Medicine is changing as patients get older and sicker

Our emergency departments are under pressure as we see increasingly complex cases — only working together can make this sustainable, writes Professor Adrian Murphy 

The uncertainty makes the decision to send a patient to the emergency department a lot more complicated.

The waiting room is not what it used to be. Much has changed in general practice. It used to be a place where doctors could mostly filter out the less serious cases and buffer their patients from the more complex problems. 

But now, it's right in the middle of all the chaos. Patients are coming in earlier (or later), sicker, or with stranger symptoms, and sometimes many of these things happen at the same time. The familiar patterns of the past, like the usual coughs and colds, urinary tract infections, and childhood fevers, are still there, but they've been pushed aside by more complicated and uncertain cases.