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.

So frustrating to see the same old myths trotted out on this thread.
• NHS staff waste money - please stop blaming staff.
.• Too many managers actually they’ve halved the amount of them in our hospital (it’s just made life harder for most staff).
• A&E is full of time wasters - actually most patients are genuinely ill. And time wasters don’t get hospital beds so you can’t blame them for bed shortages or ambulances queuing.
• Gold plated pensions - the pension is reformed every few years its nothing like it used to be. Doctors in particular are facing huge tax penalties for their pensions- that’s a nice slap in the face for their dedication.
• The NHS needs reforming- NO! More reforms is the last thing needed, they cost a fortune and cause chaos.

It’s down to lack of funds and as a Country we simply have to accept that we need to fund our NHS properly and we can afford to do that, we are a first world Country. And op was right Hospitals on the whole were doing well under the Labour Government.

People not turning up for appointments winds me up £300+ wasted for someone who can't be arsed to pitch up and let us know in advance so the appointment can go to someone else.

Oh yeah and when we run out of reps post it notes we have to buy our own.

It's taken two years to get a scanner for our office that we need to use everyday and the money has had to come out of charitable funds.

Our one between 20 people toilet is disgusting and we have no kitchen or staff room.

Sorry for ranting

I don't think anyone who doesn't work in the nhs should have any say in how it's run.
I remember you used to be able to go down to your gp surgery at a set time and you would just sit and wait your turn. Why can't you do that any more? Surely if the difference between an a&e visit and a Drs visit is £100 wouldn't they be better off bringing that back?
Or use the nurses in the gps surgery to triage the patients.
I fear the nhs will be completely unrecognizable within 10 years.

"NHS needs to change to save money, still sending appt letters for example" urgh! Yes!

Dd and I have BOTH on several occasions received appointment information by letter that didn't arrive in time for us to be able to go to the appointments! So "officially" we were DNA but what actually happened was we didn't bloody know!

On a few the postmarks on the envelopes showed they were POSTED after the appointment date.

On one occasion the LETTER Was dated AFTER the appointment date!

Wtf wastage is that?!

They seriously need to catch up tech wise for many reasons, but I understand this not happening as it requires funding!

Ludicrous that in this day and age until very recently my GP surgery still had only one phone number for EVERYTHING - appointments, test results, repeat prescriptions...

And no other method for contacting the surgery. They're slowly moving over to online appointments, and now have separate numbers for test results and repeat prescriptions.

But really in this day and age repeat prescriptions and test results should be available online.

"GP practices are pretty efficient - probably because they are small businesses that have always focused on profit as well as patient care." My personal experience means I would argue GP surgeries focus on profit often impedes patient care and creates additional costs elsewhere in the Nhs as a direct result of this!

BlackSwan - how long had your son had the infection?

You can't assume the people "bouncing around" were there unnecessarily, any number of conditions where people can be ambulatory and seemingly well when they aren't. I have a spinal condition, that sometimes flares up very badly at the worst times (weekends, bank holidays) that I've been advised not to delay getting assessed and treated, sitting - especially on hard a&e chairs makes the pain MUCH worse - I deal with the pain by pacing and Blethering to whoever is available on the phone (by text/whatsapp) in order to provide a distraction until I can be seen.

Dds disability can have a similar effect and again pacing and distraction techniques help.

Movement can help a lot with pain, as can distraction.

NHS is falling apart and has no money and it is quite scary when I hear stories like yours from people I know who work in the NHS...and I am also sure there are lots of people who waste NHS time.

However, careful with your assumptions. I had to go to A&E a few years ago sleuth a friend who had fallen and hurt her elbow a few weeks previously. She was in a lot of pain but I had to persuade her to go. The triage nurse was very rude to her as I think she assumed the same as you and she was made to wait for hours. Turned out she had broken her elbow. Nurse was much nicer to her after that. Do don't assume just because a lot of time has passed that there was no accident.

I have worked on and off in the NHS for 30 years and the thing that strikes me is that people have always said the same things and most of the comments are so clueless. Yes, lots of money has been wasted but a major reason for that is that it keeps being reorganised. The last thing it needs is another total reform. The comments about people leaving on the dot are also laughable. The only people that do that usually are the admin staff who are paid an incredibly low wage so why should they work for free? I'm never sure about the argument that money is wasted on people not turning up for appointments either. Considering I have to wait quite a while every time I go to one it is clear the clinics are pretty full up and late finishing so what would happen if there weren't any DNAs? That could be what is stopping everything from breaking down completely.

