Do non NHS people realise how bad it is at the moment?

[DoyouknowJo]

I had to justify to my managers manager why I needed to spend £7 on stationery. Stationery. Some biros, some staples and a box of envelopes.

One of my colleagues chairs broke and she was told to apply to charitable funds to get a new one.

Everything is held together with sticky tape and blu tac (literally and figuratively)

We have four members of admin staff bunched into a desk meant for two, because there is no money to pay IT to put a new port in on their desks.

Waste toner cartridges are on lockdown. If yours is full you should take a scalpel, cut the seal open, empty it and then stick it back together and put it back in the printer. Don't worry about all your printing then being covered in smudgy ink. We're broke ya know.

And some fucking idiot turned up to A&E today...because their arm has been hurting for two months and they are off on holiday tomorrow and could we sort it please.

I'm thinking of starting an anonymous instagram account to get all this crap out.

The claim that money is wasted by missed appointments is mostly rubbish. Whenever I go to my GPs I have to wait an hour. IF everyone turned up it would be even longer and I bet the whole system would breakdown.

Whereas I’ve never waited more than five minutes.

KazzyHoward Slapping Doctors with huge tax bills for having the audacity to have paid into the pension scheme they were told to pay into at a rate that was non negotiable, is hurting patients not just the Doctors. How? Because lots of Consultants and GPs are now going part time or retiring early because they can't risk getting those tax bills every year, it's not financially viable for them to stay in the pension scheme or to continue to earn their full time wages. So hospitals and GP surgeries are losing even more Doctors that they cannot replace. It was on the BBC website last week but unfortunately not reported on the TV news. It's sad that the public will simply think "oh greedy Doctors moaning" like they did when the junior Docs were forced out on strike by that vile little weasel Hunt.

Treat your NHS staff badly and don't be surprised when they all disappear.

because lots of Consultants and GPs are now going part time or retiring early because

Because they're also usually earning more than £100k so are suffering the 62% marginal tax rate on their earnings over £100k too, which is also causing them to reduce working hours, refuse extra shifts, etc.

But as I say, there is general public support for "taxing the rich until the pips squeak". The doctor situation is a direct consequence of this as they are "the rich". You can't then decide to have one set of tax laws for some rich people and a different set for other rich people. Doctors were all in favour of higher taxes to fund the NHS - they've got their wish. Shame people didn't think of the consequences.

@Dungeondragon15 - you probably wait an hour because appointments are prioritized at good GP surgeries. That means if a real emergency walks or calls in everybody else will get delayed.

I work for the NHS too and every day I’m frustrated at the sheer amount of physical wastage and also time wastage. I moved health boards and now work for one that is funded directly from the government and is the only hospital in that health board, therefore we don’t have the funds divided up between us and X amount of other hospitals in the health board. This hospital seems better in ways because of that, we’ve got specialist things that other hospitals in our area don’t, we have a dedicated research centre, we don’t have an a&e etc etc but there’s still so much that regularly frustrates me.

For example the other day we had no linen in the whole hospital other than what was already on the patients beds. No pillow cases, no sheets, no gowns. We fight daily to have an extra bag of pillow cases for our unit as we use so many pillows, it’s utter nonsense.

We regularly use 50ml and 100ml bags of saline/glucose but it’s actually cheaper to use what you need out of the 1L bags and bin the rest which no one would do as most of our infusions go into 50 to 100ml. We use amps of saline and water for injection multiple times a day, again it’s the more expensive option but if you suggest using one bag of saline per patient which is named and dated each day to make up infusions for that day, infection control say no. There’s a million things like this each day, so much money is thrown around, it’s incredibly frustrating.

Wrong, there are at least 30-40 h each month that are wasted, for each of the GPs at the surgery, simply by people not showing up.

Yes, but assuming they work 20 days per month, that's just one missed appointment per half day session. I'd be incredibly surprised if that could be beaten whatever they did. There'll always be the odd missed appointment. It's not as bad as they make out and is just the same old NHS patient blaming. I'm sure the GP didn't sit there for 10 minutes twiddling his/her thumbs - don't they claim they spend hours per day on paperwork, so they can just do something else, assuming they're not already behind schedule!

shockers an ambulance costs around £90/mile to run. That figure might be a little out of date now. But all those people who feel they are entitled to hospital transport probably cost the NHs £1000 just getting to the hospital and back, before they’ve had any medical treatment or advice. Unless you are harmorrhaging, can’t breath, have severe chest pain, anaphylaxis, have had a cardiac arrest or broken a leg (you can get a cab with a broken arm) or are wheelchair or bed bound you really don’t need an ambulance.

I don't know anyone in a private company now who works less than a 50-60 hr week just to keep their job! In the public sector admin staff seem to work 36 hours and leave on the dot.

I am now rolling my eyes so hard I can see my brain.

