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

They need to make it easier for
intergenerational living plus tax incentives for those keeping the
elderly at home
However all they have done is transfer some of the burden to the 3rd sector but you still have to pay for some of their services
Nothing is free hardly Is this privatisation in disguise

The Tories cannot bring anything to its knees unless the public allows it It is not a private company
Unbelievably large numbers voted Brexit having been told Caring staff would return to the EU
Those same people now say it was COVID which did not help but the Germans had 3 times IU
beds more than us How is that

In Germany GPS only see new symptoms They have more specialists than us which are costly to train but deal more efficiently with specialisms in the long run Our system is to leave it till an emergency and rush at it
Very different but it is great just seeing a specialist for obs and gynae in a small practice than trailing to a large hospital Luxury over there

Germany, like France and most of Europe, have been spending more per head of population on health for decades, its nothing to do with the funding model, they just spend more, they also do not charge students 10s of '000s to train as AHPs either.

We have voted for tax cuts instead, ironically pay more in taxes now than ever before, most it wasted on fire fighting/throwing money at a problem instead of having long term plans.

That's all very well but it'll be women who end up doing the caring and giving up careers to do it.

If DM had come out of hospital it would have been impossible for me to care for her as I am the main earner. We have a small flat so she wouldn't have been able to come here and we wouldn't have been able to move in with her as her house had to be sold when she died. She'd done an equity release when DF died to allow her to stay in the house (please no comments about the equity release. Last time I mentioned it I was told DM and I were stupid, thick etc.).

@Trailstunning

As for taxation, we have Fuel duty, Tobacco duty, Alcohol duty, i'm, if we really wanted too we could have Fast Food duty too, try to be more imaginative, VAT isn't the only tax in the Govt armoury!

You have to think of the practicalities though. Fuel, tobacco and alcohol are so obvious, there's little scope for confusion abuse. How would you define "fast food" - would it be based on fat content, sugar content, size of meal, whether it was fried, cooked or roasted, how long it took to cook, etc etc. It'd be an unworkable minefield. Who'd decide that fish & chips from a chippy was "bad" and taxed more highly, but that sushi was "good" and tax free? Completely impractical. It's already bad enough with all the legal challenges as to whether a Jaffa cake is vatable, i.e. whether it's a cake or a biscuit. A "fast food" tax would tie up the courts for decades and probably cost billions in solicitor/tax consultant costs!

So we do nothing and allow the UK to become the fattest nation in Europe? and ensure that whatever is done with the NHS, it is overwhelmed with obese patients.... sounds a good plan.

Doubtless your arguments were also used to stop taxes on tobacco, fuel, alcohol...

The Jaffa cake thing was stupid, VAT isn't normally charged on most baked products, cakes inc so bad law.

Gladwhere It is no different to NI and tax Richer have been paying in for the poorer for decades Basis of our system

Of for goodness sake. Its people like you that keep us stuck with a health serviced that is completely unfit for modern day living and is the worst in Europe. Stop the politics - there is no government of any political persuasion that can ever go on shovelling more and more of our GDP into a failing, wasteful and totally moribund organisation. We MUST move to an insurance-based system so that all of us can have the health care that we have already paid for.

I recently spent a night in A&E with my elderly Auntie. She'd collapsed and had a nasty gash on her head, and constant nausea and vomiting. No beds, no trollies, she just had to sit on a hard plastic chair for over 8 hours. It was just carnage in A&E, the majority of people in there were either drunk or high as kites on drugs. There was a lot of shouting and screaming, and police just leading these morons in and just leaving them. The loos were absolutely filthy, I've seen cleaner toilets at festivals.

In contrast our DD was taken suddenly very ill in an Eastern European country this year. Ambulance arrived within 7 minutes. Within an hour of being admitted to hospital she'd been seen by a doctor and consultant, and was resting in a hospital bed on a quiet, clean ward. A lovely nurse even had time to sit with DD, as she was only a teenager and was feeling very frightened and alone. And, this is just considered par for the course in this country, according to DD's friend who lives there.

OK, as expected, you can't come up with a workable solution to taxing fast food!

Lots of things are good ideas in principle but impossible in practice, that's why they remain just ideas!

So we do nothing and allow the UK to become the fattest nation in Europe? and ensure that whatever is done with the NHS, it is overwhelmed with obese patients.... sounds a good plan.

