Harry Bizzle » Tue Jun 17, 2014 10:29 pm wrote:I think it's a perfectly reasonable idea.
Weight needs to be taken off the back of A&E departments. The idea that a cabin or bus with healthcare professionals capable of administering fluids and doing simple tasks such as suturing being "ridiculous" suddenly becomes a lot more reasonable when you consider that the alternative may or not involve police time, the ambulance service, a long wait in A&E, the time of an A&E doctor and in possibly the time of an already stretched on-call medical team.
That sounds reasonable, but maybe you should read the whole article?
The head of the Royal College of Nursing called for pilot schemes to be set up to relieve pressure on Accident & Emergency (A&E) units struggling to cope with high numbers of binge drinkers.
Dr Peter Carter said too many casualty patients were being left in fear because they were surrounded by aggressive and bloodied drunks "careering around the place" after falling into fights.
He spoke after nurses at the RCN's annual conference in Liverpool yesterday said drunks should be kept out of A&E because their intoxication was "no accident."
Nurses said casualty units were under "intense pressure" from increasing numbers of drunk patients, with 2 million visits a year now linked to alcohol.
This part reads less as setting up mobile first aid centres and more as scaremongering "oh my god drunk people run amok in A&E!".
How do you decide who should be kept out of A&E? One pint of beer? Two? Two pints plus a shot? What if somebody is sober in a city centre and gets punched? Do they get put in the booze bus or are they deemed worthy of a proper hospital visit?