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 funding needs sorting out. Management aren’t the problem. Everyone is stretched. Proper investment the only way forward, when privatised there will be more stretch & money taken out by shareholders not invested back in. Services that create revenue will be prioritised over those that don’t. At the mo external companies cherry pick ops that make profit & deprive nhs if that & nhs left to deal with non profit making services without the profit they’d normally have made from the ones that have been outsourced. That makes more of a difference

Nhs is full of brilliant inspiring staff & patients & never a dull moment, it’s not all bad, but seriously needs better funding to achieve full potential. It’s a bit cr-p being a dr & being taught the ideal way at med school but having to operate in an underfunded over stretched nhs once working & not having time or resources to give the care you want to give.

And the conservatives are suggesting tax cuts?

Yep. Had my dd admitted over the weekend. 1 doctor was covering 14 wards. There were 3 nurses on a ward of 16. The care we received was abysmal and I absolutely do not blame the doctors and nurses. How on earth are they supposed to do their jobs?

The NHS is broken, not fit for purpose, and needs drastic reform.

People are going to have to drop this 'free at the point of use' obsession and start coughing up more. When patient care is linked to funding (like the European system, a mixture of insurance and tax), then the link between consumer and producer will result in less abuse of the 'free' system and more efficiency.

I have been saying this for over a decade and am staggered at the refusal of an otherwise sensible and thoughtful nation to even think about it.

The NHS is now killing people. Very sadly in my own family my theories are being proved in that a DD was unable to get a GP appointment for a routine problem. Then odd symptoms happened which have been ignored for 2 YEARS (a test here and a scan there, but nothing joined up as she goes from uni to bf in a big town to home). I cracked and paid for tests privately, which says

1. sparked by the initial infection which required GP attention that she couldn't get
2. organ damage 20% scarring
3. agressive treatment needed
4. will end in organ failure.

So my previously healthy child has now got a long term issue ending in 'syndrome'. The NHS response? 'Lets wait and see'.

Terrible that my point is being proved by my own child.

The NHS is actually one of the more efficient healthcare systems, it really is. We spend far less than many countries as a proportion of our income - for largely similar outcomes.

We spend much, much less than the US for example yet have better maternity outcomes for example.

As more and more different providers get involved, the system becomes more and more complicated. More 'gaps' for people and information to fall through.

The internal market idea caused most of the problems. Then they were worsened by Tory cuts.

It's the Tories.

Sounds the same as MOD departments.

It seems everything and anything owned or run by our government is fucked.

Let's face it the UK is a totally fucked nation with absolutely zero prospects if my improvements. There is NO politician or party capable of sorting stuff out.

but nothing joined up as she goes from uni to bf in a big town to home)

@ScreamingLadySutch

That's exactly what I'm talking about- too many organisations, it's all so incredibly fragmented.

Sacking half the managers would save a truckload.

I often wish I'd trained to be nurse, my wages would be double what I earn now and I might be able to smile from time to time

No you would probably be sitting at home or working in the private sector having been made redundant

the fact that every £75 pair of crutches isn't taken back into stock

We have a pair of crutches that Dp used when he broke his ankle. Local hospital refused to take them back.

We don't actually need politicians to sort it out. There are plenty of people in the NHS who could do it- their hands are tied by lack of resources and stupidity like PFI, internal markets, CCG's and God knows what else.

Devomanc looks interesting though...

Management aren’t the problem.

Disagree. DH is doctor, one of my best friends retrained as a doctor after working as management consultant for the NHS and concluding fewer managers and more doctors were needed.

www.gmhsc.org.uk

Please do not think binary

'if we don't have the NHS then we will have USA'.

This is NOT a binary issue! The problem is 'free at the point of use'. Why? Because a) it gets abused, as lots of references to time wasters say, and b) the consumer/patient becomes an irrelevance in the real relationship between funder (the state) and provider (NHS), and c) the increasing onerous and self serving BUREAUCRACY which is used to manage the relationship between the state and the state body!

Trust me on this one! The hospitals of France and Germany work much better than here, because the patient is required to contribute something towards their treatment which is a mixture of tax and contributions. IF you are required to pay £20, the sore arms and drunken calling of ambulances will miraculously vanish. IF you are required to pay £20, the GP will respond to you a lot more, because you become a customer instead of a number.

