Horror I witnessed last night NHS

[ElisabethZott]

At 3pm yesterday I took my 88 yr old mum to hospital as she had an unexpected, sudden anaphylactic reaction to one of her meds and her tongue and throat swelled up to the extent she was struggling to breathe/talk/ swallow. I drove her there because I knew the ambulance wait can be hours.
I witnessed pure absolute carnage. I worked for the wonderful NHS for 30 years and yesterday I had first hand experience of the struggles the poor staff. I have never seen such a horrendous sight of so many trollies with extremely sick and dying patients lining the corridors. I couldn’t begin to count them but there were dozens and dozens. It’s only early November, I can only say, for your own sakes, unless you have a life threatening condition, do not go to A&E.
The staff were absolutely brilliant but there’s not enough of them. The care and kindness they showed us amazing. DM didn’t join the trolley queue as her airways were compromised so we went to the observation ward where she has stayed on a trolly overnight. All A&E wards were rammed to capacity with people not even having their own bay, they were just squeezed into any available space.
Once mum had steroids and anti histamines and she stabilised ( because they were working at full speed to treat other patients) the staff simply didn’t have to time or capacity to help mum. She was offered no water, no blankets no food ( her tongue swelling had gone down a little and she hadn’t eaten all day ). You can see by the tone of my post I am no way being critical of the fantastic medical team , they were pushed to the limits. I don’t really know the point of this thread except to say I am so worried what’s going to happen when winter starts properly.

Thank you NHS but you too need looking after too because you are really broken and sick

Well the first reply isn't wrong. Thank the Tories. They don't give a a damn about anything but their own bank balances. They have allowed tenders from incompetent cronies for crucial NHS equipment. They have underfunded consistently.

I have no issue with tax rises if in return we get good services that benefit the whole of society.

But as that guru of the Tories said, 'there is no such thing as society'. Look after your own and sod the rest. That's their moral standpoint. Doesn't really tally with creating a functioning infrastructure.

Nonsense, Wales and Scotland are not independent countries & one only has to look at the steady rise in elective waiting lists since 2010 to see its Tory problem.

They waste the money spent on the NHS, no actions on preventative care, nothing done about staff retention, outsourcing of NHS staff to private companies, which then double up on HR and admin functions plus the Govt wouldn't even honour the pay rises won after strikes to those NHS staff working in the private sector.

Tories of course blame anyone but themselves, the reality is they don't use the NHS so don't give a 4X about it.

Anyway, in poling, only 11% think Sunak is doing a good job, so hopefully he'll be gone in the nr future, along with the rest of them.

I said this a few years ago and got ripped to shreds on here for it.
But it’s true.

I don’t know if it’s always been this way or it’s got worse.

I’ve only ever needed to go a handful of times in my life fortunately and it’s usually only with my DC, so I’m mainly on the children’s ward.

But every single time there are multiple drug addicts or alcoholics and there are at least a couple that act like absolute twats.

Each one takes 2/3 staff too (probably for safety reasons which I don’t blame them for) but every time I’ve seen 2/3 staff spend ages trying to coax or calm down a drug addict and everyone else just has to wait until it’s done.

I remember we had to wait for a scan for my DD for about 40mins
In that time I saw 4 nurses following a drug addict and pleading with her and her friend to come back so they can get treatment, the women were both giggling and saying let’s hide, loving the attention/drama.
Then a few minutes later a man was running around and starting spitting on people and there were 4 staff begging for him to come back.

I used to want to work in the NHS but I do not have the patience to pander to people like that.

What do you mean they weren't busy? How could you possibly tell? People arrive for their appointments at GPS so you'll o my ever have a few in the waiting room unless some emergency has caused a delay.

It's horrendous. I fell down the stairs last month and cut my head badly, could not stop the bleeding. Sat in A and E from 7pm til 2am. I couldn't get a drink or anything as felt so much pain standing up and also was afraid to move the hand I had holding the tea towel to my head as it was holding the cut together. Eventually got stitches and a taxi home but it was an awful experience. I was very aware others were lying in the corridors in worse states than me which is why it took so long.

