I am scared of the state of healthcare system

[Notsurewhattheansweris]

I am going to start saying that I respect all the clinicians and doctors and my personal experience has generally been positivie (with the exception of one case which likely led to a physchological trauma).

Whenever I see things on Mumsnet, there are so many stories of negligence, people being fobbed off, missed cancers etc. etc.

I find it really difficult after my own experience to feel safe anymore. It did leave me with a health anxiety that I am in therapy for but I cannot see the end to it because ultimately, I do not feel safe anymore.

What do you do, how do you cope? Or is it just my anxiety talking and we only see the scariest stories here that are still rare and not the norm?

My experience has been mixed but my GP recognised I was very ill and required surgery right away. He phoned the local hospital and arranged for me to be sent straight up to the surgical ward and to be admitted. No long waits in A&E or waiting a day or two. If he hadn't acted to promptly I'd likely have died by the end of the week.

Right. Having had a family member die because of delayed diagnosis I always think I would encourage people to do it. It’s a dreadful situation all round.

You only need to look at services for ND and mental health to see it’s not possible to buy your way part way into the system. Practitioners increasingly won’t cooperate with private providers diagnosis etc. cancer is only one example of what can be wrong with people

I’ve had two operations this year and supported several friends and relatives with serious health problems. The care we have all received on the NHS has been outstanding. My GP surgery is also too notch. Not saying there aren’t issues but scary anecdotes don’t represent the broader picture.

Of course no system is perfect, but the awful reality is that the UK lags behind other countries on many measures including cancer survival. That shouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

I was in hospital in the EU last week. My consultant was explaining to a nurse that a UK colleague had told him some people in the UK have to wait 1 - 2 years for a hip replacement. The nurse's mouth literally fell open. There's an element of boiled frog going on with the NHS - it's been slowly getting worse for so long, we've come to accept it.

I think it's hard for you to separate the health anxiety from the reality of what there is to be worried about. Health anxiety can be so skewing and anything you read/hear/see can feed into it and be unhelpful in managing the concern. Because the bottom line is that even if there are some concerning things about the state of the healthcare system, that's not something most people need to feel scared about or go around feeling unsafe about when it's not impacting them. That's like when people with other kinds of mental health issues overly fixate on wars or political issues that they have no control over and feel unduly stressed and develop other debilitating symptoms as a result.

The way you describe what's going on for you feels somewhere on that spectrum - not too bad, thankfully, as you sound self-aware and are working on managing the anxiety, but it would probably help you to not be engaging in the issue and to focus on something that gives you more uplift and sense of purpose/positivity. Anything else is likely to feed your worries rather than allay them as there'll always be bad news and anecdotes that stick in your head and overshadow any comforting stuff. People cope by getting on with life, worrying about what happens when it's happening and not worrying about it when it's not - and sometimes when it does happen we surprise ourselves by how well we can cope. Know that's all easier said that done, but good luck with it. Take care. 💐

For me 2 things brought it home

1. Reading a news story last year (i think) about a woman whose 20 something yr old son went into A&E with sepsis. they fucked around so long (nurse A thought nurse B was giving antibiotics blah blah) so long he actually died. Because of their slow response and when thry did eventually prescribe medication thry didnt adminster it. His mother who was there advocating for him was a doctor at the very same hospital. If she cant reliably secure basic life saving care who can????
2. my own iexperiences of my babies "care" / neglect in NICU last year. It was just awful, there arent words. I came out of it with (privately) diagnosed ptsd and was thankful my child was alive at the end of it.

I understand your fear think one of the few thongs you can do whick I have done quite seriously is double down on health (diet and fitness inc. Mobility)
additionally i am going to start getting annual private cancer checks (they are expensive but you cant easily put a price on health)

Also a timing issue. They sprung into action eventually with my DSF but too late. So arguably wasted money on futile treatment

Positive anecdotes don't reflect the broader picture either sadly. Statistics show that outcomes in the UK are much worse than in other countries. That shouldn't be acceptable to anyone.

Thank you. Very wise words.

It just got to a point of wondering whether we need to consider moving countries. It is not practical for our family but sometimes I just can't see antother way, so maybe I am not that moderately affected as I sound!

Me too. My late mother was failed repeatedly up to her death and as a result suffered horribly. The ward sister didn't even know that she needed oxygen even though she had a lung disease. Kept saying she didn't need it. PALS were useless.

Another (young) relative was fobbed off when her cancer returned and thus the chance to save her or give her a few more years at least was missed.

I'm starting to think if I become sick I will take my chances at home in my own bed. But then I have no dependents and am not bothered about getting old.

Gosh no that really is quite drastic. I hope your family can keep you grounded as you work through it and use what tools you get in therapy to keep things in proportion. Wherever you go, you will take the anxiety with you, so it's that which needs to change, not your location or other problems will just take its place.

That's super vague about 'statistics' and 'other countries'. A cursory google on 'medical outcomes by country' just threw up a bunch of reports from UK being top 5 to top 15 to somewhere in the middle of the pack of first world countries. No one's saying it's the best, god knows I know it's got problems, but it's not 'much worse than in other countries' en masse and to say that like it's fact isn't that helpful to an OP with health anxiety who's feeling scared and unsafe.