I don’t understand why people don’t use minor injuries or walk in more often I’ve been to A&E twice both times I couldn’t breath (asthma attacks) every other time it’s been walk in which includes getting glass stuck in my foot and a horrible ankle sprain that I thought was broken it’s both quicker and you often can book an actual appointment with 111 A&E to me is if something is serious and if you go to walk in and they deem you to need A&E they will sharp send you down there!

Perhaps because they don’t have a MIU or a walk-in centre. Here it’s A&E or nothing.

"The internal market idea caused most of the problems. Then they were worsened by Tory cuts.

It's the Tories."

No, it isn't. New Labour swilled money on the NHS, it achieved not a lot and just contributed to our huge national debt which will still be being paid off by our great grandchildren.
New Labour proved for us that 'more money' is not the solution.

BOTH parties know damn well that the NHS needs to be reformed. This is not a party political issue.
They are just waiting for the other one to carry the can (told me by an insider sitting on NHS board at government level)

Spineless politicians.

And some people would like to see Jeremy the cunt Hunt as the next PM, or else that other fucking clown Johnson!

Screaming not everyone has a spare £20 or so.
Shall we ask people their banking details before we treat them, as they do in need the good old US of A?

To be a decent country to live in you need to have a well educated, well housed, healthy population, and the UK is failing in at least two of those ideals, however it could be a hell of a lot worse, I suppose, it could be like the USA.

New Labour swilled money on the NHS, it achieved not a lot

@ScreamingLadySutch

Actually it did. Prior to that, waiting lists were horrific and the NHS was running on unpaid overtime from doctors, nurses and others. Hospital buildings were ancient and crumbling. I remember staff bringing in a portable heater from home once in the 80's.

I do sympathise with the cash shortages. But.... My husband has cancer so I have had a lot to do with the NHS. Some people are brilliant, others have a frankly terrible attitude that would never be tolerated elsewhere. For instance, one nurse spoke so nastily to me - on the worst day of my life when my husband was being tested for a second cancer on top of the one he had, which she knew - that I burst into tears. I had been perfectly polite and all I had done was enquire how long the colonoscopy would take and when I should come back, but she bit my head off in a really vicious way, for no reason. I am not a shrinking violet believe me, but I was vulnerable, that day and deserved to be treated with compassion, not contempt. Then when I cried she abused me some more for making HER feel bad. My husband was terribly upset at her behaviour - he was about to have a test for a second cancer as I said - it was unbearable to see him so hurt on my behalf at such a nerve-wracking time for him. I will remember that needless cruelty until my dying day and I'm sorry if someone else gave her a bad time or there wasn't enough money or enough pens, or she was tired - but it is no excuse. Not everyone in the NHS is an angel. What is really terrible is I remember her more than the others, who were so kind and wonderful and I am afraid the incident made me less sympathetic to complaints from NHS staff about their lot. I expect in time I will get it in more perspective but if you work in the NHS you have people in your hands at a very vulnerable time, whether you are in admin, a nurse a doctor or whatever. If you speak nastily, or you muck up an appointment, or something trivial to you - it can cause all kinds of pain to those on the receiving end at a low ebb of their life. However hard your working lives are, you need to remember that.

Everyone in a public sector job has similar tales of woe

Yes, and interestingly they're the same tales of woe we've heard for decades - including those under governments which they now insist were much better for public services

I agree reform's needed, not least to get rid of the almost criminal waste and bring in proper accountability, but I see no point at all in pouring yet more money down a black hole until that's done

We spend much, much less than the US for example yet have better maternity outcomes for example.

One advantage of a centrally controlled system is that it is easier to standardize care protocols for common adverse events (like uncontrolled bleeding after birth) so that is definitely an advantage. Other measures, like cancer survival rates, are substantially better in the US because we screen for it more aggressively and can therefor start treatment earlier in the disease progression.

You can’t even whistle blow the really really dangerous stuff that goes on. Our whistle blowing champion is friends with everyone on Facebook. They’ll have your head on a stick if you raise anything.