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

Unfortunately a lot of people think throw more at it and vote labour and we will have a miracle transformation

nothing could be further from the truth

yes yes yes more money would help but there are far worse issues causing the collapse of the service than funding sort them or you might as well set fire to the extra funding

They may have more GPs but most likely they work part time.
The role of GP is such that many cannot manage "full time" because it's not 40 hours a week it's twice that. So they work part time which means you need 10 GPs where you used to have 5.

So when the government say there are more doctors it's true in actual numbers but not in capacity.

Yes, it's a shame Blair/BMA didn't double the number of medical schools and training places when they changed the contract in the early noughties. It was absolutely obvious that making GP "more family friendly" by allowing GPs to opt out of anti social hours would increase the number of GPs wanting to work part time. Yet, Blair wouldn't fund it and the BMA voted against increasing numbers of medical schools and training places. Nothing to do with the Tories!

What questions need to be asked of those who want elected?
What roadmap can voters ask for?
who in the NHS can provide insight and guidance to what is needed?

There is already privatisation in the NHS. The tricky point is where do you draw the line. All easy cases go private and tricky ones stay nhs with cost per patient set at a fixed rate? Who benefits?

The only system of training Drs in the UK is the nhs.

Everybody wants gold plated healthcare for a bargain basement price. Not surprising the nhs cannot deliver.

Privatisation has been daylight robbery and quite frankly fraudulent in some areas IMHO. I know one department that had an annual budget of 4 million. It's now costing 12-14 million per annum. The outsourced company is run by the son of a prominent right wing media mogul and the shareholders are Lord Ashcroft and Lord Rothermere.

I'm quite aware of the shortcomings of our political parties, thanks. In fact, if you read my post, you'll see that I said exactly the same about the different political parties. Labour can't wash their hands of any responsibility for it, and there's no guarantees that it would be any better if they're elected at the next GE, especially as Starmer seems to have no backbone. And I agree that the Tories have done a good job of finishing off the NHS, but with their backhanders 'jobs for the boys' ethos of looking to outsource everything to their pals, no surprises there.

I notice you ignored my point about the older generation still paying taxes - and do you really think that this situation with the NHS wouldn't exist if there were no older generation to care for? If so, you are deluding yourself and believing exactly what the government (of either persuasion) would want you to believe. And the situation won't miraculously right itself when the last of the 'boomer generation dies off, either.

Expecting a tiny bit of efficiency isn't wanting gold plated healthcare! You know, appointments that aren't constantly cancelled, NHS depts that actually communicate with each other, not turning up to the hospital at a pre-arranged appointment only to find the drugs havn't been ordered or the test results have been lost.

You seem determined to take offence and paint me as ageist, when my comments do nothing to vilify the elderly @DriftingDora. My parents, aunts and uncles are of this generation and I'm well aware of their financial contributions to the public purse over the decades. I'm also aware that pensions are taxable and that those drawing private pensions are still contributing, but do I really need to address every point you made? You appear to be one of the posters who haunt MN and who are professionally offended by everything.

I can’t believe how many posters blamed the people attending A&E for minor treatments.

I am from EU country considered as poor economically. In my home country the health system is great - you can access GP on the same day straight forward and there are GPS available during the weekends. They are no crazy waiting times in A&E just because there is no need to go for minor issues and there is enough staff. Maximum waiting time is 20 minutes.

if my child is sick I rather call my GP (not practice, actual doctor) in my home country and FaceTime her for free instead of call to my local GP here and wait an hour to be connected, offered a phone call and after that maybe an appointment. Sounds like a miracle but there is no issue to call her even during the weekends.

I’ve travelled a lot and the most horrible health systems are those in the UK and US.

The problem is not the people wanting medical help, it is the whole system. If I am able to see a doctor on the same day why should I face the horror in A&E? It doesn't make sense.

I can believe that I am saying this but for the first time since I have been in the UK, I feel happy that I am a foreigner. And I do hope that a change can happen in NHS to take out the pressure on everyone working there.

