Is NHS Direct what you want when you are ill?

I spent most of the Christmas/New Year break in bed, suffering from (real) flu.

This is not an attempt to solicit sympathy (I am much better now, thank you, but still suffering from low energy levels) but to ask a few questions of NHS Direct.

First off — who do they think they are directing information at? Second — have any of those people who write entries ever tried to use NHS Direct when they are ill? And, third — why can't they provide the sort of information that users might find valuable?

On day four of my bed-based sojourn (and feeling really grim) I remembered that we had publicised a new symptom checker service for colds and flu from NHS Direct in The Pharmaceutical Journal. I struggled to the computer, switched on and found the checker quickly.

Things went downhill fast.

When you are suffering from flu doing anything becomes really hard work: reading and understanding the words, for example. The first few questions on the cold and flu checker had nothing to do with colds or flu. NHS Direct wanted to make sure I was not suffering from a heart attack or from meningitis. I started to lose the will to live and switched off. It was all too complicated for an ill person to take on board, difficult to understand even when you are in the business of health, and a weird combination of being patronising and supremely unhelpful.

What I was looking for was a short list of possible symptoms, how long each one might last and for how many more days was I going to think that life wasn't worth living. In short a list of what is perfectly normal when you have flu.