No, a lot of what you hear is the everyday experiences of many people and the ‘norm’ these days is often to be treated poorly (in my job, I’ve heard, in detail, about the experiences of thousands of people in hospital over the last decade or so - a lot of it horrific, some barely believable). I also have my own dreadful experience of the hospital’s neglect nearly killing my child, plus two recent trips to A&E lasting 14 and 9 hours. Our health service is broken.

I’m really sorry to hear about your experience. I would caution with this though:

“additionally i am going to start getting annual private cancer checks (they are expensive but you cant easily put a price on health)”

I have annual private cancer checks. Every year I am sent on the check to cancer pathway for breast cancer after they find lumps. I do not have breast cancer.

Over screening -looking for things and finding “something” is known to be a big issue in these systems (it’s partly why the NHS don’t do it) and is particularly risky for those with health anxiety.

You could pay for many years private healthcare with the cost of moving abroad! How could you afford to immigrate if you can’t afford private healthcare?

Tell me about it OP.

Had an absolutely appalling uncaring birth experience a few years ago, now heavily pregnant again and absolutely dreading it. To the point I have sympathy with freebirthers who avoid medical intervention. I don’t trust they have my best interests at heart, which is quite a scary start point for going into such a vulnerable period / experience.

I’m also petrified.
I was talking to someone last night who said they work in the local A&E. Apparently the current wait time for a bed is 5 days and people are dying in corridors.
I decided last night to start prioritising my health. I’m so scared that if I get severely unwell, I’m on my own.

I'd assume by getting a job abroad first. That's what my friends did. Their accommodation was paid for too..

The answer is pretty simple. Everyone who has a bad experience must complain. The NHS is in its present state because it has been worshipped at the altar of gratitude for forty years too long.

It has never been free, it is free at the point of delivery.

I too have lost any faith or trust in the NHS as a system. That doesn't mean there aren't fantastic individuals working in it of course. The system failed my son as a teenager resulting in an emergency admission and badly impacting his GCSEs. His care started slowly but ok but was a fiasco when he was moved from paediatrics to adults.

The system ignored my daughter as a young adult with untreated Crohn's disease for 3 years - now much worse than it should have been. By system I mean lost referrals, interminable waits, an inability to chase anyone up, incomplete records leading to pointless consultations and repeat tests etc etc. She eventually went private through work and was on treatment within 3 weeks.

And individuals failed my mother who's terminal, multi-site cancer was only diagnosed when she suddenly went blind (kidney failure) and was admitted. Even then the NHS wouldn't send an ambulance. She died in hospital 3 days later. So many obvious signs had been missed by so many individual professionals failing to connect dots. I so wanted to complain very loudly about her GP practice but respected my dad's wishes and didn't.

What comes first, the visa or the job?! How are you going to get a job abroad? Do you have dual nationality or something? Or are you under 30?

The NHS is NOT FREE, where do you think the money to fund it comes from? Off a magic money tree?

The NHS like all healthcare services including those in Europe which perform far, far, better is paid for out of the pockets of taxpayers. It is free at the point of use.

Why shouldn't UK taxpayers who fund this monolith get far better value in terms of healthcare for what they are paying into it?

This belief that we all have to be craven and grateful for the woeful health care provided by the NHS in this country is why it will never change and improve. The litany of healthcare scandals in the UK is appalling.

The UK NHS is the fourth largest public employer in the WORLD, third place goes to the Peoples Liberation Army in China.

How do European countries with the same or higher populations as the UK manage to provide a more superior health care system with far fewer employees?

There are lots of issues feeding in here (unhealthy habits, PFI, population increases) but one thing I think we have to start talking about is the way in which we treat the very very old - and the ‘just get them to take one more breath’ approach so often seen.

I have very elderly frail relatives (incontinent, immobile, aphasia etc, significant pain) and I have noticed with shock that the health system is far more aligned to their needs than to those of my 20 year old son who has a serious medical condition. He had to wait & wait for a consultant & then go private; the last time I called an ambulance for him, it took so long to arrive that I had to drive him to hospital (he needed significant medical intervention on arrival at A&E). My relatives in their 90s however are automatically given GP, district nurse & specialist clinic appointments; & last time I called an ambulance for one of them it was there in 20 minutes, to take her to a ward full of very old people in states of extreme frailty and illness. It was quite clear no one on it would ‘recover’ in any sense beyond continuing to breathe.

I think basically our health system is frantically, desperately keeping the very old alive by ‘heroic’ interventions, refusing to accept their mortality, in conditions of great suffering & frailty, at a horrible cost to them - loss of their dignity, prolonged pain- & at an awful cost to younger people for whom in consequence medical services are really not available.

I am terrified of receiving in old age the type of ‘heroic’ interventions visited on my older relatives. Resuscitation, tube feeding, etc. I really do not want the sort of ghastly painful prolonged death the health service seems to envisage for us, strapped to a bed with medics poised to break my bones by resuscitating me even when it’s clear my body has given up. I’ve filled in an extensive letter of wishes that I hope will prevent this. But it really frightens me- the refusal to accept mortality. I don’t understand what has led to this- do doctors think they are God? That they can give the gift of immortality?

And I think it’s inevitable it will make any form of state medical service, in the end, unviable.

The uk is a relatively low tax regime and most people are not net contributors. We are only getting poorer as a nation and we refuse to pay more tax. We can’t aim for a EU style health system