Urgent Health Problem?
Safety first: if you feel you have an urgent problem, then go straight to 111 Online
The 111 Online website will take you through a quick series of questions and decide the best advice for you, which may be:
- sending you an ambulance
- arranging for a doctor or nurse to call you back to understand more about what’s wrong with you
- arranging an appointment with your GP
- asking your GP to call you when they are next open
- suggesting you call your GP
- suggesting the nearest place you can travel to, to get help
- booking you into a pharmacy to get advice
As you can see, 111 Online offers many options. Some are automatic and don’t require waiting for a phone call back, and they are linked to NHS services local to you.
Not so urgent, but troubling – UK Symptom Checkers – NHS.UK and Isabel Health Care
If you are having troubling symptoms for a while, it can be a miserable and worrying experience. Using Google can create massive lists of complicated things to worry about, which are difficult to pick through and sort out, creating more anxiety.
Using one of the free, simple, quality-assured symptom checkers below can give you a short, organized list of potential problems to consider and possibly discuss with your doctor when you are ready.
We believe patients are the experts in their own health, and a better informed patient will be able to look after themselves better. So don’t be afraid to use these tools to learn about what might be bothering you, it might save you a few visits to your GP, saving both you and them time.
Each of these systems says they are not a substitute for medical advice, not intended to be medical advice and to seek medical advice from your doctor.
Isabel Health
The Isabel symptom checker is free. We recommend it because it has been developed over nearly 20 years, it is very quick and easy to use:
- you enter your symptoms in plain English, it doesn’t ask lots of questions
- you can enter as many symptoms as you want
- it gives you a list of what might be wrong with you that you can email back to yourself to share with your GP, highlighting any ‘red flag’ problems, and separating common from rarer problems
- it has been used in some parts of the NHS and on the EMIS Patient Online website [EMIS supply around 50% of the computer systems to GPs across England].
- Isabel, like any symptom checker, can only suggest some conditions based on the symptoms you have entered or help you decide where to get care.
NHS.UK
If you have never visited the Health A-Z on the NHS.UK website it is worth checking the wide range of health advice available on the site, including:
- symptoms
- illnesses
- online tools and checkers
- where and how to get help locally
The video below shows an example of checking headache symptoms using the NHS.UK website
Hopefully, you found this information useful. I use Isabel myself for a long-term nagging problem, a second opinion, or to prepare for a GP appointment. To be honest, I can’t recommend it enough.
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