Wtf is going on with the nhs, is this the new normal?

[letdownchristmas]

I was in A+E with a relative yesterday with a suspected pulmonary embolism (has a history of this ) although luckily turned out to be all clear. We got there by ambulance at 3pm yesterday and was on a trolley in the corridor until 9pm. There were 15 people in the corridor on trollies with ambulance crews waiting to be handed over. All I could think was how the fuck are there any ambulance crews left on the road when they are all waiting in here to hand patients over. I was told that that this is a fairly normal day now. On the electronic board I could see that there was a 42 hour wait for an inpatient bed and only 56% of people met the four hour target. A 7 hour wait to be seen for walk ins. It honestly frightened me as to how the nhs is going to survive another winter.

I’m just about to do something so I will come back and do it later. But just to be clear I didn’t say it was decreasing. I said it was increasing at a slower rate than a million per year. I also said there were two years where it did decrease but that was due to covid lockdowns and it’s not part of the general pattern.

Net migration last year was 700k - not a million, but frankly not far off. And all because the Tories have decided to totally relax immigration controls post-Brexit.

Of course that is going to cause massive pressure on public services and housing.

And there is a difficult trade-off with elderly medicine. My uncle had a heart attack last year when he was 88. He now has a pacemaker to prevent this. But he is now going blind, can barely walk and has dementia. A decade or two ago he’d have had a quick death from heart attack or even the flu. Now it’s likely to be a long slow decline requiring lots of social care and hospital visits.

You did say it was decreasing.

In 2021 and 2022 the population actually decreased slightly but this is probably due to covid and won’t be part of the over all trend.

This is what I challenged you on. Please show your sources for that.

The thing is though when it comes to an election people don't think about public services . They might spend a weekend in A&E with their kid but really they go away maybe moan about it and forget about it . You have to a regular user of hospitals when it really affects your life .

NHS could be drastically improved by funding and upping wages in adult social care.
There is no flow through of patients from AE to wards to discharge.

The Tories deliberately chose not to do this, they want to force more people to take out health insurance and/or pay for treatments.

Not necessarily more relevant but one of the factors that puts stress on the system along with more people needing treatment for more conditions that are more expensive eg drugs and technology.

Bevan's NHS was so much simpler when it was devised.

There is no one cause for the NHS crisis - it is a cumulative effect of all of the issues mentioned on here.

My 75 year old Dad has severe health issues, he sat and cried and said if him giving up all his NHS appointments resulting in his death would save his granddaughter he would do it.

How has this country come to this?

Exactly. You can throw as much money at it as you like, but until the NHS are prepared to change (which they're not), it won't be any better.

I worked in a city hospital under Labour. The patients weren't on a trolley in A&E, they were on a trolley in the middle of the ward. We had 4 extra patients per Nightingale ward. No curtains, no privacy and no space for them. Great for those stats- as they were seen and not in A&E.

We were understaffed and under resourced. Patients were not as well informed and generally less demanding.

It's really not a ‘new’ normal. It's the ‘old’ normal with increased awareness due to social media and increased public expectations.

People being on trolleys on the wards is still happening. Like previous poster said, no curtains, no privacy, no call bell. So five or six beds in a 4 bedded bay. For a week or more length stay.

Yes, that sounds pretty normal. No ambulances to go to emergencies because all stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patient.

My hospital is being financially penalised this year for not meeting targets. How is that going to help?
Dangerous staffing levels every shift.
Yes it is normal now.

Be wary of certain key phrases when you read any debate on the NHS.

'wasting money on diversity'

'unfit for purpose'

'spending more money than ever'

'needs radical reform'

These repeat so habitually across social media now that I fear it is an attempt to brainwash us into throwing away universal healthcare. Powered by Bots and fake accounts (X/Twitter particularly)

The NHS is on its knees for lack of investment. The level of funding has not matched the level of growth in the population, nor the aging demographic.

Vote ABC - anything but Conservative. Be tactical. I hope we can get proportional representation into our government so that the country can start to view projects like health, education, environment as being more important and enduring than on or 2 parliamentary terms of clinging to power.

The problem is exacerbated by the GP' apts being inaccessible so people go to A&E out of desperation. My GP receptionist always says there aren't any apts available so to go to casualty instead. This is what's making the problem worse and its happening more since covid.

However, whenever I go to the surgery to drop off prescription requests, the waiting room is empty & the receptionist looks bored.....This is just my surgery though and I've decided to write to my useless Tory MP to complain about it. I suggest you all write to your MPs about the lack of gp apts and the a&e situation.

The U.K. spend less on healthcare than Germany or France. Which suggests funding is an issue.

I had cancer treatment under the last Labour administration and it was no better. I was in a mixed ward which was never cleaned, 2 toilets and one shower for 12 beds. It was utterly grim. Meanwhile they were spaffing money on a grand new “Trust HQ” entrance complete with fountain.

Never underestimate Labour’s capacity to be Orwellian. And no I won’t be voting Tory.

Do you REALLY work for the NHS? I also work in a major NHS hospital and this really isn’t what the senior management spend the majority of their time talking about. It’s about working to make efficient pathways, catching up on waiting lists and, this year, managing patient care in the case of continuous striking. As well as concerns about how to bring more investment into the hospital to maintain and dare I say improve the status quo. If that’s the case with your trust then I’m assuming it’s in special measures?

Yrs it’s normal. I had a baby last Friday and lost a litre of blood in hospital - they were amazing.

on Saturday my mum called an ambulance as I was haemorrhaging at home, we were told there are no ambulances, put her in the car. Thankfully we spoke to our maternity hospital and they were fab.

Vote Tory- this is what you get. It is the will of the people that we have a terrible health care system

I live in a developing country. One that’s only about 55 years old. Our government health service is fabulous and really doesn’t deserve to be thought of as a Cinderella health service in comparison to the UK.

What we have is way better.

People voted for Austerity. Where did they think the cuts were gonna come from?

The NHS will always be the same. Even if the whole country stopped smoking and drinking tomorrow and the burden of all that self-inflicted stuff was relieved, even if everybody started showing up to every appointment instead of missing them without calling, all that would happen is whichever governnment was in power would see an opportunity to 'save' money and the budget would be reduced until the system was just above breaking point again.

Nope, those satisfaction surveys from the early 2010's dont lie - 79% satisfied in 2010 vs 29% today.

& neither do the long queues of Ambulances waiting to discharge patients into crowded AE because there is no ward space.
Patients have died in those Ambulances due to lack of expert care.

I ve lived in a so called 3rd world country and in that particular case, it offered better emergency healthcare.

Obviously suits Tory supporters to paint it as you do and blame SM and patient "expectations"

Instead of underfunding, lack of staff and Brexit (collapse in EU workers coming to the UK)

This is what it was like in the early 90s, the last time the Tories were at the end of their shit. And things got better under Labour. I'm never saying Blair was perfect. But the NHS got better.

Just think how you vote. And don't lose hope.

We've been here before.

We could stop this ever happening again if we vote wisely.

It needs better management and leadership - probably why performance is so different across the country. The resource planning is shocking. Ambulance times are poor in some places but because of a lack of ambulances and staff but because the Ambulances parked. The route cause comes back to social care - too many people are in hospital beds who should be in a social care setting. This would clear through the system. Reducing pressure on all roles would reduce the challenges with pay. Social care needs to come down to families taking more responsibility for their "elders" as happens in many other countries or investment in more care homes/facilities. Tereasa Mays proposal was politicised by Labour as a "dementia tax" now no-one has any proposals.