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.

My Mum (in Wales) is having some hip & knee problems and had a referral from the musculoskeletal people to the orthapedics, with a view to surgical intervention. Just had a letter through for a clinic assessment for orthapedics, and is a 41 week waiting list, just for the clinic appointment!

And this is what happens when you get rid of targets. There’s no accountability whatsoever.

Flatwhite I remember waiting lists like that under old Tory Governments, I was working in the NHS for 26 years so saw a few Governments come and go. The only time the waiting lists came down was with the last Labour Government who put massive investment in to improve services.
Sadly we are back to the bad old days now.

Just a query... does anyone else remember what it USED to be like - in the 80s - my mum had to wait 2 and a half years for carpal tunnel surgery, my dad died before he got a knee replacement - he went on the list around 23 months before... There was no 2 week fast-track for suspected cancer. This was when there were 10million FEWER people in the UK.

Since the 1980s waiting times have reduced hugely in real terms - but we are in an instant gratification society so having to wait for something as important as our own health seems wrong.

haha - cross posted...

The waiting lists are easily as long as that now where I live. Longer probably. Wanting to see a specialist without having to wait two or three years is not a symptom of an instant gratification society, it's just common sense that if you are ill you will become more ill in the years that you wait for treatment.

Yes, I remember the 80s. I also remember how much better it got under new labour (yes I know they were far from ideal). Not perfect but a lot better although there was a it of waste going on.

And I've watched the decimation since 2010.

The actual people who work for it aren't the issue here. It's the starvation of funding.

I know it’s bad, but honestly I think knowing just how bad would terrify me.

My DS has been waiting two and a half years for an op we were told needed to be done before he was 18 months and we have just been told he needs to wait another 6 months due to their cock up.

My mum has been given a year wait for a specialist appointment.

I think they do it because they want people to seek private treatment elsewhere.

SootySue in my specialty (a cancer diagnostic unit) new Labour made a huge difference. We were able to introduce the 2week wait rule, bring routine appointments to within 6 weeks, and invest in new equipment which was proven to improve diagnosis and patient outcomes. We also became a national training centre. We couldn’t have done any of that without the extra funds from the government.

I worked in the NHS during the years of proper funding and rigorous targets and it worked. A&E had to be less than four hours from arrival to discharge or move to a ward, my trust had 98% compliance. The 18 week waiting time had 100% compliance. Austerity has pissed all that away.

And referring to the 1997-2010 government as “new” Labour is a real give away, by the way.

I moved area shortly after my illness and the NHS could not be more different where I am now - I have had excellent care and it's usually timely (except where things can obviously wait). I know there is comparatively less money sloshing around now, but the standard of care seems much better in certain places irrespective of that.

That will be because your DH is a consultant. For the rest of us NHS care is nowhere near as good now as it was before the cuts. There is no comparison.

my experience was the opposite - patient care was no better under New Labour

My experience too. Both my mother and FIL suffered cancer between 2005-2010 and both were very badly let down by the NHS.

My FIL had operable cancer, but it took them so bloody long to get around to doing the OP, by the time they finally get all their ducks in a row, it was too late and it had become inoperable. It was a catalogue of foul-ups that involved moving him between 3 different hospitals, and of course, his notes went missing every single time, so he ended up treading water for several days each time until they found the notes! At one stage, they'd got a date planned for the OP, a few weeks in advance, but on the Friday before, they dropped the bombshell it was cancelled because the consultant surgeon was on holiday the following week, and then it was another few weeks before there was theatre/team availability to try again.

As for my mother, it was hard to imagine just how incompetent they could be. Admitted with constant sickness, couldn't keep any food nor liquid down for several days. Cue a few weeks of them farting around doing all kinds of scans, xrays, etc. The symptoms clearly indicated a bowel blockage as we researched ourselves and also suggested by our GP before admittance, but the consultant just wouldn't have any of it, and kept looking for different things. Week after week, she got weaker, they started injecting food directly into her stomach and then she went on food drips. After about 2 months of this fiasco, the consultant was away, so a different consultant did the ward rounds, looked at the notes, scans, etc, and decided it was a bowel blockage - into operating theatre next day, and sure enough, yes, it was a bowel blockage which he sorted.

That was at the peak of New Labour's spending frenzy. Money can't cure everything. People are vital to the NHS - the good ones worth their weight in gold, but the crap ones, whether admin or clinical, need their arses kicking out to stop the damage they cause.

Erm, I was already with DH when the NHS supplied the near-death experience and totally failed to look for cancer? I was encouraged by (now) DH to pursue a claim and got a six-figure settlement to keep it out of court (i.e. the treatment was so egregiously bad the GP/hospital really didn't want it to be aired publicly).

Lol even more reason to explain the good treatment you now receive compared with previously. Not only are you now married to a consultant (being "with" him wouldn't make any difference) but you have also previously received a six figure sum for previous negligence.

And those six figure compensation payments are one of the reasons the NHS is on its knees.

And those six figure compensation payments are one of the reasons the NHS is on its knees.

No, the staff errors and systemic failures are the reasons why compensation payments are made. Blame the people who make the cock-ups, not the patients whose lives they ruin.

No, the staff errors and systemic failures are the reasons why compensation payments are made. Blame the people who make the cock-ups, not the patients whose lives they ruin.

If there are staff shortages errors will be higher though.

And those six figure compensation payments are one of the reasons the NHS is on its knees

No the reason it is on it’s knees is because for decades the drs have looked at diagnosing patients as a game of chance and a case of treating one symptom st a time.

When I went in for my consultation with an osteopath that was the first time any one in 7 years had actually talked to me and asked me how it started.

If drs listened then I would suspect virtually all those 6 figure compensation payouts would be saved

The OP needs to urgently find another job. The anger, the sneering at people is disturbing. Ultimately everyone has the right to choose how they approach the NHS, not up to an angry housewife to decide.

No. The OP is human and trying to do a difficult job with insufficient resources. That is incredibly frustrating. Despite what you say, the public do have to bear some responsibility for abuse of NHS services. Having a fairly minor health issue for some time and then deciding you’d quite like to have it addressed so it doesn’t spoil your holiday so rocking up at an overstretched ED that is treating seriously ill people, can by no stretch of the imagination be termed a reasonable action.

I was a sister in A&E for years. You really wouldn’t believe some of the absolute crap people came in with. You want a corn on your toe treated at 2am? I’m entitled to think ‘fuck off you waster’ while not actually saying so. And let me tell you, those who attend with trivia are invariably the ones with the greatest sense of entitlement who readily hurl abuse when you tell them no.

HCPs are entitled to feel anger at those clearly abusing the system as they tend to reserve their empathy for those who deserve it.

We were told we had to go to A and E for a bumped head though I would have been happy enough if the local doctors surgery could have glued the small wound and given us the standard leaflet.

Dungeon do you think they offered to settle for that amount just for shits and giggles? Do you have any idea of how badly medics have to fuck up someone's life in order to be in that ball park? Think about it - if they offered to settle for that then either they feared being ordered to pay more by a court and/or they receive negative publicity for their atrocious care.

I'm not saying anything about whether you should or shouldn't have received a payment so I'm not sure what your point is.