly very poorly.

These days there would be no reason to recognise measles as children are vaccinated against it.

Just seems daft to call out a GP for every little rash when the child is reasonably healthy, whatever it is is going around, and mum and grandma don't think it is serious. No wonder the NHS is so stretched if it has come to this. Back in my day........................

I really don't understand what the fuss is about.

I always Google symptoms in myself and my DD and DS do the same for their children. It's not instead of visiting a GP (though it does cut down unnecessary visits) and can be as well as. When the GC had chickenpox I, as grandmother, was asked for my opinion on the spots. Then, a visit to GP to confirm.

Had I not been on hand, they would have googled the spots.

Am I missing something here? I'd genuinely like someone to explain why it's considered wrong to suggest a parent google the kind of rash their child has, as then they can reliably inform someone at the end of a phone line eg Out-of-Hours GP, Practice Nurse Orc 111, rather than just try to describe it without reference to a photo that the other person can access too.

Perhaps Jeremy Hunt would like us to start looking up treatment on line as well. We could all start buying drugs on line and refusing to vaccinate our children. He wouldn't need to provide any doctors at all!

Like the rest of us, GPs can make mistakes and in the case of GPs these mistakes can have desperately serious results. Non-medics on a telephone line reading from a prepared script are even more likely to make mistakes. A politician recommending diagnosis from photographs on the internet is just plain wrong.

luckygirl
My gp father missed my glandular fever as well! IT was when I was a first year medical student. The student health service had told me I was suffering from depression.
I went and sat in the queue in his surgery to see his female partner in desperation. She guessed immediately

GPs missed two life threatening conditions....and I mean my son and I were seen by several....my brain haemorrhage was dismissed as anxiety, even though it was text book and I told the doc what I thought it was to be told I was talking rubbish....my son had encephalitis and we were initially told he was just tired and he was seen again by a diff GP who said he was fine , only to have a fit on the floor in front of me at waitrose five minutes later....
I recently have been misadvised by a GP who told me I could take st.johns wort with my prescription medication which turned out to be wrong!

Then there was the GP who was concerned about some lumps on my small sons head...quoting cysts etc....when they were insect bites that disappeared in a couple of days.
I reckon there is more information on the internet than in a bad
gps head sadly....

As in you have to laugh, otherwise you would be crying.
How can people not see what he is doing to the NHS?
Anyway, when his daughter was ill, he took her to A&E rather than bother his GP. He didn't just look it up online.

Rueful humour might best describe it I think.