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

Planning Taxation & employment laws should have been used to limit the expansion of junk food, the Tories did not.

But your comment is perverse, on one hand we all want everyone to improve their health but on the other, you think we should allow the unregulated growth of highly addictive calorific foods, Sunak wants to ban smoking, yet does nothing about junk food, a bigger problem for the NHS, its not even taxed correctly.

So, yes, anyone who is serious about improving the UKs health is going to have restrict fast food outlets.

I've worked in the NHS as well under Labour and Conservative and you're absolutely spot on with your assessment. All of our managers were ex nurses and mainly hopeless. If only all political parties could come together for a solution instead of blaming each other. NHS can't continue as it is, it's completely disorganised and wasteful. More money won't solve that, no matter how many clinical staff are recruited

It's almost as if the Westminster government wanted the Welsh Labour government to look bad 🤔

I live in Wales. The Welsh Government doesn't need any help in looking bad, it's the one thing it's good at.

Totally agree !

My little sister suffers with chronic anxiety and depression with a history of psychosis too. Sadly she took a big overdose of high strength co-codamol in the early hours of Thursday morning last week. Nobody knew until much later when she became very ill, projectile vomiting almost continuously and her son managed to get her to tell him that she’d taken an overdose. He rang an ambulance and he went with her to hospital. She was made to sit in the waiting room with lots of other people whilst she was being sick badly. Her son went to ask for cleaning stuff and more sick bowls and the nursing staff were so rude to them both. They took bloods which took 6 hours to be given a result which showed liver damage due the high levels of paracetamol in her blood. The Dr walked in, gave the result and walked out. No sympathy, no empathy, nothing! This was QEH at King’s Lynn. She had numerous drips to counteract paracetamol toxicity. She was still being sick. It was degrading in front of lots of other patients.She was moved into a ward and treatment continued and the staff were much friendlier and compassionate. A&E was just awful, they had no empathy for a suicidal patient and she was made to feel like a time waster.

Fresimo, and BlackCountryWench2,you are absolutely right. Put much more eleuqently than me, suffering from Long Covid. I spent 40 years in the NHS, nursing, seen it all. The Health Tourism, the My Husband has private Health Insurance with his job, the time wasters, (I do not care my lifestyle has given me diabetes,it's MY right to eat/drink what I want, and you to care for me)the drunks. I have worked in the ED on New Years Eve.

There was a report on the news today about a scheme that focused on areas with.low take up of exercise. They found after getting people more active there were really good results in terms of improved health outcomes including fewer ambulance call outs.

Things like exercise to improve strength and balance in older age are so important to prevent a lot of poor health.

It’s about poor management and not funding. I worked for decades in education and early prevention and at every meeting there were at least 5 different NHS managers. They couldn’t make a decision about anything or communicate effectively with other organisations. They came from a very defensive standpoint and never seemed to want to join up services in a way that would be more effective for service users. They were far more interested in data and reports. Many retired with huge pay offs and then reappeared as expensive ‘consultants’. It was very dispiriting they love things the way they are….

Where I would completely agree that the state of the NHS is probably not much better than in England, There is a lack of funding at core level. To improve the NHS Pay and develop the people staff appropriately and you will attract new staff. I worked for NHS years ago under the labour government - things were far from perfect but we were well stocked, people were seen at appropriate time, you could get a GP appointment.
Ive just been told 12 hospice beds in our NHS area are closing, getting a bed here was gold dust before. I genuinely despair of the NHS crumbling, and when I see my colleagues burn out it’s horrible but unsurprising.

@AngelAurora presently my trust has stopped all overtime and bank shifts via nhs professionals and agency staff. Ive heard other trusts have done the same. This is due to financial reasons.

Equally my local council has stopped services, some of which benefitted those in need. This is following the announcement Birmingham council in bankruptcy and again other councils are following suit.
I dread this winter

Unbelievable that the intent to privatise the NHS is not widely understood. PPI was part of this but the policy gonks have been pushing the compartmentalise and sell off agenda for years. Maybe there has to be a mixed economy of healthcare provision but at it's base surely there is the understanding that a progressive society values the care of the sick and vulnerable over profit?

until there is... better management and organisation

I see a lot of stuff going on in the NHS for which this one of the key issues if not THE key issue. Particularly in one hospital.

Maybe if these wonderful folk didn't keep striking ,for largely political reasons, the nhs might be in a better state. They are not all entirely wonderful and I say that as a Dr's daughter.

Be careful what you wish for . Last time labour were in, it was them that allowed hospitals become nhs trusts and independent of the government, hiring big chiefs at the top. Borrowed billions and billions to build hospitals which we still don’t own . Also sore spot for me labour closed down so many special schools as they believe forcing Sen children to mainstream schools in the name of inclusion. Last day labour was in office there was an iou note saying we’re broken and Gorden Brown sold our gold for next to nothing. Not for me again having Labour

Trusts were formed in 1991, long before Labour got in.

How would you have paid for all these new hospitals we got?

Yes we need special schools, Austerity closed down many of the few remaining ones.

Devolved Governments still rely on funds from Westminster so yes its the Tories!

The tax raised on tobacco products is around £10bn a year. Smokers cost the NHS an estimated £2bn a year, far less than the tax raised. If smoking is phased out, where are politicians suggesting they find the lost tax revenue from? Whilst it’s good that people’s health overall would improve, there is a financial cost banning smoking.

Obesity costs the NHS over £6bn a year. Where are all the policies to try to address this? Junk food and takeaways should be taxed far more heavily than it is.

Why is it politically popular to tax smokers, but not to use tax as a way of tackling the obesity problem? I say this as a non smoker.

So are Labour going to do anything about it?

More importantly, are they going to include it in their manifesto?

I imagine large numbers of fast foodies are Labour voters so I'd be surprised if they announced a "war on fast food".

@Another76543

Obesity costs the NHS over £6bn a year. Where are all the policies to try to address this? Junk food and takeaways should be taxed far more heavily than it is.

There's already the new sugar tax on fizzy drinks and 20% VAT on "catering" which includes fast food. How do you think we can tax the "wrong" foods more, yet without increasing tax on healthier options? You can hardly charge more VAT on McDonalds but reduce VAT on "lettuce R Us", can you?

I think Wales have done something recently, with some good policy

I don’t see Wales as particularly healthy under Labour. Nor Scotland with SNP on that count.

Always hearing that making the NHS private will be a better use of the available resources. I'm not 100%convinced that an insurance based service is though. It isn't as if the money isn't in the service but putting contacts up for competition might just hike prices further
I always hear about the Canadian health service being the best example.

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

People were stopped from doing that in March 2020. "all you have to do is stay home and watch Netflix" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its also interesting that they came out with "just three weeks to flatten the curve" given it takes 23 days to break a habit. The habit of going to the gym for instance

So basically "excercise and keep yourself healthy" until the NHS cant cope with a pandemic then you will have to stay home and we will still blame you for the consequences of that despite the sacrifices you made

Well if you said that at the time I would have been agreeing with you.

More focus should have been on getting to healthier and lower risk weight rather than repeated lockdown

I DID say it at the time under a different username I was suspended