Mumsnet Talk

Great thread

I was delighted by the MNT reaction to the DM request. When you read the papers you are inclined to think that everyone in the UK must think that all Doctors, nurses or any professionals come to think of it, are incompetent, lazy, overpaid and unprofessional bunch to a man and woman!. It is so depressing for these dedicated, hard worked, well trained and dedicated to take day in day out. The GP bashing going on at the moment is totally politically motivated and the DM journalist is just a lackey doing the governments work to manipulate public opinion whilst they actively work to dismantle the NHS as it stands. The pressure on GP,s is unbelievable at the moment and yet they still do a magnificent job to act as gatekeepers of the NHS. Here is a story that you won't find printed in the mainstream papers as the profession does not seem to have as much influence as the government to get their voice heard: www.gponline.com/bulletin/daily_news/article/1172817/dr-kailash-chand-dh-stop-bullying-gps-contract/?DCMP=EMC-ED-News,jobsandCPD-1172817

Btw my husband is a GP and I barely see him due to the long hours he works for the benefit of the local community with his many similar colleagues. I do see the many lovely letters and cards he gets from those he has assisted including mothers and children. Maybe if the DM dedicated a few pages to these stories they would sell as many newspapers as the negative press they are dedicated to.))))

I see that it is one-sided, Viva. And that the DM is totally into scare-mongering - like I say, I can hardly believe I'm actually writing anything defending it. But actually, in this particular case, the pregnant woman who reads it and is scared that an incompetent cervix won't be picked up? She's too right, sadly. The NHS is terrible at taking certain early pregnancy problems seriously. Some things are on their radar, but some things - IC among them - are really not. There are still women in this country who lose baby after baby through late miscarriage because of it. I won't go into detail here, but it's not a good state of affairs, and I'm not just talking of my own particular case (when I was mentioning classic IC symptoms for weeks, to universal dismissal by everyone from midwife to senior registrar).

Don't get me wrong, I owe my son's life to the excellent NHS care I and he ended up receiving. But it was shutting the door after the horse had bolted. In the particular case you mention, the DM can scaremonger all it likes as far as I'm concerned, because if it gets any woman to press harder in the face of dismissive medical professionals if she is getting IC symptoms, it might actually do some good.

Looking at the comments below the article confirms my fears;

"I've never heard of such poor quality of treatment for OB patients as I read on this site. I'd be scared out of my wits to be treated by a physician or nurse in the UK for any reason, especially if I were pregnant or a child."

Well the DM article has made me cross Marmoset

Is it poor practice what happened to that woman? I have no idea and neither do the DM....thats what makes me cross. The one sided version of the story.

If she has had poor care then I totally agree that shouldn't be covered up and defended. But I do know its quite possible to have a normal length cervix one day and then a day or 2 later its starting to show signs that its shortening. The article states that she had scans for bleeds and abdo pain so they should and probably did look at cervical length - these weren't routine scans.

Of course I could be wrong and they could have been totally incompetent. However the hospital won't even have been asked for their side of events, and I would imagine they can't defend themselves even if asked. So the DM writes an aritcle based on a non medical person's understanding of what happened. The reporter has no idea what happened or what best practice is, etc.

The thing that annoys me about this sort of article isn't that it shows the NHS in a bad light as such. But its the scare mongering aspect of it all. The pregnant women who will read that and then be scared that if they have a problem it won't be picked up, etc. When in the vast majority of times problems are picked up.

I see where you are coming from witch but I think most of the anger is directed at the Mail than her personally. Coming on here, wording her OP in that way wasn't the most intelligent thing she could have done either. She would also have earned some respect if she had come back to answer the questions, though I understand that would be difficult.

I feel a bit sorry for Zoe- I'm sure she's got bills to pay just like everyone else, and writing this sort of stuff can't be very much fun.
I understand her sister is an A+E consultant so I'm sure she gets plenty of grief closer to home without the wrath of Mumsnet...

And it's entirely possible that a cervical length check in the early part of pregnancy might have flagged up a short cervix and led to greater surveillance and an earlier stitch insertion.

Pregnancy monitoring, particularly early pregnancy, in this country is far far below the standards expected in much of Europe and North America. I'm no defender of the Daily Fail, far from it, but there is nothing factually inaccurate about the article as far as I can tell.

