When to see your personal doctor and when to call 112

Most reasons for seeing a doctor can wait for a booked appointment. A sore throat, cough, rash, lower back pain, long-lasting tiredness or feeling unwell without a clear cause belong in a family medicine clinic and, as a rule, do not get so much worse within a few days that booking would be the wrong route.

The family medicine clinic at Medicinski center Ljubljana works under the public health insurance scheme of the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia (ZZZS) and on a self-pay basis. For treatment covered by compulsory health insurance you must be registered with the doctor and you need your health insurance card. A self-pay consultation is also available to people registered elsewhere, and you do not need a referral for it. Your personal doctor is also the one who puts the collected results together and judges whether a specialist is needed at all.

Between these two extremes there is a middle ground: problems that are not life-threatening but cannot wait a week. Sudden severe abdominal pain, fever with chills lasting several days, sudden swelling and redness of one leg, difficult or painful urination with fever, and a marked worsening of a chronic illness belong in this group. In these cases call your personal doctor the same day or contact emergency medical services, instead of waiting for the first free appointment.

Some conditions do not fit this scheme at all. Call 112 if you have pain or strong pressure in the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, spreads to the arm, neck or jaw, or comes with a cold sweat, nausea and shortness of breath. The same applies to sudden weakness on one side of the body, a drooping corner of the mouth, slurred speech or sudden loss of vision; these are signs of a stroke and every minute counts.

The same list includes sudden severe shortness of breath with blue lips, coughing up blood, a seizure that does not stop, loss of consciousness, a sudden headache that is the worst you have ever had, heavy bleeding you cannot stop, and a baby or child who is floppy and hard to wake. Call 112 also if you are having thoughts of suicide. None of these is an overreaction and none is a reason for embarrassment.

When you call, say where you are and what happened, when the problems started, how old the person is, and whether they are conscious and breathing. Stay on the line until the dispatcher ends the call; the instructions you get over the phone are often the most useful part of the call. Unlock the front door, turn on the light and get out the boxes of the medicines the person takes.

The middle ground is the hardest. If you do not know whether it is an emergency, call – the dispatcher is trained to make exactly this judgement and the call is not wasted. In none of the cases listed should you drive yourself or wait for it to pass.

The clinics at Medicinski center Ljubljana are for planned care, not emergencies. Each provider manages its own bookings, and the link to it is on the clinic page. For general questions about the centre, call 01 436 82 17.