The government could exert greater controls over the UPF industries, and deal with some obesity at source - as their foods are designed to be high in fat, sugar and salt, to make them particularly addictive? According to Christopher Van Tulleken, UPFs are likely to cause increased rates of cancer, mental health problems, cardiovascular disease, etc among the under 50s in particular. This might cost even more than obesity in the long term?

I don’t see why poor people should be subjected to higher taxes on fast foods, while the fat cat UPF industries are left free to make profits at their expense?

Can I just add, article in the nursing standard today that said nurses in this country are paid on average 20% less than global counterparts.... maybe that's the sticking point! Not enough staff to run a service as it's too appealing to leave once qualified for better pay.... just playing devils advocate

I ve other things in my life apart from formulating health policy!!!

One solution that has been used elsewhere is to tax based on calories per 100gram.

Min turnover could ensure that a tradition chippy (if there are any left?) wouldn't be affected, planning laws could be updated to limit FF outlets.

Otherwise, how would improve the nations health? so far all you ve offered is criticism.

If FF outlets were highly taxed, companies would be forced to improve food standards?

But yes, tackling at source is a great idea too, though improvements would carry costs passed onto the consumer too.

Having seen the prices of (some) fast food, i'm not sure poorer people are their main customers.

So true. It's interesting that no other country has ever adopted the UK model of health care funding. In Germany the government has very little involvement in health care provision. The NHS was in financial trouble from the start because of spiralling costs. Treatment maybe free but it is rationed and uneven in quality. A system that fails both patients and staff should be phased out and a new model introduced.

The fact is, every healthcare model in the world has rationed treatment of uneven quality, whether privately provided, state provided, a hybrid, insurance backed, or anything else. No human-provided service anywhere, ever, has provided unrationed care of a universally high quality. It’s only the rich who pretend this is possible, because they have the highest chance of getting it in any system.

So much money and time wasted.

Yesterday I needed to see a doc and did so via the surgery's triage system - so far so good.

Doc wanted blood tests and sent me to make an appointment for this. I went to the window and was told that the next appointment with a nurse to have blood taken would be on 22nd!! I explained that the test was needed to see what was going on right NOW, not in 2 weeks' time! I pressed hard and she "squeezed me in" for bloods today.

What a piece of nonsense this all is. My late OH was a GP - if he needed bloods from the patient in front of him he would get the kit from the drawer, stab the patient and all done in 60 seconds!

The nurse today agreed that it was a farce.

The NHS has paid another member of staff to spend time doing this. And I had to make the 40 minute journey twice in two days whilst feeling unwell - it is a rural practice. It is totally barmy!

I think the German health care model is better than the NHS. It's true, but banal to say no health care system is perfect but some are better than others. There's plenty of data on waiting times for treatment and outcomes in different countries. In the UK the third rate NHS favours the better off because they can afford private health care.

Absolutely true. The problem is, the mantra of 'not fit for purpose' or ' been throwing money at it for years' is repeated ad nauseum by the right wing media and Tory politicians and as such it seeps into peoples minds, eg priming them for massive (but negative) change, in this case full privatisation. What they are never told is that the NHS was one of the cheapest mass health systems in the world. It costs circa 9.3% of gdp. The USA for example, being the Tories preferred model costs over 18% of gdp but with far worse outcomes for most people and some of course get nothing or get made bankrupt after treatment (after Braverman's statement the other day about lifestyle choices, we can see what the Tories are really about)
Also to note that dentistry used to be part of the NHS budget which has now all but disappeared thanks again to Tories destructive negligence.

artsperson
Its only 3rd rate on account of the Tories. Pre the last 13years it was the best it ever was and much better than most western countries, never mind the USA which is the Tories preferred model.

The idea of % of GDP is an interesting one as a system can be very expensive for other reasons as pp puts

Which leads to outcomes, but then you need to factor in overall population health and cultural factors such as care of the elderly in the home

Our health isn’t very good overall and that is cultural too

That's shocking!! I'm in NZ, and while I rarely go to the doctor I have been twice this year and had to have blood tests. I just presented myself at one of the two labs in town (one is at the hospital) and they took the blood - no appointment, no waiting.

It is also true but banal to point out that which model of healthcare is best is a matter of opinion, not fact. However banal, it needs to be pointed out, to avoid people thinking that being condescending is the same thing as being right.

It’d be interesting to see how the NHS compared if we were healthier and more inclined to generational living

Maybe still worse, but those two things cause extra strain