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

Obviously not. And obviously it’s a difficult problem. However, the Tories have fucked it up pretty deliberately for 13 years. Enough is enough.

I can work all the Sunday mornings you want. But then I won't be there Tuesday afternoon or Friday morning. No one wants extra hours. And statistics show the highest incidence of non attendance is at weekend. We had over 200 no shows Monday to Friday last week alone.

faffadoodledo - It was Maidstone hospital. When I arrived there was hardly anyone in the waiting room, was triaged within 10 minutes, had bloods and an ECG taken. Was then taken to ER where I waited for 2 hours for blood test results. Was then seen by a Dr. and then wired up to heart monitor. Then given a trolley bed in main ER room and offered a cup of tea and a sandwich. Then taken to a ward with only 3 other people in it. I can't fault the treatment I had or the kindness of the drs. and nurses.

At my hospital there are different areas depending on what the problem is. There may have been a long wait that day say for people sent to minor injuries with suspected broken bones.

Just my thinking here - Is the issue that we fiddle with things that need a complete rethink? I know from issues with the NHS in London, 30 years ago, that it was dire then and we know we have pockets of good performance, but they are isolated by the chaos elsewhere. All politicians talk a good talk and very few are actually capable of really changing what is, so I think we've moved beyond who is in government, to is the way we are governed fit for purpose!!! Like housing, utilities, transport and local government and oh so many other services that should be working to produce better results for all, we need to re-think what we actually need and want from our services, alongside what is health and what is funded. So, should we fund medicalisation issues of personal choice or should our funding be about improving and fixing health issues that could be / can be fixed? Should we be changing out those currently running these services, who flit from board role to board role, often with irrelevant experience and yet act as experts. We definitely need new thinking for a new age, alongside stopping a great deal of that which causes harm to us, so no increase in a local population unless you can serve its needs might be the first way to go, alongside opening up access to medical training and universitites not being only able to offer places to overseas students. There are some easy fixes here, but rich politicians hate to put their hand in a state pocket, unless it is to benefit them and theirs it seems.

Some charging would sort out a lot of this stuff.

paying £20 for a GP appointment would deter the No shows. And you could means test that so those on the lowest incomes were affected.

’free’ is part of the problem here and patients behave badly as it doesn’t directly impact them.

france has an insurance where most people pay up front and then claim it back via state backed insurance. So it’s free, but you feel it if you don’t show up.

From my first hand observations when I took an elderly church member in (ambulance wait was approximately 6 hours, we got her into my car instead which was fine by me, ambulances are needed for those who can't get into cars) anyway, the issue in minors seemed to be dozens of pretty elderly (80+) who had a variety of injuries, illnesses which wouldn't have been an issue for younger people and dementia that had come to a head, all needing care rather than nursing really. Purely my observation and you can't see majors from that waiting area. We need a better care system for our aging population, this would relieve the nhs overnight

Enough is enough

This is just another Labour line though. From Rayner

The problem needs more than political sound bites

It's the "I've paid in" mentality that allows people to abuse the system and not place any value on it.

My elderly neighbour was in hospital recently, and her adult children were here waiting for her to come home. A neighbour asked them if she was too poorly to get into their car. They responded that she's fine but she's coming in an ambulance, we've paid our taxes for this, we'll use it while we can.

Yep, nail on head. My OH has bone marrow cancer and needs monthly chemo drugs. Every single month it's a sodding nightmare trying to get them prescribed. It involves several different people/departments and they never communicate between each other. OH spends a stupid amount of time phoning to arrange appointments, chasing different departments, etc., and every sodding month, he turns up at the hospital, after having checked everyone has "ticked their boxes", only to find the drugs aren't ready for issue, then he has to ring around again to find who lied and didn't "tick their box", then another journey to the hospital a day or two later to finally get them. It's a nightmare. So many different systems (that don't communicate), different staff who won't talk to eachother, etc.

