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

This is a fabulous post and sadly very true.

One day last week my DH was a GP admission. We had to walk through A & E. The place was overflowing and there was a six hour wait to be seen. Don’t bother going to A & E if you are sick, try seeing your GP first. I know what a pain that is, so I don’t say it casually.

The issue is our model was set up when the demographics were very different.

It will struggle to cope with the vast requirements. We pump more into the NHS each year via taxes. They are a large chunk of what we pay for. Look at the employment projection I put below.

Plus we are too unhealthy. I think in part due to undervaluing healthcare as it’s free at point of delivery

Most wont want to learn the skills for managing a huge business

why? Because they wanted to learn how to treat and care for people!

and all the time they are training for these other management and business skills… they are not treating people

I know of 3 people aswel as myself who unnecessarily bed-blocked because there had been poor communication and/or liaising with pharmacy to get discharged at the earliest opportunity.

Hope your mum is feeling better now 💐

I called 111 once for a trapped nerve in my finger, because I couldn't get a GP appointment. Their automatic response is to send an ambulance. Obviously I didn't actually take them up on it but they can be quite forceful. I wouldn't assume that the woman with the cut finger was there entirely of her own volition

And yes the state of the NHS generally right now is an absolute disgrace. The sooner the Tories are gone the better.

I’m in Scotland, we have the largest population of retired and elderly in Scotland. I also work in community nursing and the issue is social care, it isn’t the NHS it’s social care and the fact we are rural so many young leave to the cities for a better life so not enough people to pick up the caring mantle. Couple this with the fact many retire here from down south away from families so no help there and it’s a ticking time bomb. What do they do instead of looking at social care where the problem is? They make it a whole team, a partnership they say where the community nurses are now plugging the gaps where there are no care packages. We can be going to people to help them with ADLs for 18 months as well as continuing with our usual jobs. Just papering over the cracks as usual. Many who do retire here say they have come for the free personal care, yeah if you can get it.

We have hardly any residential or nursing homes anymore, many are closed due to poor outcomes with inspections but I find this very short sighted, they should be supported to improve instead of cutting beds even further. Closure of cottage hospitals was idiotic as that freed up acute beds for those waiting on further assessments

then there is the issue of keeping people alive well past natural expiration. I hope I have the choice when my time comes

I had several prolonged tonic clonic seizures last year and DH called an ambulance. He rarely does this but he said I’d gone blue at one point.

Anyway, I came round in A&E and I was in a bay. I was very confused and so thirsty and hungry (seizures make me ravenous and so unbelievably thirsty) No-one came for a couple of hours and in the 14 hours I waited all I got was 2 cups of tea and 2 cheese sandwiches. I was finally admitted to the ward at about 3am. The staff were clearly rushed off their feet 😢

It sounds as though you live in my area - a certain hospital which has been in the news recently ? My own mum, in her nineties, was admitted ten days ago by ambulance. Spent most of the first day waiting in the ambulance for a space to free up, then two days on a trolley in A&E corridor, then a further two in A&E bay before being shunted between three different wards. Like you, I’m in awe of the staff doing their absolute best under these circumstances but inevitably care standards suffer. The moral of the story is don’t vote Tory.

Another person went to a and e with a young child the other day.. childs symptoms were could not walk due to stomach pain, doubled over, started vomiting at the hospital- a nurse gave paracetamol syringe to the parent,left waiting on a chair, his mum was given one of the pads that get put on the bed to soak up pee etc, to clean up the vomit with. No nurse or cleaner came around to help and to disinfect.

No other patients in the waiting room.

@Hab788

As an aside, every single trip we have had to A&E in our family (bar one fall requiring stitches) has been because the GP surgery have been unable to see children with tonsillitis, ear infections etc until its got so serious that weekend urgent care is required. Personally I feel it is access to urgent non-emergency care is where the pressure lies at the moment.

Yep, the rot in GP surgeries started when Labour (Blair) "solved" the GP crisis by offering them more pay and to opt out of evening/weekend cover. Well that went well didn't it? GP services have gone downhill ever since.

