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

My mum went to A&E recently. She said the staff time is taken up by drunks and people who are high who have been brought in by police. Their behaviour and attitude towards staff was awful

Anecdotal but I was in A&E in 2017 (fell over, cut my face open) I was seen at 7pm. The nurse who stitched me up said by midnight it'll be carnage with the drunks on top of everyone else. That's a big London teaching hospital. You only have to watch some medical programmes about A&E to see that - I recall one in which a nurse said at night there as as many police as medical staff. And that takes police from the front line.

We also do zilch on preventative healthcare or retention,

well that's just lies! The whole system is now set up about prevention!

This hasn’t been my recent experience. I have not needed to attend a hospital or a&e for over 10 years but have twice this year.
The first time I tried to go to a walk in centre but when I arrived it had been closed for 2 years even though it was still on the nhs website. When I got to a&e they directed me to urgent care and I was treated including an X-ray within 1.5 hours.
The second time dh had to call 111 in the middle of night due to the pain he was in. He went to a&e and was seen immediately.
The after care wasn’t great and it took weeks to get a scan to check what was wrong but a&e itself was fine.

The thing we can do - we won’t do - but the best way to take as much pressure off as possible - is for the next 6 months stop giving them extra work:
*do not leave the house with any infection (until actually better) this would stop them from spreading and reaching the more vulnerable (so this includes testing and isolation of covid and flu - plus smaller infections = less people infected = less risk of bad infections)
*reduce traffic on roads (because often people can’t drive sensibly).
*reduce participation in risky sports etc
*ban alcohol sales and/or restrict places and times you can get booze (eg stop booze culture on a Saturday night).

Hahaha - it’s basically a gentle “lockdown” although not as restrictive. It’s the only quick instant way to reduce NHS pressures.

Obvs. I would remove the cap on medical uni places, wang some money at providing bursaries or free places, and hire as much as possible. (But if the people aren’t there to hire it’s tricky).

Surely you noticed furlough, SEISS when the economy was closed down and CoL payments direct to accounts

This idea that the state hasn’t been paying more in funding and financial support in last few years is so odd. As taxpayers it has been massive.

An absurdly large, largely pointless and vastly expensive administration.

for an organisation the size of the NHS it's grossly under managed and under staffed on the clerical and administrative front.

I work in the NHS (HR) and this is spot on.

It baffles me that people think Labour are going to be able to magically fix the NHS.

And some people still think IVF should be free.

Hahaha - it’s basically a gentle “lockdown” although not as restrictive. It’s the only quick instant way to reduce NHS pressures

Good luck with enforcing that.

The NHS has signed into stupid contracts where they pay way over the odds - from medical supplies to cereal. They also pay stupidly high salaries to 'diversity leads' instead of using that money for junior doctors and nurses. Labour started privatising the NHS, but the Tories have continued to do this.

Also, A&E is always busiest on a Friday and Saturday, especially in the evenings.

@TheLonelyGoatTurd
Imagine if the quietest hospital was two counties over. An hour drive might save a 6 hour wait but then the crew is well out of area. In my town there might only be two ambulances serving the community. Also, if the patient is requiring A&E, you just cannot justify the risk of delaying access to the place of definitive care, even if it's not immediately accessible when you arrive. It's not ideal I know.

Whenever I read things like this I am reminded of my anger and frustration when I was on one of my local Facebook groups some years ago. It’s was election day. My city is predominantly red or yellow with a pocket or two of blue. The FB group I was perusing represents quite a well to do area of the city and fluctuates between red and blue in elections. I remember a post from this one lady boasting about how she’d just been down to the polling station to make her vote for [name of blue candidate] urging the naice ladies in the postcode to do the same. All chuffed with herself she was. I wanted to scream at her that she had no business being proud of this. Did she have no regard for schools or for hospitals? Did she have any idea what she was doing?! Cut to a couple of years later and a post popped up from the same woman deploring the Tories and what they’d done. She didn’t want Brexit. She was upset about the effective dismantling of the NHS. She wasn’t happy with schools being perpetually underfunded. She was outraged. She wanted to write to her MP. The same MP she had voted in. Pride now replaced with indignation. Again I wanted to scream at her and say “but this was precisely what you voted for. How dare you foist this government on us all and then complain when they do what we all knew they would do! You are responsible. You and others like you. How dare you!” I hate the Tories with all my heart. This is what they do. Dismantle and sell off to the highest bidder. Corrupt and compassionless. And people are stupid enough to vote for this shit. I won’t get into a bun fight about the merits of each political party, the voting system itself or stupid people and their right to vote. Suffice to say I hope we can collectively see sense and vote this party out and start the unenviable task of trying to undo the many years of lies, corruption and shameful mismanagement.

That's because Scotland receive more money per head than England, and nurses are paid more.

Uni tuition fees are also free, so I'd say Scotland get a better deal all round really.

My dh had chest pains recently and called an ambulance. I was able to leave work and drive to his rural location (about an hour). I beat the ambulance, but that's not the point. The ambulance took Dh to our local hospital. It was an hour's drive, but it took 1.5 hours because firstly, having established he wasn't having a heart attack they drove pretty slowly, and second they didn't have proper live traffic sat nav, so followed a much busier route than my Google maps sat nav was suggesting (I was driving behind). Hand over at the hospital was only about 45 min but we did all sit in a corridor waiting for quite a while.

Logistically - yes it was no longer an emergency to get him to hospital as fast as poss for his sake, but surely releasing the ambulance for another call is also a priority, why not use lights and sirens for all ambulances with a patient in?
And surely investing in live traffic sat nav would make sense?