I now have a bag under the stairs with blankets in it, a few bottles of mineral water and packets of biscuits which we can grab in an emergency if any of us have to go again.

Ffs. If there is not the money to invest in the NHS, there is not the money to invest in massive structural and funding changes to the UK healthcare system either. People keep talking about entirely changing the way something works as though this will save money, instantly improve morale and make everything cheaper. It won’t. Besides which, the Tories have already wasted colossal amounts of money on restructuring the NHS to nobody’s benefit, so they clearly cannot be trusted to restructure anything.

The Tory government specialises in reducing funding for public services and Local Authorities, making knowledgeable people redundant, and then ultimately paying the same people more to access their services via outsourcing to the private companies they now work for. They have no ability when it comes to any other model of government.

Burn out and trauma. I'm amazed there isn't a PTSD pandemic within our emergency services (there is but society doesn't like to talk about it)

The NHS is broken and has been for years. The government don't care.

Blue mongoose, I spent 40 years working for the NHS,, it was always short staffed. I can remember working 3 wards on a shift, sitting on the toilet with my head on the wall, closing my eyes, because I was exhausted.i retired 7 years ago,12.5 hour night shift, putting my head on the wall at 5am because I hadn't had a break.

Always blame the tories and demand a general election; such a trite answer

The problems with the NHS are many decades in the making. Aging population, trusts being run badly, resources being wasted, personnel being treated like shit

Thank fuck the Tories haven't been in power for the last 13 years then......... who on earth do you think runs the NHS/Trusts????

@dickdarstardlymuttley there absolutely
is and you’re right

Ugh. They really need to stop full families at the door.

We need to support hospitals to throw out the crowds of well-meaning family supporters. We shouldn't have copious amounts of hangeroners. Take a book, take a phone, take a charger, take a bottle of water and some snacks. We shouldn't be in the situation where sick people are waiting on floors while healthy people look on tutting because their spouse has an infected hang nail.

Fwiw my last trip to a&e was for a fracture. I was triaged, x-rayed, treated, referred and discharged in under 2 hours. The last trip for a child was awful, so many parents and siblings hanging round the waiting room and sick children on floors as a result.

It’s not a simple case of changing the government or throwing more money at the problem unfortunately.

There is so much wastage in the NHS, be that in the way that the funding is spent or in the way that may patients are using the NHS unnecessarily (there’s often posts on Mumsnet asking if a child should go to a&e with a slight temperature for example). Unfortunately, when something is free (at the point of use), many people don’t value it and abuse the system.

Pharmacists could be given more ability to help with various ailments, as they often are in other European countries. People visiting a&e for a minor cut for example is absolutely ridiculous.

For those remembering a golden age of the NHS under the previous Labour government, it’s certainly not the experience we had. Our family’s experience of the NHS under the previous Labour government was absolutely dreadful. Maternity care was awful and elderly relatives were treated appallingly. Correspondingly, our experience of the NHS in recent months cannot be faulted. We received excellent care.

My point is that it seems to pot luck whether you receive good care - but it’s been like that for years, long before the current government came to power.

Rather than blaming the current government and scoring political points, we should be looking at how to improve the system. Even with the current level of funding, I firmly believe that things could be improved dramatically with a bit of efficient management.

The population as a whole could do with taking more responsibility for their own health as well.

It's not the same in Scotland. NHS Scotland is definitely in trouble, but it's not as bad as England.

We have also in our department recently placed water fountains with squash in every waiting area. We have volunteers back now since they were stopped in covid times, but the volunteers now do tea and coffee trolley runs that include waiting rooms with biscuits. They circle the department 24 hours a day so its usually an hours wait at most for them to get to a waiting room. We also have a chain coffee supplier that is 24 hours and multiple vending machines. We have a HCA based in the main waiting room too who provides blankets an assists people to the toilet or with phonecalls etc and a nurse available to help with timely pain relief in waiting areas, although only paracetamol can be given at this time. Its not perfect, but it is something to help patients with long waiting times.

