bed blockers adding to the lack of hospital beds

[newcovidisolations]

My mum was medically discharged to leave hospital into rehab (following a stroke) well over a month ago but due to no rehab beds being available she is still taking a hospital bed from someone who needs to be admitted from a&e. She has now tested positive for covid and despite no symptoms at all is now taking a private room on the ward for 7 days as they insist she isolates.

Over 3 weeks ago I rang every private rehab within 50 miles and none could assess her to see if she could transfer until 5th Jan. Despite fees of over £2k per week with extra charges for all physio.

She could possibly have regained mobility with daily physio in rehab had she been discharged weeks ago whereas now she could have far more care needs for the rest of her life.

The system appears broken to me and could affect any one of us and I cant understand the lack of protests. Any of us could need the hospital bed not just the elderly. Her ward is not just used for strokes.

Im a healthcare assistant and I agree with @CovertImage.. it's not up to anyone to decide who gets to live how long.
Everyone deserves a good quality of life at every age in my view.

Anyway I just completed a shift on an elderly rehabilitation ward where patients are waiting for care packages. Most with dementia & aged 90something.
Only one lady kept crying & saying she wanted to die but I felt that she was actually clinically depressed in her behaviour & probably needed anti depressants. As I have suffered from that myself I recognise it in others.
Also one lady got upset sitting in her chair as she wanted to lie in bed all day, she cried too but couldn't understand that staying in bed was making her legs more stiff & immobile.
The other patients were quite content - providing their visitors turned up or they had TV to keep them occupied.

I normally work as a healthcare assistant on a surgical ward but got moved.. the work on elderly care wards is very 'heavy' physically & I find it mentally draining too. Yet only get just above minimum wage.
For that you have responsibility for at least 7 patients, wash them & clean teeth, do 4hourly pad changes & turns / pressure area checks & write care plans each time; move them up the bed several times, 3 x day blood sugar for diabetics, 6 hourly blood pressure etc & report abnormal findings to the Staff Nurse; feed any all care individuals, give out meals & teas, check property once daily, empty catheters, mobilise patients to toilet / commode, answer call bells, chase wandering patients & clean vacated bed spaces.

LexMitior, so I am meant to stay in employment to plan my own pension carefully, while leaving those I care for to the mercies of a now inadequate health and care system?

You can’t have both. If care for the elderly and vulnerable is not going to be provided by the state, and privately only at prohibitive cost, then family carers are needed. Those carers will have to drop out of the workplace, and yes, this affects pensions.

Do you want me to do the state’s job pf basic care and dignity for the elderly and ill, or to shout ‘me, me, me! You must suffer because I must protect my pension’????

@LexMitior which is possibly why social care is in such a crisis ? Poor pay and working conditions, rubbish pension.
Which leaves the sandwich generation of women who are expected to work full time otherwise they are lazy and not planning for their futures, whilst simultaneously looking after their own children, their childrens children and/or elderly parents. I am definitely coming back as a man next time, or a cat

If you agree to fund care and health adequately, then I can return to work, especially if you also fund my place pf work adequately to make sustaining mental wellbeing possible.

I’d go back to work gladly under those conditions.

I'm not getting at anyone, but think of the logic here. If you do not have a reasonable income for your old age, what will it look like? It's something we need to plan for when we work. Caring for others but no income yourself? How do you survive?

If you agree to fund care and health adequately, then I can return to work,

how should it be funded though?

Caring for others but no income yourself? How do you survive?

As I said above - rely on husband, significantly reduce household expenditure, downsize. Would you prefer I abandoned those I care for?

The problem with “let family deal with it” as a solution which is the one the government favours imo is that it doesn’t take into account that demographics & society have shifted hugely

1.5 million ppl over 65 don’t have any children. Half of all ppl over 75 live alone because they’re either bereaved, divorced or never married. The generation below that, 4 million ppl over 50 have no children & being single/divorced is far more common

in addition we have now a lot more what are called beanpole families where there are more generations alive because ppl live longer but each generation is generally smaller. Basically because ppl have fewer children, not only are there less ppl with children but there are also fewer nieces/nephews. This will leave fewer ppl in the younger generations supporting a larger number of older family members

that’s before we even get into the practicalities of combining caring with working or adult children and parents living hours apart

Taxation, and an element of ‘co paymemt’ which is means tested.

