In my opinion patients and the public should treat it as urgently as a sudden sight loss.
High dose steroids are regularly prescribed in this sort of scenario in an attempt to minimize damage, and are likely to be more effective the sooner they are given.
That's why patients wait days before presenting.
It will be really nice when everyone has access to a medical AI that can assess these things instantly wherever you are.
And cost, now that insurance is playing the "we only cover ER visits that were necessary in hindsight" game.
For those of us at the top of the pleb pyramid it's not so bad, but for the average person, a single mistake can be ruinous.
They do seem to have some sway over the GPs though - Rather than A&E, they've refereed me to the Doctors instead. When I said it's impossible to get an appointment 111 told me to tell the Doctors they've referred me. At that point the Doctors seem to _have_ to see you the same day.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2017/10/16/anthem...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/29/16906558/a...
went to ER, they took a single xray, 5hours later doctor shows up and say "yeah its broken, we will put a temporary useless immobiliser worse than the one you came in with. here's the phone number of a specialist you can try calling monday". it was $4k for out of pocket btw. my top of the line insurance just said "we can't dispute anything from er visits".
Concerned my mother hadn’t improved and was being discharged, I called my sister, who happened to be a nurse upstairs at the same hospital. She came down and explained to the doctor that my mother was having a “visual disturbance”. As soon as that terminology was used, they took her for an MRI and sure enough, she had indeed had a stroke and was immediately admitted. This was after 4 hours of wasted time and an attempted discharge - simply because the doctor refused to listen and would only go by symptoms.
The doctor never apologized for his comments. While I wound up feeling justified in this case, had my sister not intervened, I would likely never have taken her to the ER again unless she was unconscious or bleeding.
To this day I still wait until I can't move/breath/feel to go to the doctor.
edit: unfordable health care and/or bad money education is how people end up putting health to the bottom of the list.
If you really want to shock a European, tell them that American children don't have free heathcare either.
(I remember discovering this when I was about 14, on holiday in the US, when my younger brother caught pneumonia.)
Having gone to the physician with complaints many times and be told to wait to see if the issue goes away (most of them didn't) or that there's nothing to be done about it, one is quickly trained not to bother going to a physician for anything short of a major injury.
(And this behavior is from a physician who is a Ph.D at a teaching hospital, no less.)
It puts me in mind of the Cuban embassy thing...