This could be rolled out in all ED's, and could be worth campaigning for in your local area.

How can the NHS be so understaffed when it is the 5th biggest employer in the world?
It makes zero sense.

Why are the triaging staff not sending people like that packing??

The Tories have wasted so much of our money on other crap/their friends.
If they spent it wisely we wouldn't be in this situation.

Because with a deep cut there's a risk of tendon damage.

To those asking if a general election will make things any different, maybe, maybe not. But the Tories have proved time and time again that public services are not safe in their hands. So, to my mind, the priority is a GE to vote them out and stop the wholesale greed, corruption and utter contempt with which they so openly regard us - the people they are supposed to be serving. Labour may not be any better, but let’s face it, they’d have to go some to be any worse than the inept bunch of sheisters we have now.

@sep135 Changing the NHS to a French let alone a Germany model will not create French or Germany levels of buildings, equipment or staff, neither will it create more money for healthcare.

Staff take years to train, buildings and equipment (with planning) take just as long, Dr's many years longer.

We also do zilch on preventative healthcare or retention, we've some of the fattest people in Europe inc children, we have also made it extremely difficult for equivalently trained AHPs to come here from the EU, so we now have some people coming here with poor language and medical skills, as well as depleting their own countries health systems of staff.

Unfortunately the NHS can't be fixed by either the Tories or Labour, I've been a contractor to the NHS and witnessed the core reasons for failure, and they are not easy or paletable to address, you can divide the issue in two.

1/. Lack of enough medical staff, equipment etc to do the job efficiently and provide a good level of care.

Equipment and buildings can quite quickly be addressed, costs money, but doable. However trained, good quality medical staff are harder to come by.

2/. An absurdly large, largely pointless and vastly expensive administration.

This is a sort of self fulfilling, self replicating behemoth of managers, middle managers and other assorted fuckwits, they cost us billions and do very little - This is the really hard bit, to fix the NHS you need to stream line the admin and it will result in hundreds of thousands of redundancies and people out of work.

Pouring in more money doesn't fix the problem, as part 2 of the problem absorbs a large ammount of the funds to grow itself, I liken it to giving money to a poor african country, where the dictator pockets most of the funds and the people see very little.

Money poured into the NHS doesn't find its way to Dr, Nurse, Patient, it just germinates more fuckwits, Core Strategy Managers, Patient Experience Managers, and heaven preserve us, the cess pit of them all, Human fecking Resources.

The political party has nothing to do with bringing the NHS to its knees. It is the NHS who have brought the NHS to its knees

I have over the past 40 years watched as the fundamental flawed way of doing things (when you point out the flaw the reply is “This is how we always do this”) has resulted in what we see now.

There are 3 things which would save the NHS but I doubt they would be implemented as then they wouldn’t have anything to complain about

Firstly medical personnel need to listen to what the patient is saying

Secondly listen to all the patients symptoms (not just the one symptom they are allowed to mention) as specific diseases and illnesses can have a specific set of symptoms

Thirdly send the patient for all the tests relating to their group of symptoms

The first cost £0

The 2nd will cost more initially with longer GP appointments but when you look at the fact most people return many times before the GP will take any notice of them it will soon even out and potentially save time and money for all concerned

The third will cost hugely more initially but like the GPs appointments it will end up saving money as people are diagnosed early and instead of multiple GP appointments, Consultant appointments and more complex and longer operations and extended stays in hospitals. Most people will be diagnosed quickly and have the issue sorted and not be clogging up the appointment books trying to be heard or ending up in A& E when the untreated condition gets to the point the patient is near death.

So sick of hearing this is all the tories fault. Every constituent part of UK has a different set up....only England has a Tory majority in government, and yet the NHS is all countries is malfunctioning

Honestly I don't like the tories, but it is so tiresome every thing seemingly being blamed on them on mumsnet by many

(BTW my constituent part of UK is not England)