Patients blocking A&E with minor ailments? Here’s what’s probably going on

Patients blocking A&E with minor ailments? Here’s what’s probably going on

Picture a busy A&E department on a winter evening. Among the emergencies – heart attacks, broken bones, severe injuries – sits someone with a sore throat. Another with an ingrown toenail. Last winter in England, over 200,000 people turned up to emergency departments with complaints like these, leading many to ask: are people misusing A&E – or is something else going on? A perspective not always considered in this discussion is that the sore thro…