Part of the problem is that every 5 years out NHS Trust has to go tender to keep the contract to provide services. We compete with private companies such as Virgin Health and other NHS Trusts. This takes us so much time and money and keeps out SLT from doing the job they are actually qualified to do. There is absolute stealth privatisation going on. Check the small print in your local GP surgeries and any other NHS Departments you may have dealings with, you may find they are not being run. By who you assume they are run by.

Currently working for the NHS and a gnats wing from burn out. Changing numbers as not to be outing but right ratios I work on a 10 bedded ward. 3 of those beds are for high acuity (v sick and unstable patients in a specific specialty). We have been in escalation for 9 months. That means we have had 24 patients for the same amount of staff and resources. I currently work 14 hour days on one sand which. I bring my own pens .

I have been nursing for 15 years. I have been working at 200% capacity for 9 months (no end in sight). There are not many private sector places expect you to double your output for no extra resources for an indeterminate time. The mandatory training I need to do my job safely has to be done in my own time. No worries though, the NHS will soon be gone and the only people I will have to look after are ones with £££££££ for treatment .

I don't think anyone who doesn't work in the nhs should have any say in how it's run.

I would argue (with some exceptions) the exact opposite.

Part of the problem is that every 5 years out NHS Trust has to go tender to keep the contract to provide services. We compete with private companies such as Virgin Health and other NHS Trusts.

This is true which makes the comments that the private sector would be more efficient even more laughable. They are running things a lot of the time anyway and are certainly not doing a better job on the limited resources than the public sector did.

Doctors in particular are facing huge tax penalties for their pensions-

That's because there's a general consensus that "the rich" should pay more tax. By most accounts, doctors are in the top 10% of earners, so by definition, they're rich! If their pension schemes weren't so huge, they wouldn't be caught by the penal tax!

escalation of medicalisation of problems does not always help either. I had a gastroscope last month, there were 12 of us in the 3 hour clinic.
3 of us went for a straightforward "get it done" approach - unpleasant but in and out in less than 20 min, after waiting up to 2 hours for our turn (that was me - always me)...
of the 9 others 6 had the sedation - fair enough, it is a bit uncomfortable, but is a faff requiring cannula fitting, more time in the procedure, lying about - supervised - afterwards for an hour, being picked up from the hospital and stayed with for 24 hours afterwards.
3 others refused treatment without a general anaesthetic - having misunderstood what "sedation" meant. So will be put "into the system" for a major more risky procedure costing a fortune for the sake of 5 min discomfort.

Check the small print in your local GP surgeries and any other NHS Departments you may have dealings with, you may find they are not being run. By who you assume they are run by.

Most GP surgeries have been private businesses run by the partner GPs for several decades.

*caringcarer

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.*

Hahahaha it's hilarious that you believe that. Let me guess, Daily Mail reading Tory voter?

Do you have a source for your claim of "billions". I'm guessing not because it's bollocks:

fullfact.org/health/health-tourism-whats-cost/

Go into any hospital ward or GP waiting room and they're not full of "forriners." They're full of elderly British people. We have an aging population with ever more complex needs that come with living longer, plus a chronically under funded social care system that can't support them. So they end up at the NHS's door.

@DoyouknowJo if you hate it why do you work there? Assume you have an admin role? FInd another job.

FWIW I did exclude medical staff from my comments. I was talking about admin staff not drs or nurses or HCP.

The thing is the NHS was not set up to cope with the amount of chronic long term ill health we have now.

Billions are spent on diabetes alone, because people are eating themselves to death.

If we got rid of the obesity epidemic, there would be more money for other things.

40% of illness is chronic and 70% of that it related to lifestyle. A consultant told me that.

If people took responsibility for their health, the NHS would be much better.

But it does need changing. Like another PP said, I've heard of letters arriving after appts, patients unable to cancel appts because it's taken them more than 30 mins to get an answer to their phone call so they give up, staff not being able because of NHS red tape to cancel an appt in a different building in the same hospital for the same condition because it's not their role, letters never arriving at the GP to inform them of what's been done for the patient. In fact I could relate more bad examples than good!

Only read the OP, but I noticed the only thing you blamed in it was the patient. Please don't by distracted, the blame for this situation lies 100% with government, nowhere else.

Haven't RTFT. I recently read Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt which listed lots of wrongs in the NHS. My initial thought was how bad the NHS has become ... until I realised that he was writing about the days when Blair/Brown were pouring money into public services.

