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.

There is waste . The nhs trusts need looking into ( bought in during a labour gov). There is one drug that bus pays hundreds a month for one course that you can buy over the counter in Europe for a couple of euros. If that is one drug what about others . I know someone who supplies to hospitals ( equipment) he says it’s like printing money. Sort out the waste then we all need to pay more.

Lots of people "put off " going to the GP ,(or find it hard to get an appointment!).Surely A and E is the place to go, if you are worried and will be out of the country though?.What may be a sore arm could potentially be something serious .(I have a swollen ankle and my leg aches if I overdo it )but my GP is thorough, and did a blood test for Cancer (luckily Clear!).Someone may be lucky enough to find its nothing to worry about ,another may not be so lucky!

Milton Friedman on Fox News, eh @Teacher22? Well, that’s not coming from a particular direction at all, is it?

So Labour trebling NHS spending didn't cure it then??

Perhaps they should have repaired the leaky bucket rather than just put more and more water into it.

Perhaps it should be privatised then OP.

The person with the bad arm can then walk in, pay his £124 & get seen. He probably wont have to wait 4 hours as all the poor people will be at home dying in their beds as they cant afford it.

The problem is that the politicians KNOW that NHS staff will just deal with it. In many other industries there would be strikes & walk outs. Next time your printer runs out of ink or you need a pen...dont buy it yourself. Dont do the job. Just say to your manager that you cant fix it or do that particular piece if work as you dont have the materials. Get arsey with the people who SHOULD be taking the blame & not the end user. YOU have the power.

Yep! My doctor is still using Windows 2007 and Internet Explorer.

The NHS has been horrifically badly rund for decades though. I had a DP (now and ex) in the nineties that worked for the NHS on the periphery.

I was admitted to hospital with a severe asthma attack and while I was there a bunch of workmen came and took the cabinetry that was next to all the beds and replaced them with new ones when there was literally nothing wrong with the old ones and in fact the old ones were nicer and more practical.

I asked ExDP why and he said because that department would have a budget for the year and if they don't spend it, they will get a smaller budget the following year.

This is the sort of shit that should have got sorted out decades ago. There was about twenty skips full of smashed up furniture all in near perfect condition. I still remember it nearly thirty years later.

Run for decades. Fat fingers.

In my home country, residents get a photo -ID card which says that you are entitled to access the system.

All people who are permanent residents are entitled to one, once they have resided there for 3 months. Citizenship is irrelevant.

The first question you are asked when accessing treatment is ‘where is your health card’. If you don’t have it, you pay.

i issue prescriptions for a ccg and have recently stopped issuing otc items. Some are switched to generic items instead. That’s caused some fun days but mostly people have been sympathetic. Just by people buying their own paracetamol, cetirizine etc will mean a saving of £100000 a year to just our small part of the nhs.

Before anyone asks people with carers and those using 8 paracetamol a day every day or who are housebound get to keep them.

Most people that need to be seen by a GP or at a&e are genuinely in need. But it's the ones who feel entitled that waste time and money.
I worked as a GP receptionist before I retired and one of my last calls (6pm closing at 6.30pm) was from a young lady who demanded an appointment as it was an emergency. She told me that she had been bleeding for a few weeks. I put her in with the doctor and after she had left gp came out and asked why I had put her in as an emergency. it seemed she wanted a sick note as she needed it for Monday morning and had forgotten to ask in the morning for it to be ready that afternoon.

When my son had breathing issues (year old at the time has chronic lung disease) the ambulance took him to A+E as the children's ward (which he has open access too) didn't have the staff in case he needed resuscitation.

I imagine that was down to cuts. I have so much respect for all the staff and what shite they deal with.

(Not an ambulance/hospital TW he was blue I had his vest up ready for cpr. First and hopefully last time I have had to ring for an ambulance)

The state of the NHS makes me really sad. The last time I took one of my kids for an outpatients appointment, I would say the hospital car park was more potholes than carpark.
I’ve recently had some back problems which turned out to be a slipped disc and required an operation. Thank God I have really good health insurance and it was all done privately. If I had gone down the NHS route, I suspect I would have not even had an MRI at this stage and would’ve been on crazily strong painkillers from the GP.

The private experience also made me realise that I felt like my surgeon and other medical staff actually cared about me and knew who I was. Probably because they have the time to actually be caring instead of being rushed off their feet.

It demonstrates how money is wasted in the NHS by people abusing the system

They shouldn't have been at A&E. But I suspect they tried to get a GP appointment and were told they could have one in 3 weeks' time, if at all.

Many moons ago, I worked in a corporate job On one of the projects to outsource NHS services and operations to the private sector. Without going into too much identifying detail, I couldn’t believe the amount we were charging to the Department of health for the work.

I had to go to a&e last week with a suspected DVT . I have had 2 in the past and have a blood clotting disorder. I couldn't have been treated any better. From the word go, they were sympathetic to my worries , reassuring that I had done the right thing in attending and more important, willing to check it out fully. Blood tests, scans, ecg, doppler scan and thankfully they were able to diagnose the cause of my problem. I could not be more thankful or proud of our amazing NHS but I WISH they were given the right budgets to continue. As an aside , the snap shot of the waiting room included a hayfever sufferer, a woman who was complaining that she couldn't breathe but who was on her mobile constantly and a man who had a cut finger. I don't know what the solution is , but please don't blame the staff .

