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.

hebee - problem is, it would be pen pushers who negotiate the cost of bulk purchases of lightbulbs and non-branded cereal. IT consultants and updated national IT infrastructure would be needed to improve systems so that communication methods can be more consistent across the NHS and only patients who still need physical letters still get them. And re the issues with GPs and consultants working privately, you would need to go back to the foundations of the NHS when the medical profession, particularly GPs, were not entirely happy about its creation and needed sweeteners to get their buy in. If you couldn't get the genie entirely into the bottle at the inception of the NHS, when the Nation was actually of the mindset that we were all in this together after years of destructive wars and suffering caused by human selfishness and destructiveness, then why on earth would you expect to be able to do it, now? People are infinitely more self-centred and self-serving in their views now than they were, then. We all know our rights, but we only know other people's responsibilities.

Kazzyhoward - what makes you think a nurse would not be bothered by throwing away an expensive bag? Better that than kill the patient. As for inefficiency - that is an inevitable result of understaffing. Tired, harassed people make silly mistakes - inefficiency is the least bad of these mistakes when human lives are at stake.

Sadly, bad attitudes also tend to creep in when people feel exhausted, overworked and powerless. We don't have enough saints to fully staff the NHS, so we end up with a few flawed characters, and even a few sinners in there who react particularly badly to dire working conditions.

I work in this NHS- regarding biros I don't know why people can't bring there own to work? Every little helps 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think the NHS is amazing in a lot of ways and I'm grateful to have it. But it's not beyond criticism, and whilst I throw my hands up in horror at the thought of a USA style system, I do look across to the rest of Europe and think that their systems seem to work quite well. I don't hear horror stories from there of poor people being refused treatment, or medical bills bankrupting people.

Whilst in some ways people are very demanding (too demanding) of the NHS, such as timewasters coming to A&E with a sore finger, in other ways we, as a nation, are very accepting of its shortcomings. My child has recently needed a referral to a consultant and I'm told the waiting time is around two years, with possibly another 18 months or two years after that if it is decided that he needs surgery. There is a three year wait in my area for a child with life threatening allergies to see a specialist, and many other waiting lists are similar. I just can not imagine that any other wealthy developed nation has waiting lists like this. A friend in Germany tells me that she never waits more than a few days.

Graphista

Dps cancer misdiagnosis happened in the last few years.

I can list many instances with myself and family members which have ended in death or years of agony going back to the 70s. The NHS hasn’t been working for many many years.

I was referred to a psychiatrist at 11 years old because I got stomach ache every time I ate or drank something. Doctor and psychiatrist said the pain was all in my head.

Turned out 4 years later that I had stomach ulcers (plural) and gave me 6 weeks to live.

The NHS is their for certain services but I wouldn’t trust it with my life.

Last time we went to A&E Dd had slipped coming out of the shower and knocked herself out cold on the radiator

We had been out at a village fete all day. Cakes and cups of teas or soft drinks were the only thing available.

After sitting in a virtually empty A&E for hours. Instead of treating Dd I was ushered out of the cubicle and Dd said the doctor grilled her about how much alcohol she had consumed.
Dd doesn’t drink.

This dr believed Dd hadn’t knocked herself out but had whilst she was in the shower necked a bottle of something then because she felt woozy and I would have noticed said she had fallen and knocked herself out .
We ended up having to go back to A&E again the following day

I could save the NHS millions.

I would make drs listen to what their patients were telling them. It would certainly save a fortune in the long run.

isabellerossignol Perhaps that is because we have a huge shortage of consultants and people wanting to become consultants because we treat the junior doctors so appallingly. Nothing to do with the NHS and more to do with Jeremy Hunt.
My daughter wanted to be a paediatrician. She changed her mind because of her experience as a junior doctor. She didn’t want lots more years of horrendous shifts, weekends, little control over where she worked or lived, and no possibility life outside the hospital for many years. She changed to GP training and is loving being able to have a social life, to see her fiancé and to plan ahead.
We’d not have the problem if we treated junior doctors better - just don’t blame the NHS.