My background to this is that I was blue-lighted to hospital with 3cm dilation at 25 weeks pregnant. I'd had a scan just a week previously for an unrelated purpose, which would and should have picked up on the problem.

Defending the NHS should not equate to defending poor practice within it, and Viva your comment has made me rather cross.

Viva, I'd defend the NHS 110% but there is a big issue surrounding poor diagnosis of incompetent cervix. It is categorically not checked for on routine scans.

Haven't read all posts, and will admit to bias, as I work in the nhs. But, I think that the media , encouraged by govt . Is colluding in a sustained attack on public services to discredit them in the eyes of its users, to enable an easy passage into private services.i am not saying that bad things don't happen or that things go wrong , but what happens everyday in the press is just plain bully boy tactics.

There's another NHS bashing and totally factually incorrect article in the Wail today about a women who had a miscarriage due to an incompetent cervix. Slagging off inefficient NHS scans which didn#t spot her shortening cervix until 18 weeks.

When its far more likely her cervix didn't shorten until 18 weeks at which point a stitch was put in. But there they are saying the stitch should have been put in at 10 weeks.

Years ago there were fewer A&E referrals- and more GPs like the one who diagnosed FIL's broken ribs as pneumonia and prescribed whiskey!

Otoh our current GP who got suspicious about dh's gastric flu and sent him to A&E was spot on: dh had Reyes syndrome and nearly died.

I am a GP. I see ill children every day. Every day I have to make the immensely hard decisions about whether a child is well enough to stay at home or unwell enough to need assessment in hospital. I care deeply about my patients and am kept awake at night by the worry that I might make the wrong decision.
I work extremely long hours (I have just got home at 9pm after a 13 hour day) in a stressful job with ever increasing demands. My job is made infinitely worse by the barrage of poorly researched and often totally untrue stories in the national press- especially the Mail. I resent being portrayed as lazy and uncaring. Yes there are some rubbish GPs around- but the vast majority of us work very hard and want to get things right.
Thanks mumsnet for defending us. You have no idea how much it means to read something positive for once!

The Wail ran a story today about some DJ who had been bullied over her choice of name for her child, based on twitter posts. So they do pick up on twitter threads, they are just ignoring this one.

Have to say, there was nothing at all in the Times which was twitter-related.

So how do we nail the b*stards?

This affects ALL of us and yet niche stories continue to make headlines.

And by all I mean that, because if people currently paying for private healthcare think what they pay isn't going to massively increase due to this they are wrong.

They're all colluding to bring down the NHS, if another paper ran it it would remind people that the NHS is pretty fucking decent, that many of us are happy with it and would not like it sold off piecemeal for profit.

Why is the rest of the press so silent otherwise?

I'm really disappointed that other newspapers haven't jumped on this. It's all over Twitter & they usually pick up all totally inane threads on Twitter. I can only think that they all do the same themselves, so they daren't castigate The Wail! Or else as someone has pointed out, the owner of The Wail has friends in high places. And the government seems to have a vested interest in bringing down the NHS!

I waited an hour to see my GP today, turns out an elderly patient had an emergency, did I mind? NO. Replace elderly with infant, replace GP with a 4 hour wait in A&E would I still mind? NO.

As far as I know people are treated in a&e in a case by case basis, so if I have been waiting 3 hours and someone comes in with an emergency they get treated first, I do not care if they are 6 months, 6 years, or 96 years old if their medical issue is more severe than mine then it is only right that they are treated first.

The NHS is fantastic, I am humbled and privileged to be able to get medical care that is free at the point of use. I do not see the need or point to try and get a story where GP's are lambasted for doing their job.

GP = General Practitioner not a pediatric doctor if a GP feels as though a different opinion is needed on a child's health I do not mind waiting.

Well if one of the other papers wanted an unbiased story written about gp targets, Nhs targets are causing umpteen problems for service users I'd be appy to oblige. My fee is £800 for 3000 words.

I'll get ds2 to practise- he does a good line in patheticness to order.

Hmm. None of the papers have picked up on this, despite it going viral and being very well reported on FB and Twitter.

Funny that. Normally the press is happy to run a MN savage journalist story.

Millais, I expect Zoe will be in touch any day now with an offer to run your "MY GP CACTUS HELL" story. Start practising your sadface now...

I bloody love Mumsnet so so much. It feels like a secret affair.

I guess we could blame the GP for the second one as the cactus was in the surgery waiting room .