The problem is access to primary, community and social care. People end up in A&E because they have no other way of accessing the system but there is nowhere for them to then move onto because the referral pathways have huge waiting lists, or social care can't cope with the overwhelming amount of elderly or those with chronic illness. So back to A&E they go in a never ending cycle. Then add in poor staff retention due to appalling pay relative to skillls and a toxic, bullying culture which is absolutely rife within the NHS (a lot of it about who is what pay band), plus archaic IT and a complex and ridiculous financing system with departments competing with each other for cash and the whole place is quite simply a mess!

Hope your mum is ok now and got all the care she needed, even if it was a bit chaotic.

You’re all going to get a shock if you think Labour are going to sweep in and open the check book & it will all magically resolve itself.

My profession had much more funding under the tories in the 90’s and then labour came in and all of a sudden we had less funding because they funnelled everything into primary care. Then the coalition ran with what they started.

I just think it’s a real
lottery with the nhs.
I tried for an urgent gp appt last week and was advised to go to walk-in centre. I saw a nurse when I would’ve preferred to see a GP as not sure she checked ‘enough’ - said if still an issue in 10 days to see GP (was in and out in 2 hours which was reasonable). I made GP appointment for 2-weeks hence as I can cancel easier than make a quick appointment if the issue doesn’t resolve (then I’ll need bloods and maybe a scan).
Conversely I’ve had a good result from getting help for adult DS this week - was on cusp of taking him to a&e but decided things weren’t quite that bad (MH related) and waiting hours there would be not what he needed.

Absolute oberhaul is needed in spending too - I did some temp work in accounts payable in our local NE hospital. All of the groundwork’s there were completed by a company based in Birmingham - the invoice charged £400 a visit in fuel and transport. Plus meal expenses for the staff working ‘away from home’ Apparently they won the tender for all of the hospitals In our area at that time - meaning they billed each one this £400 fuel 3 times a week.
a local firm may have cost more at tender but when you cancel out that travel cost of over £52k a year it just seems like there’s no critical thought at all.

It's just awful, and there's no excuse.
But it's shit for everyone, including the 'gatekeepers'.

If you saw how many GP appointments there are available, compared to how many patients there are, you would be horrified.

Surgery staff are not allowed to register at the practice at which they work. They also have to call their GP surgery for an appointment when it opens.

Do you really think Labour will fix it? Do you mean more funding, how much more do you think would fix it?

I have worked in a and e in an admin type capacity. There are numerous problems that are the reason it doesn't work and why the nhs is overwhelmed but the biggest reason is the entitled waster section.

These are the ones that attend for any minor ailment, often self inflicted by drink/drugs/stupidity and treat a trip to a and e as a god given right. Throw in a good dose of those that need MH support and that's why you often have a five hour wait.

After a short stint in that job my perception of what the NHS should be changed dramatically. It's become too much of a crutch for feckless people and if they started to charge the time wasters and the idiots that overdo the drugs and alcohol I suspect things would improve quickly

When will people on here stop criminalising older people for everything that's wrong?

There is nothing wrong with pointing out the fact that frail elderly people are being kept alive with no quality of life. It's a heartbreaking and ethical crapstorm.

It's a fact.....a very sad one.
But life IS sad.

I do hope your Mum is feeling better now.
I'm amazed NHS workers are still loyal to their jobs (and also extremely glad). They were superstars during the pandemic before the covid vaccine, and we are so lucky to have them. I would be happy to pay higher taxes to support the NHS.

Well Labour transformed the NHS for the better when they were in last time. People were dying on waiting lists, just like they are now!

Same in rural Wales. Escape to the country but don’t expect any care as everyone has left to get better jobs elsewhere.

My mum recently had a successful hip replacement but the nursing care was appalling.

Nurse gave a drug my mum was lised as being allergic to - it was on her drug card. Epi pen was given but I was furious. You can see how unnecessary deaths happen.

That, and the ward was rammed with broken equipment and no wheelchairs. I had to beg for an extra blanket.

Watched DM survive in hospital in hospital for several weeks recently. Well, took several days of trolley to get admitted. Staff great in the most part, the buildings and organisation terrible. The same stay would have killed my MiL...it was awful and with prompt treatment, she would not be as ill now.

It’s really got to be more than ‘last time’ if there is to be realism on the costs of the NHS