@DriftingDora you cannot deny that the poor state of social care provision is a lot of the problem within the nhs though, bed blocking for weeks even months etc does not help with patient flow within the hospital. Social care provision is likely to get worse due to the continual growth of the elderly living longer but not necessarily healthier and many kept alive artificially and the continued drop in birth rate, eventually this will level out I would assume but not before the shit show that is coming

Even having stuff like that on the hospital websites would help though.

Do you mean live A & E wait times? You can find many of them online.

If they are in hospital and have over £23.500.00, just arrange the care privately and don't encourage them to block a bed just so they can get a few weeks free care

NOT ONCE in your very long post did you mention the Covid vaccine mandate for care workers and how this has contributed to the shortage. Much easier to pretend it never happened and gaslight and blame the general public

Yes, we all have busy lives but there is such an expectation that the state provide everything in our culture and it does shock me. Our staff from Indian and Philipino and other cultures where their elders are honoured and respected, are often horrified by the way our families do not look after each other

Yes, we all have busy lives but there is such an expectation that the state provide everything in our culture and it does shock me. Our staff from Indian and Philipino and other cultures where their elders are honoured and respected, are often horrified by the way our WOMEN do not look after each other

Corrected for you

There are not enough beds for the NHS Acute hospitals to be treated like hotels

Having an intolerance (e,g, lactose intoerance) and expecting not to suffer with explosive diarhoea will help the NHS workers as much it would help me As the ill patient i wouldnt be the one cleaning it up if i couldnt get to the loo.

Expecting NOT to be made even more ill is not treating the place like a hotel for fuck sake

My DH nearly got discharged. Because apparently he had ignored 2 letters, we never received them. And had missed an appointment. Never received letters.
How many of the missed appointments were never received!

Having used the NHS quite a lot in the last few years - taking away understaffing and underfunding the absolutely dire administrative systems is a massive part of the NHS's downfall.

I had to take my son in a few weeks back. He fell and hit his coccyx and he was in so much pain with it we needed to make sure he hadn't broken it.

When we got there we were the only ones there - we were later followed by a policeman who had twisted his knee and a poor lady who's paramedic daughter had bought her in saying she thought she had broken both her feet dropping something on it. That was it. No one causing trouble - everyone just needed to be sent to X-ray.

We were there 3 hours. We had to do the forms - then return it to a different reception. Then we had to wait for triage to tell a nurse what had happened (even though it was written down and clearly nothing could be seen). Then we had to wait for a doctor to send us to x-ray and so on. All the staff were walking as thought they were in slow motion. I had my head in my hands. We could have all been sent where we needed to go in 10 minutes.

My MIL is over a hundred and in a care home, all her wealth apart from the last £23,000 ( I think) will be used up by paying for her care. She worked and paid into the system her whole life and always looked after her health. It annoying that someone who didn't pay in and didn't look after their health could be getting it all for "free

Some of those who wont be able to pay in as much will be the very same care workers who are looking after your MIL Just saying

I wish, I wish I shared your confidence. The vision of a Labour conference asking for nationalisation of resources, badly needed, while the leadership stood there and ignored them, means I have none. I don’t know who these leading politicians are listening to or governing for, but it is not the working person with no family wealth or possessions and only their own ability to recommend them.

@LeakyBoot, cheaper private services come at the cost of people having to work harder so that profits can be creamed off for non-working people. Without a strict non-profit regime there is nothing that should be cheaper in a private system. Too often the big public services (councils included) are hamstring by government requirements around procurement and ripped apart by private sector corruption.

Are you sure its only 500 'quid' (dollars?)...

How much does her employer pay on top of that?

How much is her deductible and her co-pays?

Nice leap there, cheezy! Sorry I queried you being selective in your replies - how very dare I! But I'm terribly flattered you follow me so closely!

Carry on missing the point - enjoy.

And on the other hand, how many GP appointments are wasted because patients just don't turn up?

At the moment we are averaging about an hour a day of time wasted in my surgery due to this, and the biggest offenders are usually the patients who complain the loudest that they can't get an appointment.

How is that split, i.e. workers, disabled, unemployed, OAPs, etc??

I haven't analysed it, but seems to be across all demographics. There are no repercussions for missed appointments as we aren't allowed to withhold healthcare.