Do A&E departments in the UK have a specific triage nurse/doc ? In many ED's here in the US if you bring a patient in who has non critical 'walking wounded' type stuff, we take them straight off of our stretcher, and stick them in the waiting room where they are put into the patient triage queue. This keeps the actual ED beds for actual ED patients who need them. It also means that people who call an ambulance because they think it'll get them faster treatment for a minor injury are sorely disappointed. The second question one would ask is whether this is a radical increase in patients leading to an overload of the A&E, or a fundamentally flawed system where all patients are funneled into an underequipped system when other resources (GPs, local clinics etc.) are available but largely unused. In my town we have a fairly nice local Health Center which does have such things as an X-Ray and the ability to triage, but if someone shows up with anything from a cut finger to chest pain, they call 911 and sit in the waiting room until we show up and drive them 30 minutes to the closest emergency department. If I had to guess, I'd say that it is professional liability insurance and lawsuits that prohibit doctors in this kind of facility from carrying out any kind of care - but maybe I'm just being cynical....