Sorry, to be clear, I mentioned non-resident Brits as there is a similar rule here- the NHS is for residents of the UK

I reckon a lot of health tourists are Nancy and Trevor who were from Basildon but have lived in the Costas for some time now and as they are over visiting the grandkids,,,

However, people walk into a GP surgery’s waiting room, hear foreign accents and make assumptions

I’m sure people thought I was a health tourist too

To those who say "the NHS needs massive reform".

If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that the biggest reform of the NHS since 1948 was carried out in 2013. Six years ago. The last thing the NHS need is continous "reform".

There are a lot of time wasters either that waste paramedics time and or staff at a&e. More education is needed for people to know when they should go and when they could treat themselves like simple first aid or use minor injuries units for those that do present with a non emergency they must start charging people especially for ambulance call outs, the problem is partly down to people with mental health issues and are lonely. but regarding a child or head injury always get it checked. I work in nhs too so am totally sympathetic to cutbacks but that sometimes due to lots of money wasted in other areas e.g. paperwork that someone decides needs changing because of a word or 2 and piles of paper just scrapped

They shouldn't have been at A&E. But I suspect they tried to get a GP appointment and were told they could have one in 3 weeks' time, if at all.

Like the 111 system, others are also too quick to tell you to go to A&E. I fainted at a fireworks display. They had first aiders on site (don't know if it was a private ambulance firm or StJohns). I felt fine after a few minutes and was ready to get up and go home, but the first aiders were having none of it and wanted to take me to A&E in their ambulance. I said it wasn't necessary. They were insistent and said A&E would want to do a scan. So to compromise, my OH took me in the car. We then spent 8 hours in A&E (Saturday night) for zilch to happen. When the consultant finally saw me, he had a real attitude of "what on earth are you doing here" and clearly blamed me for wasting their time. When I said the first aiders insisted and said I needed a scan, he just laughed and walked out. A complete waste of time all round, all due to a first aider presumably just wanting to cover his back.

A pp hit the nail on the head with the housing situation. I've actually never even thought about this but in the last 2 years there has been 5 new housing estates built on the outskirts of my town. Hundreds and hundreds of new houses and thousands of people, yet no new gp surgeries.

No wonder I can only get appointments a month in advance. I can phone at 8am for an emergency appointment but by the time I get through they are gone. All the time. So what is someone in this situation actually supposed to do? Sometimes a&e is the only option left.

I feel sorry for the NHS, (my sis works for it so I do know it from the inside a little) I think it's either in dire straits financially or has sadly mismanaged its funding.

• There are more and more things needed/wanted (drugs/machinery) for them to spend money on.
• Also, too many people using it, too many fantastic cures and help it can offer...more than before ..which are fantastic but all these cures/help cost more money that 60 years ago I guess.
• They have invested (?) in huge super hospitals and shut down many smaller ones which to my mind doesn't work (more distance for people and ambulances to travel when need to get there equals more time on a journey)

Also, I don't know if it's dr google or physche today, people seem to not want to put up with any niggle as they think the doctor can cure everything. They also read horror stories on line/in papers about someone who ignored a small symptom and turned out to have the big C with weeks to live.

As to the person turning up with a hurting arm...if you were at my doctors and at least one other practice I know of they too are so limited on time and appointments they actually advise people to go to either A&E or the drop in clinic at the hospital....which ofcourse means they are also passing the buck and I guess the expense of seeing someone. I phoned the other day at 8am when the lines opened as I couldn't be bothered to go and queue outside the door at 7.45 , which is the only way to guarantee an appointment on the same day (again, like many doctors practises in the area) and was lucky enough to get through at 8.05....to be told there was only emergency appointments left and was it an emergency. Bearing in mind the soonest on line book in advance appointment was the end of July/beg of August...and only one of those and I had been trying to get in at the doctors for a week. No, not an emergency, but something I am concerned about and would like to see someone about. DH also wants me to see someone.

I was told 3 doctors have retired recently so they are short staffed. I can only imagine they either couldn't afford new doctors or didn't manage to find anyone suitable because those doctors would certainly have had to give notice to retire and I know of at least one who had cut his hours in readiness.

I agree...wrong to go to A&E etc. I would need to have my arm hanging off to go. Having said that I didn't go with an injury and left it too long because I didn't want to "bother" them and have ended up with a life long physical impairment because I left it too long for them to operate as they would have done if I had gone earlier.

But what do I know...I work in education....awash with money...not

@Kazzyhoward the NHS was doing ok when the Tories took office, targets were being met, waiting times were down etc etc. Lansley's reform in 2013 cost billions and I don't think it is a coincidence that the NHS has been struggling ever since.

i issue prescriptions for a ccg and have recently stopped issuing otc items. Some are switched to generic items instead. That’s caused some fun days

Has just moved the problem though... I suppose pharmacies' time is "cheaper" - we get maybe 20 customers a day coming in saying they are no longer getting their pain relief gel, or their hayfever tablets so can we "do something about it" because they can't afford it. We ring the doctor's prescribing service and argue about "essential for long term blah-blah..." they then either give it or we deal with an angry person for 30 more minutes.

The more vulnerable and the silent elderly don't argue and just go without of course. I don't think it is a great move to be honest.

Time wasters in A&E are a disgrace. Took my son to A&E with a severe infection this week that he was then hospitalised for and the number of people bouncing around A&E, clearly treating it like a walk in GP service were astounding. It is always like that. Also old drunks...but that's a problem with the Police service being underfunded...