The NHS couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery. The amount of funding they have/have-not is not the crucial point; poor management and lack of joined-up thinking is the problem.

If we got rid of the obesity epidemic, there would be more money for other things

But then people complain if money is spent on helping people with things like weight loss of stopping smoking so in that sense it’s a no win situation

I think the phone consultation is fab.

Indeed if you can get one. At my GP surgery, there've applied the same screening. So you only get a same day phone call back if it's deemed urgent or an emergency. If you just want to ask about a blood test result, or, say, you're a diabetic and your blood sugars are high, or you want to discuss your medication, there's a 2-3 wait for a phone call.

Re the desks. I’m not saying 4 people have to share the same desk on different days. I’m talking about 4 people physically sitting at a 2 person desk at the same time day in day out because it’s too much money to pay IT to port another internet connection on the other desk.

Of course we bloody hot desk!

"We need a complete rethink. We don’t have to have an American system"

The reason we fear an American system is because our mps have been "consulting" American healthcare companies, investing in them... They have personal, vested interests in our moving to an American system.

THAT is why those of us most likely to be screwed over by such a change (the chronically sick and disabled generally of course but particularly the mentally ill, those with learning disabilities or children with these, low income pensioners with multiple health issues... Because these categories are treated APPALLINGLY - if at all! Under the American system)

"early diagnosis and management and prevention saves money ling term." Exactly! But primary care is FAILING on this - mainly because they lose money if they take this approach!

GP surgeries have never NOT been private, they refused to be fully assimilated into the Nhs from the beginning out of purely financial motives. Shouldn't have been allowed in my opinion.

Are you a nurse OP or see patients? If so brilliant. My local A&E has transformed itself by hiring nurses (retired and retrained) in traditionally admin roles including receptionists. They are qualified to turf non-emergencies out immediately.

The problem is also that the NHS is haemorrhaging money where it doesn't need to.

This is because of poor management - I know people don't like it but it does need to be run in a similar vein to a business, it does need those people who are not doctors and nurses reining in where money doesn't need to be wasted.
One of my parents works in a dept where the drug wastage is astronomical, she is involved in dispensing chemo drugs, drip bags and other types of intravenous medicines - these are often sent back to be destroyed unused so not only is the cost of the drug wasted but the time spent dispensing them in the sterile unit.

They also have issues where part boxes of drugs have to be destroyed because no one refrigerated them or something wasn't labelled correctly.

I suspect one lot of chemo drugs could probably pay for at least one persons pens for a year!!

Sometimes we need those annoying admin people to go and and look at where money is going and clamp down on it.

The NHS is drowning but I don't think the answer is to just constantly throw money at it. The pot isn't never-ending.

NOTE - I do agree that the NHS is underfunded, but also think they need to sort many other spending issues.

The NHS couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery. The amount of funding they have/have-not is not the crucial point; poor management and lack of joined-up thinking is the problem.

Well said - nail on the head.

My OH has myeloma (bone marrow cancer). To diagnose it and check the extent of the damage, he needed a bone marrow sample taken, a skeletal x-ray, MRI scan and para-protein blood tests. That was four different appointments in three different hospitals. After that, sixth months of chemo. Then it was time for a stem cell transplant. Unfortunately, our NHS trust don't do them, so he was referred to a hospital in a different NHS trust (same county!) an hour away.

We duly got sent for the appointment with a consultant. All he had was a brief referral letter - no notes, no medical history, no test results etc. So, the first appointment was all about him asking medical history (A top consultant who does specialist work like stem cell transplants) - spending half an hour going through the bog standard medical history form, does he smoke? any history of heart disease in family? etc etc. He had no idea at all about when the myeloma was diagnosed (sometimes you can have it years without needing treatment), what the paraprotein levels were before and after chemo, complications during chemo, etc. no idea of the results of the skeletal x-ray nor MRI scan. Then at the end of basically a pointless consultation, he tells us he'll order various tests etc - these turned out to be exactly the same as he'd had six months earlier which we pointed out. Then he said he always wants to do his own! I asked whether he'd get a copy of our file or had access via the computer, and he said no, he always starts from scratch. So not only is there a massive waste of resources in duplicating what's already been done, he had no interest whatsoever in the relevant medical history/notes of the chemo etc.

Naively, we thought he'd just either get a copy of the full notes from the first hospital/consultant or at least be able to access them via the computer, but no, it all had to be done again. Completely crazy, waste of money and waste of everyone's time.