Many inefficiencies are because we now have a litigation culture and place hugely bureaucratic controls on frontline staff. Qualified nurses needing to write daily what the fridge temperature is on their ward - even if it’s got a temperature monitoring system, the accountability and hostile culture demands that they can prove the temperature was within certain limits. Time spent updating a whiteboard to show the planned establishment and the numbers actually on shift to appease Daily Mail readers. Time spent completing unnecessary risk assessments as assurance against litigious patients. Why would a healthy 23 year old admitted for a repair of a broken nose need a screening for pressure damage risk level or malnutrition risk level? Just a waste in reality but potential for significant compensation if that young person happens to bump their arm and it gets a bit red. Ambulance chaser law firms have driven an accountability culture that is the biggest waste of time and money. It’s greedy people that have provided the demand.

DoyouknowJo - you sound as if you're just about clinging to your sanity by the edges of your fingernails. Much sympathy.

Maybe the prospect of a snap General Election could mean a new administration who can wave a Magic Wand (please!) and banish this rabid mania for austerity?

Did Labour trebling the NHS funding over less than a decade "cure" all the mistakes, inefficiencies, etc?? Or did it just provide the finance to let the NHS carry on wasting money left right and centre.

@CherryPavlova I think we have a shortage of consultants due to the tax benefit / pension benefit to going part time vs full time based on their earnings. Same with GPs. They all now seem to go part time and do private work separately via ltd companies.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/24/doctors-will-go-part-time-pension-rules-not-changed-bma-warns/

"I would make drs listen to what their patients were telling them. It would certainly save a fortune in the long run." It shouldn't be so bloody hard for that to happen - it's basic common sense surely?!

Heeebee partly but after thirty years as an emergency department consultant, they probably deserve to step down a little but the problem is nobody coming up behind to fill the gaps, reduced EU numbers because of impending Brexit and other options that are more lucrative and less demanding.

Consultants aren’t leaving because if pensions. Please don’t believe the daily mail & sadly mainstream media not reporting correctly either. It’s all part of the plan to dismantle.
Doctors are having to consultant accountants to make sure that they are not actually penalised to the tune of £1000s by paying into their pensions. They’re not stopping working.
There are fewer consultants because working conditions are difficult, esp as you get older & there are fewer juniors coming through as fewer going into training and if those that go in, more are quitting part way through. Because of difficult and dangerous decisions. We all heard about dr bawa garba & the death of jack adcock. She was doing the job of three people on the first day back after maternity leave & her consultant in charge was double booked and not around as he was teaching. There’s lots of stretches like this which mostly go unnoticed except when tragedies happen.

It's not just pensions, though. Introduce more women to the workforce after setting up a male-dominated system, and make working hours and conditions incompatible with a family life of equally shared domestic responsibilities and you will get more people seeking specialisms that enable part time work (which in reality is full time hours by most people's standards in terms of actual work done, anyway), or dropping out altogether. It's yet another example of society's double standards, where lots of demands are made and rights claimed, but nobody wants to deal with the consequences of competing costs and demands. Instead, everyone gets cross with everyone else, because they are only thinking about their own needs.

Ps drs do listen - we have to go document and often discuss with seniors and to make decisions. but there are lots of differentials for each presentation. It’s difficult to get through a detailed history when you have 10 min per patient & you’re trying to get the “worried well” or inappropriate attendances because you know there are 5 ambulances coming with people with strokes, heart attacks, head injuries, stabbings, an unresponsive child etc. If the public could see behind the scenes they’d know.

The female consultants are more likely to not have had children whereas male consultants and trainees have lots of kids and non medic or stay at home wives

Drs wantnto provide the best care, have fully staffed dr & nurse & hca rotas and for adequately funded gps & social care so that holistic care is generally provided. Take away funding for all that & it falls apart.
For those who think the nhs is crap & should just be got rid of, you will most likely regret this when you become old or poorly or if a child or grandchild develops a serious or lifelong illness. Look at what happens to your demographic in the us- how much it costs & how many people go bankrupt or have to sell their homes because of medical fees

@Kazzyhoward, if you look back upthread there’s a link to a King’s Fund report evidencing the improvement in the NHS during 1997-2010. All that improvement has now been reversed. The Langley restructure cost £millions and made things worse, more £millions are now being spent undoing it all.