Even worse when an oncology blood test reveals some kind of low/high level of something. Oncologist tells OH to ask his GP for whatever is needed, i.e. calcium or iron supplements, etc. He phones GP and tells them, but they insist on their own blood test because they can't access the oncology blood results. Oncology dept apparently "can't" share the blood test results and refuse to email the GP surgery to confirm what drugs need to be prescribed. So OH had to have a GP ordered blood test. But, guess what, they don't do their own blood tests anymore, so they send him back to the same hospital, same phlebotomy dept, to have another blood test, to confirm the deficiency, and then the GP issues the prescription (usually a month or two later after all that faffing around). Why the hell can't the oncologist just issue the calcium or iron tablets needed - of it they can't do that, why can't they email the GP to give them the blood test details and ask them to issue the drugs?

The entire admin/management system is a shambles, wasting huge amounts of time and resources.

Actually I’ve not heard her say that. So it’s my opinion too - and that of a lot of other people, judging by the polls.
Do you really, honestly, not think they’ve been given enough chances and should go now?

@Fernsfernsferns

paying £20 for a GP appointment would deter the No shows. And you could means test that so those on the lowest incomes were affected.

It wouldn't deter those on benefits (or otherwise exempt due to age etc), from being no-shows.

I'd love to see the breakdown of "no shows" between those who'd be likely to be charged and those who'd be likely to be exempt. I'd imagine it would be the exempt ones who were more likely to be no-shows, so lots of effort for little benefit really.

The ones who aren't exempt (i.e. workers) are more likely to be the ones who need GP appointments and who would actually turn up for appointments because they actually need them. The exempt ones are probably the ones who turn up (or not) for minor things, forget appointments, can't be bothered if Jeremy Kyle is on the TV, or just make GP appointments for the company because they're lonely. Charging, but making such people exempt, wouldn't achieve anything!

That's always been the problem with A and E, especially at the weekend, the police need to have a place to dump the drunks and all the other non-ill wastes of space to free up hospitals for the sick. Far to much is dumped onto the NHS for which it was never intended.

Help the NHS by staying home or wearing a mask and avoiding contact with others when you're sick.

The one thing in common in all the NHS hospitals that declared a critical incident this week is the very high levels of COVID test positivity.

Avoid catching COVID, and avoid spreading it, get your booster if you are eligible, and help relieve pressure on hospitals. (Bonus, by not catching COVID you are protecting your body from vascular damage - because it's not just a cold).

I want better discussion than empty sound bites on what we do about the NHS

Some posts have said more which is good

Leighton by any chance?

What was the break down of the no shows?

How many were confused/forgetful OAPs?
How many couldn't cancel because the surgery phone wasn't answered?
How many couldn't cancel because they'd been admitted to hospital or had died?
What is the split between workers and patients who'd be exempt from charges due to unemployment, disability or old age?
How many phoned to cancel but the receptionist didn't cancel on your system?

What proportion of the 200 is out of the total number of appointments? 50% is a massive problem but 1% is statistically irrelevant.

Headline figures such as your 200 are meaningless without context.

It wasn’t an empty soundbite. It’s my honest opinion. You haven’t answered my question, I notice.

Fully agree. We need radical reforms in most areas of public finances and public services. The NHS, the tax system, the benefits system, utilities, transport, judiciary, education, etc. It's all been falling apart for a few decades and re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titannic won't solve the problems.

Just get private medical care. That or move abroad. NHS can't be fixed.

I don’t think Labour have the extra funding, no. They will not fix the NHS

So it’s not a factor in my vote

They also have some poor policies

Whenever Labour were in power it was a magnitude worse than the Tory rule either side of it.

You seem to have answered someone else’s question. Mine was about whether you think the Tories deserve any more chances. What’s your opinion about that?

All I can say is - Please, please PLEASE do NOT vote Tory in the next election.

They are. Check your local surgery for how it operates but most are/should be for non emergency routine care.

Sadly, very poor experience too. My 87 year old MiL admitted with an episode of paranoia caused by COVID was left on a trolley for 19 hours, in a corridor, upsettingly to the point of soiling herself.

Horrific loss of dignity.

The Tories should be very ashamed. Vote them out!