It would be much, much more efficient and effective to enable me and my peers to work but tax us more heavily.

@cantkeepawayforever what taxation?

I pay enough income tax imo

Income tax. Also redirection of some of current expenditure. It may also be worth considering the best and most cost effective use of resources - state run cottage hospital or extortionate private care home with unused restaurant and grounds for show?

@Theeyeballsinthesky exactly. Ideally I would have left London ly but because of ageing parents DH & I decided to stay relatively close.

how should it be funded though?

Well, and I know this is a bit renegade, but how about through general taxation like it is now ? That is how the majority of the NHS is funded, general taxation, plus a bit from NIC and an even smaller bit from charges to patients.

Well, what is ‘enough’? Enough to pay for what you and the rest of society needs, or little enough you have private money for what you want?

Helford its a slope we have to go down. People do not want to pay to keep others alive at any cost. And why should they? We do not all have the same sensibilities as you. Are you one of those who think life is sacred for some reason?

@cantkeepawayforever more income tax?! How high would you have it?
how will you incentivise people to work & stay in this country? where will you get more workers from?

The money we earn no longer pays for the level of intervention and maintenance we need from the state as individuals. The main issue is personal responsibility but nobody wants to hear it - everything is someone else’s fault, or there’s a ‘mental health’ reason why they can’t lose weight/stop smoking/exercise/plan for retirement properly etc.

If you start a thread on here about how obesity is crippling the NHS - and therefore directly affecting all of us - you’ll just be met with screams of ‘goady fucker’. They feel entitled to go through life without having poor decisions that impact others ever questioned.

As a society we all need to look after our health properly, make good long term decisions and learn to solve our own problems rather than relying on others to do it for us. It won’t solve the issue entirely but think how much more capacity the NHS would have if even half of the obese people in this country lost weight, and half of the alcoholics stopped drinking, and half of smokers stopped smoking. Plus less old people constantly in and out due to falls because they’ve either moved to suitable facilities or actually spent some money on having adequate care in their own home.

But, they won’t - it’ll just be excuse after excuse as we watch it all go up in flames.

Bibbof, currently, I pay no income tax. Because there is no care, I do not work, and so I pay no tax.

Even the amount of tax I paid as a senior full -time teacher would surely be better than nothing to the Government??

And no, I don’t want taxation paying for home care for an elderly couple living in a 900k mortgage-free home with enormous savings in the bank.

The reason I am raising this issue about income is that women live longer than men. They have smaller pensions and very little of their own assets. They should. It should be incalculated into young women that they need their own means because otherwise they will head into old age either dependent on others or in poverty.

What's not talked about is people running out of money in retirement. That happens. If it is hard to raise income at 50 plus it is very very hard at 70 unless you have done some work while you were of working age.

It's like women staying at home for the kids. If you can afford it, fine. But you do have to think "how long?" and "how do I manage the cost"?

Well, what is ‘enough’? Enough to pay for what you and the rest of society needs, or little enough you have private money for what you want?

Young people can't afford housing, childcare or even dc. They also face huge educational costs & you think they should pay more income tax?

And no, I don’t want taxation paying for home care for an elderly couple living in a 900k mortgage-free home with enormous savings in the bank.

Quite!

Even the amount of tax I paid as a senior full -time teacher would surely be better than nothing to the Government??

I guess it depends if you tax is more than the cost of care?

I would also say, btw, that I believe health care should, to an extent, be rationed. There are treatments that should not be available on the NHS, and patients - of all ages - who should not be receiving the treatment they are. There are doctors who have trained in the NHS who do more private than NHS practice. There are processes that could and should be more efficient and cheaper. But ultimately, we pay very little compared with countries we see as having better health, care and education systems, and we should learn from them.

(Oh, and the Brexit self-inflicted wound …that was just stupid)