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

Oh I definitely wasn't suggesting that this was for everything, but it was something that was happening all around me for weeks while in hospital and I experienced also. Chronic long term conditions would obviously be different.

But released from ward any concerns go back to a&e.

@sparklefresh spot on. I worked for a hospital taken over by Virgin Care. It was owned by Richard Branson, run by his pal Bart Johnson who was CEO (and he was also Boris' cousin) and they all went to Eton school with ex Tory prime minister David Cameron. I rest my case.

As a nurse on the other side.

Please know. That I go home from almost every shift in tears because my patient/patients haven't had the care they truly should have had, because in my itu setting I should have one intensive care baby to look after, instead I have 3.

They have this week taken away the offer of enhanced overtime pay, so our shifts will be now even short, we should be 18 nurses on a shift, we are running on 9/10.

It's horrific,

I hope your mum is ok

Sending you all my best, burntout. That sounds so hard.

My partner is a cardio patient and on new years mornjrn he has chest pains I called 999 told 4-8 hour wait so drive him myself fully expecting to have to stop do CPR on the way on him but we got there he was in a&e on a bed for over 74 hours (hed had a heart attack) I was told by the dr if we’d not driven in he would have died, he ended up having a triple heart bypass in Jan (spent the whole month in hospital) the staff were wonderful but by god theee was like urine bottles that weren’t emptied for over a day (I did them myself!) and he’d not been given food (type 1’ diabetic) lucky I was back and forth up there so took stuff but I hate to imagine older people laid there for days without anything to eat in pain and worried alone it’s simply awful it really is our nhs is amazing but so cruely underfunded. I hope your mum is doing as well as she can be now x

Um, no. I pay almost 600 a month for national insurance, the fuck I would be happy to pay even more for piss poor service. The funding is mismanaged, there are too many freeloaders, people should have to pay for an ambulance (just 10 pounds, enough to weed out people who don't really need them from using them), entire families shouldn't be able to sit in A and E while one kid is seen, one parent is enough, and the homeless shouldn't be able to use A and E as a shelter, they can go to an actual shelter. I'm sure the NHS receives more than enough money, just like the govt takes more than enough taxes, the money is just managed by morons.

Wishing you the best OP.

i took my DS to A&E with stomach pain and vomiting on a Sunday night, and the care he received at a major London hospital was excellent. By Monday night he was diagnosed with cancer, Wednesday he had port surgery and by Friday had his first chemo. I have nothing but praise for the staff who did their utmost in really trying circumstances, the A&E doctors moved mountains to get my son scans and x-rays that got him fully assessed and told me it was near miraculous he’d managed to squeeze him in.
Over the course of the next year we spent a lot of time in the hospital system and saw everything from poorly maintained wards with no functioning heating, spending nights crammed in medical store rooms serving as impromptu patient treatment rooms due to lack of space, hours waiting for chemo meds to arrive, really stretched nursing teams.
But every single person we came into contact with was doing their best and treated us with kindness and respect. They saved my sons life and I owe them everything.

Please get this government out! I’ve been an NHS nurse for 36 years and I’ve never seen it so broken as it is now. My NHS community team, that has been award winning for the last 5 years, has just lost their tender to a private provider and it’s an utter shit show. Half the fabulous nursing team have left and we are being run on bank staff and sellotape. I hate it and it’s the patients that are suffering, we are powerless against the corporate big wigs. I feel for anyone needing NHS care right now.

I think as well as the issues with drunks or people not knowing what A and E is for, I think medicine is a victim of it’s own success.

We’re able to keep people alive much longer than ever, through drugs, operations and curative treatments. Those people then take more and more resources from the NHS being kept going on the same treatments etc.

I was in for a heart attack a few years ago. The high dependency cardiac ward was half full of geriatric patients who didn’t have an acute cardiac issue. The nurses said there’s nowhere else to put them. I only had an hour wait time for the ambulance and was whizzed straight into a PPCI facility. At the time the cardiologist said if I’d waited another couple of hours to call 999 it would’ve been a very different outcome.

I don’t fancy my chances if it happens again.

