Helen Salisbury: Safety netting relies on a responsive system

Our waiting rooms are full of anxious parents, with children sitting listlessly on a lap or running around doing aeroplane impressions. This is one of the reasons I like to walk out to collect my patients: that first glance helps me sort the ill child from the merely shy when they then spend the consultation with their head buried in their dad’s jacket.Right now, it must be more frightening than usual being responsible for a young child, with so much in the news about the rise in hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses and about fatal invasive group A streptococcal infections.12 This is also worrying for GPs, who know the impossibility of picking out the child with a sore throat whose health will suddenly deteriorate, from all the others will make a rapid recovery with paracetamol alone.As we can’t routinely review every feverish child to look for signs of worsening illness,…
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