I assume if he had had a car crash and was bleeding out we would have gone straight to resus on arriving at hospital. But leaving crews waiting hours for handover of non- life-threatening patients stops them from being able to leave to get to a possible life threatening emergency, which also doesn't make sense. It feels like the systems need changing rather than the personnel or just chucking money at it.

I worked in emergency recieving 10 years ago and we were barely coping then.
I will however say anecdotally I've had 3 A&E emergencies in the last year with my son and only had one poor experience when a junior doctor tried to discharge him before his blood results were back- it turned out he had sepsis, consultant thankfully overrode that decision after I objected to taking him home, he ended in for 4 days of IV antibiotics.
When he broke his leg we were through A&E, assessed by an incredible nurse practitioner, given strong pain relief, x rayed, into plaster by NP and orthopaedic registrar and transferred to ward all in under 3 hours and the follow up care was also very good.
We are fortunate to live close to a large paediatric hospital with a dedicated children's A&E department though so the drunks ratio is significantly lower than in most A&E departments although sadly not completely non existent.

It has been this way in Ireland for the last 15 years. The goal is to get the people who can afford it to take out medical insurance and use private hospitals. It's an absolute disgrace.

Nothing we haven’t heard before, every winter it’s the same and starts earlier every year.

At the end of the day the Tories have done this but they were put there by the people of this country, they aren’t dictators.

Wr have the government and NHS we as a country voted for. Its down to us to do better.

And no, I never voted Tory nor will I ever.

@PurpleFlower1983 the population isn’t falling, in the last decade it’s reached 67 million compared with 63.3 million in 2011. It is still increasing but at a slower rate, but increasing non the less. The problem is the demographic is getting older. It’s estimated that between 2015 and 2050 the number of over sixty will nearly double from 12% to 22%

The alcohol problem needs sorting and perhaps the police who are currently tied up with bringing the drunks in and policing them in hospitals could enforce an alcohol ban instead. If the political will was there. It was there for campaigns like ‘eat out to help out’. Why the hell are nurses being left to handle this alone.

Agree. I fully agree that we need a change of government, but I think anyone who thinks this will radically improve the NHS is living in cloud cuckoo land. It needs radical, cross-party rehaul and anything else is just a sticking plaster.

I could have cost the NHS £1000s over the years if GPs and consultants had listened and sent me for tests Instead of the millions they wasted by their own system of money saving initiatives

100 + appointments over 60 years regarding allergies. I was refused an allergy test each time.

4 years of GPs and psychiatric appointments. I thought I had a stomach ulcer. GP thought I was an attention seeking anorexic. Psychiatrist was trying to convince me that my pain was my brain punishing me for eating

7 years in constant pain. Fortnightly physio appointments, Consultant appointments every 6 weeks because their guess (and I do mean guess as that is the word they used) was because I needed a new hip.
I asked for an MRI over and over but that apparently cost too much (£300)
The MRI would have shown I had slipped a disc in my back.
When I went private and paid for it myself the osteopath took one look at my body and said she could see bones sticking out where bones shouldn’t be sticking out. It took 6 months to get me pain free
The Consultant didn’t even look at me and didn’t want to know how I had “injured” myself

Thats how the NHS waste the money given to them.

At a recent A&E visit we were treated to patients who seemingly brought their whole families to wait with them, resulting in nowhere for actual sick people to sit. This was evidenced by the frequent rush to the door when the fast food/deliveroo order arrived. You haven’t had the full on A&E experience until you’ve seen a patients’ name called and six grossly overweight relatives jumping up and gathering their burgers, fries and milkshakes up ready to accompany them.

The alcohol problem needs sorting and perhaps the police who are currently tied up with bringing the drunks in and policing them in hospitals could enforce an alcohol ban instead

Police are under funded and over stretched as it is. What do you want, coppers barging into pubs with breathalyzers? how would this ban work, exactly?

If you want to address the alcohol problem, start with its availability. Every corner shop sells it. Thirty years ago you had to go to an off licence.

Went with my elderly mum on Tuesday - ambulance staff were amazing and really thorough and explained everything clearly, sadly the hospital is just dire and staff no time to explain anything. A&E overwhelmed as described above, and it was a 7 hour wait for a dr, so as she needed oxygen they had to keep her and squashed her on to a holding ward, next evening she got to AMU, and the day after that a winter ward that is more than dire and rundown and has no facilities such as tv, and absolutely stinks of urine and more. More worrying for care is that I go in daily and the staff are so so busy I’ve spent quite a bit of my time picking things up, passing patients their drinks or buzzers, finding a nurse when one couldn’t breathe ok - no real info on my mum’s plan or how she is doing. Some more essential care lacking than other aspects but none very conducive to recovery, except you get desperate to leave.
I’m pending an urgent referral myself that is now 3 months and heard nothing. My grandson’s referral is 2 years, whereas in 2008 ish my daughter’s for same was less than a month.
This is how it is, breaking everywhere, but can’t see how it can be readily fixed, it needs rebuilding from the ground up in many areas not just the medical care. I’ve temped there in 1980s and then in 2012 and the admin differences were not anything that you could call an improvement just much more ‘busy’ work and cost to hospital for temps is a huge waste of cash. I have recently noticed police all over the hospital every time I go in, not just A&E so that probably needs some separated processes.
I do notice that a local town’s hospital seems slightly better than my city’s hospitals, and some PPs talk of better where they are, so maybe some of it is down to numbers through doors, demographics, and that should be accounted for in future planning. Generally it’s no longer about throwing cash at it, but restructuring altogether, which to my mind should be cross party to save the inevitable 5/10 year redirection on this.

Yes, restricting availability was what I was talking about, as I was responding to earlier posts. I know the police are overstretched. Sorry I wasn’t clearer.