NHS management is shocking at lots of levels. You don’t need business skills or acumen, you don’t need to be savvy, good with people, clinically curious or critical of mind.

In most cases, you simply need to have climbed the ladder (often leaving a wake of destruction), to be willing to work full time.

There’s so little accountability because the people they are accountable to are just as bad.

Lansley even!

The standard daily mail/mainstream media gripes are often very much not true when u peak below the surface. Of course they make sense superficially, esp when it’s been trickle fed your whole life. I used to believe the same til I worked in the nhs.
I never realised the bbc & mainstream Medua lied until I saw the truth vs what is reported.
I used to think I was relatively well educated, grammar school, watched the news, read the occasional newspaper & watched news night. I was v v v wrong & we are all being misled. Look at who benefits.
It is quite obvious when you look - who owns mainstream media? Which parties do they donate to? Who has the biggest control over the bbc? The biggest voices are those with the most money & they will profit from nhs privatisation. The average person won’t.
Voting Tory or Lib Dem is like turkeys voting for Xmas with regards the NHS.
It’s a shame so many think they are well informed, as I did, but are really really not.

Dh is a hospital consultant and has been for about 14 years now. He used to love his job, he was proud of his specialty and the advances and improvements that he and his colleagues were able to make. At one point (before austerity measures started to have their effect) he had built up his specialty to be a national centre of excellence.

Now he hates his job. Literally can't bear going to work. He cannot believe what has happened to the NHS and it's staff under this Government. He feels hated by the Government he truly believes they despise him. And I totally understand why. We are taking a long hard look at our finances and will consider downsizing our house or whatever it takes to try and reduce his NHS hours.

The NHS isn’t only affected, look at teaching, policing levels, social services. So many teachers leaving as on yearly contracts, can’t get mortgages & special needs 1:1 teachers being spread across 5 or 6. It’s beyond ridiculous. We pay our taxes (unlike too many of upper earners & large companies) and deserve a better country. The people who don’t care are those in power whose children go to private school & will have plenty money & property. They spew the cr-o in the papers & just wait for everyone to turn on each other & vote them in again so they can take even more of our country’s assets for their own

With heeebeee.... I’d go as far as to say if conditions and pay were improved we could have all NHS workers only doing a 4 day week for five days pay... increase numbers so that In emergencies or to cover holidays/ sickness we could pull in staff from a larger pool.
Agency staff pay should be capped as this is draining funds.. Tenders for stationary etc should be transparent and again capped ...how much profit firms make out of the NHS is a major priority and naming and shaming should happen now to turn this around.
People.... they come in all shapes and sizes and with varying skill sets and good and bad attitudes.... if we had a larger pool to pick from the less professional would not last so long as their colleagues would spot them... unless you have worked in a customer facing role you may never understand how extreme some people are with their unfounded demands and complaints ... the impact these people have on how we all are treated is underestimated ... eg calling for ambulances for an ingrown toenail etc how many of you could deal with people of all walks of life on a day in day out basis and not get angry with time wasting..
It’s not perfect ... it could be improved but it is the right system for the UK.. I have had good bad and indifferent treatment but we need to stop the lobbies trying to turn it private so that they can profit ...
Sign Stephen Fry’s petition to save it ...now ..on petitions.org

Oh and during the last Labour Government Dh and his colleagues got waiting lists down from months to 6 weeks for a routine appointment. All urgents seen within two weeks - often one week.

Now the routines are nearly a year, and they often break the two week wait cancer referral rule - it's impossible to see them all as they dont have the man power or resources. And patients that are supposed to have yearly surveillance are waiting more like two years. It puts lives at risk.

I work in a clinic that is about 100 years old. Everything breaks. The ceiling is falling down due to water damage. The chairs are ripped to shreds, we get cast-offs from other clinics. We have no wifi, the computer system is crap. We have no fax machine to send referrals and who we refer to won't accept emails so we have to post them. There are holes in the floor that just keeps getting patched up. The toilets are probably the originals. I feel for you.