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.

And I'm not sure cuts are to blame for how massively disorganised everything is, are they? It's always a complete shambles.

If local government could survive swinging cuts why can't the NHS transform its delivery.

TheBouquets sanctimonious and patronising - as someone working in the NHS and experiencing first-hand the effects of extreme budgetary restrictions, the OP has a perfect right to be indignant about members of the public misusing the system.

I don't think a parent should feel bad about getting a head injury looked at.

Nor do I to be honest, or an infection of any kind if your GP surgery is telling you there's a 2 week wait for an appointment and your local walk-in centre closed months ago.

In all honesty those people's first thoughts aren't going to be lack of Biro pens and staplers are they?

The average cost of a GP appointment is £22.60 - you can get roughly 5 GP visits for the cost of 1 A&E visit.

But the flip side is that it can be well-nigh impossible to get a GP visit in some areas - there is a thread on here at the moment where the OP needs to have a follow up visit with her GP in a specific time frame, and she simply can’t get it.

Not supplying pens is pure mismanagement.

The real worry to me is the unsafe inadequate staffing of wards. Why would a govt introduce fees to train nurses in a context of a 40,000 nurse shortage in the UK?

You can understand those who think the NHS is being deliberately run down to persuade people that it needs privatising.

It's desperate and my heart goes out to newly diagnosed cancer sufferers forced to wait months for treatment. That's an unbearable delay for them and their families. 1 in 2 will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives so it really is everyone's problem.

@bloodbridget As someone who has worked in the NHS and if other types of organisations I could say a lot about wastage in NHS but I dont have the time to list them all.
The wastage in NHS is astronomical and private business would never tolerate or financial endure those wastages

Exactly SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius and I'm surprised the OP doesn't understand that when they're calling patients 'wankers'.

Get a new job if you don’t like it there .

OH dear, this is not the kind of thing I want to hear from a person who chose to work in NHS

I beg to differ. I'm glad that NHS employees care about the service they deliver. I'm always happy to listen to someone who is frustrated with the lack of funding. The more people drawing attention to this means that maybe, just maybe, others may become more mindful about how they use the service.

Sounds very similar to when I was a team assistant in Social Services. Particularly the printer, we had to provide our own stationary.

If local government could survive swinging cuts why can't the NHS transform its delivery.

They are not surviving them and neither are the people they are meant to serve.

Why do some people look at two bad situations and think the answer is to make the least bad worse.

....and on the other end of the same you have such terrible staffing shortages hospitals are being forced to take on agency nurses at a cost of £48(!!!)p/hr, or so I'm told by a nursing mum friend today....
How can this be sustainable??!

Ah, the glories of our wonderful NHS, where patients are "wankers" and the greatest and most pressing problem that staff can identify is "lack of pens". Value for money in action.

the greatest and most pressing problem that staff can identify is "lack of pens"

I don't mean to sound rude but it's not about the shortage of pens. It's about the fact that the NHS is strapped for cash, in part due to wasted funds.

Equipment problems also reminds me of a few years ago when I went in to have DS and spent the best part of the day in a huge high ceiling waiting room that was roasting hot as the heating system was broken but broken "on" - ie ot couldn't be turned down; the accepted "solution" apparently was to have all the windows permanently open..... I literally was there from 8am til gone 5 like this, it was like watching tenners being lobbed out of the window.

I’m sure NHS staff are committed and work hard to deliver an excellent service. But there is a lot of wastage in the bureaucracy (non clinical staff usually).

If the NHS stopped treating international citizens who are health tourist without payment up front or valid travel insurance like other countries do they would not be broke. In France I had to pay up front to see a doctor when i had an emergency allergic reaction and then pay again for needing adrenaline shot. In UK we treat everyone regardless of whether they are UK citizens or paid in NICs. Many woman come to UK for a safe delivery of their baby and it cost NHS billions of pounds every year. It should be stopped.

I had to justify to my managers manager...

Perhaps if they got rid of a management level it would save a whole heap of money.

The last time I had to go to my local hospital (to collect dh after a procedure) I noticed that there were far more management types walking importantly around the corridors with clipboards than there were medical staff, porters etc.

Not the point of the thread but I wanted to say, I've spent 5 days in hospital last week, I came through a&e and have since been under neurology team, no diagnosis but I've been treated fantastically by all staff. I hate to think how much the MRI/MRA/CT x 2 and lumbar puncture x 2 have cost though. You're all amazing and I'm sorry it's so hard at the moment.

I’ve had numerous friends that have had treatment abroad for varies things in the past couple of years. Each one of them have come back after fantastic up to date treatment, operations and general care. I don’t think that we actually realise how far up shit street the NHS actually is.
I agree with @ContactLight above post

OP demonstrates the frustration many of us feel about the working conditions. I bet OP treated sore arm patient politely even if he/she complained about the wait and even if the visit was inappropriate. I bet OP has done overtime trying to help patients and got complaints in return.

For the people who say just leave or get another job, I hope you have a plan for replacing the staff? Wait - was that tens of thousands of vacancies?

@Thesethings that reminds me of when I went into have my 20 week scan, heavily pregnant woman after drinking litres and litres of water! Got to the waiting room and the roof had a leak, so they had a bucket in the middle of the room with the water drip drip dripping into the bloody bucket. That was pure torture.

In my experience there is MASSIVE wastage in the NHS which no-one seems to care about. When I emptied out a distant relatives house there were 14 zimmer frames - each discharge had given her a new one. No one ever checked. & why is it they just say to throw perfectly good used crutches away? I'm agog at the wastage.

Anyone who's had to deal with trying to obtain mental health/psychiatric services for their child or adolescent knows how bad it is now .

@caringcarer - think of all the staff who have to be employed to track the tiny amount of people ineligible for healthcare down... in reality the amount of money that can be recovered is v small.