If we really want to save the NHS then ban alcohol related visits to A&E.....you'd save triiiiiilllllions

I think its plainly obvious its failing to anyone that regularly engages with the NHS OP, hardly news is it. I feel sorry for the staff who clearly lack the resources and time to do anything the way they want or need, but mainly feel sorry for the patients and the chronically ill who take the brunt of this. Work stress and disillusionment are bad yes, and it's awful- but I don't think it would be helpful for me to start an anonymous instagram as a chronically ill person who receives appalling care and endless admin failures/negligence as a result of rushed appointments or lost letters or rushed receptionists. People know how bad it is OP. Everybody wants it to do better for all involved. You are not BU to want that.

There's also a lot of "false economies" which I saw starting just before I left

This x 1,000,000

The NHS isn’t in free fall just because the current conservative government want to privatise it. It is in free fall because for decades there has been so much wastage because doctors in order to “save” money have only treated one symptom at a time.

Back in 1980 my dgf went to the doctors. 5.30pm appointment Friday evening.

His symptoms were indigestion, pain in his chest and pins and needles in his left arm. He asked if he was having a heart attack. Doctor told him not to scare himself and he wanted to get the indigestion under control and then seeing if the other symptoms would alleviate on their own.

Because we think he mentioned the indigestion first that is what he got treated for.

He came out with a prescription for Rennies. He was dead 7 hours later

Back in the 70s I couldn’t eat or drink anything without being doubled over in pain

It took me 3 years and several psychiatric appointments (they thought it was all in my mind), my weight plummeting to 5.5 stone and a stand up argument before I was allowed to go for a Barium Meal test for stomach ulcers. Which is what I had and what I had told them in the first place.

I could go on. Every member of my family has been affected by this health service and whilst they might treat them for what is wrong eventually, if they are still alive ultimately so many years are spent in agony whilst the dr plays the game of guess the diagnosis.

Only now are we seeing the results of this utter mismanagement of patients care and the blasé way doctors like to discover what is wrong with a patient themselves and get very angry if you say what is wrong with you.
Their way has wasted millions every year and it is now all coming home to roost.

Brexit has seen a huge loss of qualified nurses and fewer recruits.We aren’t training enough to meet demand and many who graduate don’t enter nursing

Nursing used to be something that you went into at 16 and learned on the job doing a day release type scheme.

I don’t think Brexit has anything to do with why we don’t have enough nurses. Friend was a nurse she was made redundant. Brexit might have scuppered the plan of getting rid of our home grown nurses that had risen through the grades and stopped them bringing in cheap labour from Europe but making nurses redundant was down to the NHS

It also can’t be a surprise that someone with a degree might not want to go into nursing when they have run up huge debts getting the degree

@oliversmummy, you do know nursing is a specific degree for - you know nursing? I know someone who’s got a criminology degree who did a masters in nursing. Demand was very high for that masters course.

Yes I do know it is a specific degree but how many who actually do the degree then use it to do something higher paid than nursing.

Blaming the patients is wrong. It is up to management to do the best with the piss poor funding they get. Nobody really wins at the moment. Although, that said, we are bloody lucky to even be complaining about this when there are vast swathes of the world's population who can't even access clean drinking water.

Did you not read the rest of my post? A nursing degree doesn’t really equip you for much else.

But the problem with it all being degree based is that doesn’t mean you are always getting the right people. Yes they may be good at doing the job on paper and be able to write a fantastic essay but can they chip in and get their hands dirty and relate to the patients?

My dad was a senior nurse, he had no degree his training was on the job. Before he retired 10 years ago he was talking about students coming through making comments like “but I can’t clean up poo I’m doing a degree” - not what we want or need in a nurse!

It isn’t a job where the academics should be the top priority. It’s about more than that

I agree @Sirzy and so do all the nurses who trained before 2000 but that’s how the training is done now and there’s no going back.

A nursing degree doesn’t really equip you for much else.

Very few degrees are actually useful for specific jobs. Even an accounting degree doesn't make you an accountant. Most trainee/apprentice accountants have a degree in something other than accountancy.

there’s no going back

Of course there can be if there's a will. Apprenticeships are becoming popular again, and are growing, particularly in more academic disciplines. For example, chartered accountancy used to be a degree-entry only entry requirement, but now you can an apprenticeship and qualify without a degree. If those who run the NHS, i.e. govt, unions, etc were willing to move away from degree entry, then it could happen.

But a nursing degree is for a specific job. Just like medicine.

Have you made a policy decision to disagree with me on every thread @Kazzyhoward?

chartered accountancy has never been degree only. You’ve always been able to qualify on the job.

I think nursing has become so much more complex in the last few decades it’s unlikely to be opened up to those without a degree, and I say that with no offence meant to those now nursing before degrees became mandatory.

The need for degree without Bursary for nursing and midwifery is an absolute scandal

chartered accountancy has never been degree only. You’ve always been able to qualify on the job

But you used to need a degree or equivalent to actually become a trainee member of the ICAEW - people with just A levels weren't admitted unless they did some kind of "conversion course" at Uni. As for "qualifying on the job", you can't qualify any other way - there are examinations and experience requirements whether you have a degree or not. All a degree does now is to give you exemptions from a few of the ICAEW exams.

I actually saw a job advert for a local hospital for what seemed to be a nursing apprenticeship of sorts, I'll see if I can find it.

That’s only one type of chartered qualification though. It’s not true that you couldn’t qualify without a degree in the past.