Oh but the government would have us all believe that they have employed loads more staff! Physicians associates who earn nearly double what a ‘junior’ doctor earns, after having grafted just to get an interview to go to uni for a long five years, go to uni for for 2 years have no medical training and can’t actually prescribe, diagnose, do surgery, consult or do very much and for whom junior doctors are responsible! And let’s not forget the anaesthetic associates who can’t do bugger all either! I for one will be asking for their medical qualifications before I let them near me!
Don’t be fooled by the titles, they are not
medically qualified.

ozo call CVS cckcccccc

If only there was a government department that dealt with Healthcare AND Social Support. We could call it something like the Department for Health and Social Care.

Yes, it seems the Conservatives are very close to achieving their aim - starving the NHS of resources to such an extent that people have lost faith in it. I hope a general election will sort this mess out - but there are so many messes to clear up. They have brought this country to its knees. I can't understand apologists for this disgusting government.

My late husband died in 2009 after 10 hours on a trolley. It was awful. At other times in hospital stays he was treated very badly, and not only him. The wives in the list were equally scathing. The NHS was set up in 1948, as an inducement to win votes. It was probably assumed then that, as there was then a two tier system, only those in need would opt for the free treatment. That Government knew nothing about medical care needs. They did not research the cost. In 1953 they could not cope with the London smog, but they did not improve the service. In 1955 (?) they could not cope with the polio epidemic. There have been time after time since when the hospitals could not cope with the number of people. It should never have been completely free. If there had been charges then, people could have budgeted their income, as they had done before. In the 1960s and 70s there was a lot of advances in medicine, but the NHS did not upgrade or provide for the increase in patients. We were not much better than third world countries. We were told we were the envy of the world, yet no one else has copied it. It created a feeling of entitlement, to get back what they paid in. It was never free. You did not pay when you needed it, but what has arisen now with shortages of everything, is that priority is given to younger adults and those below retirement. Patients over 70 are not given the attention they need or deserve. It is better not to send your elderly friends and relatives to hospital, except in the OP's example, because they will not be treated well. Go into any ward with elderly patients. There will rarely be more than four staff for a ward of 30. Who feeds them? My late husband was in hospital a few years before he died. We took him sandwiches and he scoffed them. The nurse said he refused food. We took him a carton of milk. Three days later the milk was still there, on the bed table, unopened and sour. I just don't know what the answer is. Anyone over 82 was alive in the second world war. Men and women both went to fight one way or another. Even those born suffered rationing and other privations. Many children were evacuated. Those who stayed risked their lives. This 88 year old patient was among them. They went without for the sake of winning the war, yet what reward awaits them now?

Sadly, it's a very complex issue and not just about throwing money at it. Much of the money 'invested' goes to the wrong places and ends up as profit for someone rather than a patient benefit. I'm not an accountant nor economics expert but I'd love someone to comment who understands NHS funding to explain what'd going wrong.

This is the Tories for you. I have worked as an A&E Staff Nurse for a lot of years, never ever seen it so bad as I have these past 13 years since they came into power.

It's not nonsense at all, anyone working in A&E will agree with me, I have worked under a Labour and Tory Government, hands down the Tories have destroyed it.

This ^

The tories never wanted the NHS in the first place & voted against it many times. They have tried to discredit & dismantle it ever since while pretending to support it. After all something that everyone supports but is available for all free at the point of use is the epitome of socialism.

@Dorisbonson Agree needs to be spent better but the 12% is due to Covid additional spending and most importantly, look at NHS spending over the last 50 years and what we spend per capita compared to other EU countries?

It’s also hard to sustain when it’s successful at keeping people alive much longer with so many more complex needs

And the population gets unhealthier generally

Why are we less healthy than ever before?

The UK has some of the fattest adults & children in Europe and 50yo adults are less healthy than those in their 60s 70s even 80s.

Deliveroo culture is to blame (according to the research) so why have the Tories allowed this to happen? crazy the amount of highly processed shite some people eat.

Life expectancy is falling, so we defo aren't keeping people alive longer than ever.

Yep, I needed an urgent ultrasound abdominal scan, GP arranged it directly with the ward for that afternoon (ultrasound dept was booked solid, but ward agreed to do it with one of their machines on the ward), but I still had to present myself at A&E, be triaged, etc., before I could leave A&E by the main door and walk round to the ward itself. Absolute madness! Ward staff said that there was no way of going straight to them and agreed it was an absurd system.

So you think Labour are going to ban Deliveroo?????

Why are we less healthy than ever before?

Your post covers it, the blaming of anyone else over taking responsibility for own health