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.

I wonder how many ambulances attended the Amazon warehouse this week

I wonder how many paramedics had to treat heat stroke because employers and public transport are too cheap and too tight to put air conditioning in.

I had this conversation with a GP who basically said "if I referred everyone with symptoms of bowel cancer for a colonoscopy it would bankrupt the practice". Which probably goes a long way towards explaining why NHS cancer diagnosis is slower than in comparable European countries

Depends what they mean by symptoms. If everyone with irregular bowels was tested for cancer the NHS would be overrun it’s true.

But actually - how many patients experience irregular bowels + blood in the stools + anaemia + weight loss + pain or mass in the abdomen?

Far fewer. And the fact is 20% of bowel cancer patients are diagnosed as an emergency indicating they could have been diagnosed earlier.

My husband, Martyn, was misdiagnosed for a year, despite pleading with doctors to investigate for cancer. When he was eventually told he had bowel cancer in 2012, it was already too late for him. He died in October 2014, aged 34....

For a year before he was diagnosed, Martyn had blood in his stools but was told it was from piles and it was normal. In 2011 when his symptoms got worse, he asked several doctors if it could be cancer but they all said they were almost certain it wasn’t. They just didn’t recognise it as a serious risk because he was so young.

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Oliversmumsarmy There is a National bowel screening programme.

The screening programmes are very carefully worked out to have greatest benefit balanced against risk. It’s not purely financial; there are real risks to over diagnosis.
Bowel cancer is predominantly a disease of ageing and the screening from fifty is calculated to allow early diagnosis for more people.
Whilst tragically some people under fifty die, they are statistically very rare.
Roughly 70 -75% of people survive bowel cancers and that figure is reasonably constant until you reach your eighties (although even then it might not be the actual cause of death).
Very few people are diagnosed under forty five years of age.

I had a friend who died of breast cancer because apparently it wasn’t a young woman’s disease.

@CherryPavlova screening is screening.

but if someone has symptoms and repeatedly seeks medical help not to investigate properly is neglectful.

The NHS needs to (a) start charging people for missed appointments

Only if they put proper checks into why!

I have several appointments each year, more so at the moment.

I have had missed appointments on 2 occasions but none of them have been my fault! I wouldn't pay up for them.

One - they simply didn't send a letter at all. They couldn't find any evidence of one on their system when they phoned re missed appointment either.

Two - they cancelled and rearranged an appointment without telling me. I turned up for the original appointment which was now the day after the new one. No letter had been sent and no phone call/phone reminder. It actually cost my own work place - a state funded school- money in getting in cover, etc. And then having to do it again a week or so later. Again, not my fault. No apology either.

Most recently - I received a letter earlier this week giving my two dates - one for pre op and one for a procedure date. The date of the pre op was the day before the letter arrived. Fortunately I had picked up the phone hospital reminder the Friday before and it was school holidays so knew about it and had gone. That could have easily been a missed appointment too.

Despite all that however I should say that I have been incredibly impressed with the NHS service I've received recently. I wouldn't have been seen a great deal quicker for either the A&E attendance, consultant appointment, the tests, the pre-op and the upcoming heart procedure if I'd gone privately. Yes, I could have paid and it saved the NHS money but actually was advised not, on this occasion, to by the hospital doctors themselves.

@WolfhoundsofLove A&E should be for actual emergencies.

A&E should be for actual emergencies

It would need to change its name then. At present it is for ACCIDENTS and emergencies.
Maybe there should be different places for both.

Not everywhere has minor injuries and walk in GP surgeries either. Also minor injuries don't always include everything. Ours won't see you if it's anything above the shoulders. When it first opened it dint have a x ray machine though does now.

It would need to change its name then. At present it is for ACCIDENTS and emergencies. Maybe there should be different places for both. Not everywhere has minor injuries and walk in GP surgeries either. Also minor injuries don't always include everything.

Fully agree. Round here, when the GP surgery is closed (or they refuse an appointment), A&E is really the only place to go. We have no minor injury unit nor walk in GP provision. My OH passed out at an event and was treated by their first aiders - they instructed us to go to A&E. When you phone 111, the usual advice is to go to A&E. What are people supposed to do when they're told by healthcare professionals to go to A&E because there's nowhere else.?

The call handlers on 111 aren’t healthcare professionals, they’re call centre workers with scripts and flowcharts. First aiders aren’t healthcare professionals either, they’re ordinary people with a little training.

The minor injuries clinic we used to use would report me to SS because I home schooled Ds.

Apparently HE is a Red Flag

In the end was forced to use A&E instead of minor injuries otherwise I would have SS on the phone for 1/2 hour trying to convince them that HE was well within my rights and he wasn’t being abused or radicalised or whatever else HE parents do with their children.