Dying and the NHS

[TheAmusedQuail]

This week, my elderly neighbour (history of heart problems) needed an ambulance. His wife called 999 and they told him the wait was 5 hours. The operator advised him to go to the local GP surgery which is a 5 minute walk away (2 min drive).

He died in the waiting room. The horror of the lack of help available to us in emergencies is like that of an undeveloped country. Today, I read about a man having a heart attack in A&E in the UK. He was left, rolling on the floor in agony, turning blue in the face and frothing at the mouth, in front of his family.

I'm not young, although not yet elderly. I'm terrified that there will be no help available, given that I'm getting older. I know it isn't just my neighbour, or the man I read about, or me. It's all of us. But I'm very scared.

There are certain parts of NHS that are awash with staff.

Taken people to clinics recently and there were plenty of medical staff in rooms that were hardly breaking into a sweat and no patients with them, another one were there were 3 receptionists in a small dept, heaven knows what they were doing.

I know of one lady that worked at a local care home, went to work at the local infirmary, came back after 6 weeks saying she was bored and not busy.

Think NHS needs a complete reset but who is prepared to do it. Too much has been "privatised" , ambulance transport, pharmacy services etc. does it really provide a more streamlined/economical service?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Tax revenue comes from income. We are a country declining in wealth, recovering from a series of serious global financial shocks in the last 2 decades, about to be battered again.

At what point do we start questioning whether the income is really there to be taxed more?

We have an aging population who pay little tax, generally poor wages for the working population meaning less tax is payable, and AI is threatening youth employment. Where does the increase come from?

Well, I think it will need to soon because we simply cannot afford it.

I had an American colleague and we were talking about the NHS. She said the difference between the US and our system is that is that in the US you die because you can't afford the treatment but here you die because you can't get the treatment.

And this was 25 years ago when we had far fewer old people.

There is a mass redundancy programme at the moment isnt there? Something like 20,000 jobs are going with the merger of nhs England

So sorry about your neighbours. I read recently that NHS funding has doubled in the last 17 years from 100bn to over 200bn with no improvement in service or health in society. It seems that no matter how much money we throw at it nothing improves, it just disappears down a bottomless pit. I love the NHS but honestly I don’t know what the answer is.

That's sad.

Though I guess if you're sitting in A & E or at the doctor's, and die, it's kind of understandable because you only went there being ill.
Poor man must have been in real pain though and no doubt frustrated and scared, which wouldn't have helped.

It’s very worrying, OP. A GP sent me to A&E a few weeks ago for urgent blood tests: I got treated like a neurotic time waster. The nurse who gave me my blood test results (all normal, thank goodness) shouted at me. I was polite and calm. I complained and the consultant in charge of A&E phoned me a few days later to apologise. I get they are ridiculously overworked but behaviour like that is unacceptable and counterproductive. I went home feeling much worse than when I arrived due to the appalling behaviour by the nurse. She also diagnosed me with diabetes without checking my blood test results or even asking me about them - if she had taken a few seconds to look, she would have seen that I had had many diabetes blood tests which were all normal, with the most recent ones being only 6 weeks prior to my A&E visit.

I've lost two friends in situations like this. DH is housebound, frail and has mobility issues. We have waited up to three hours for an emergency ambulance and it terrifies me that he'll go the same way as A and M.

I hope the assisted dying Bill is passed sooner rather than later so I can depart on my own terms

The problem is assisted death costs money.

At what point do we start questioning whether the income is really there to be taxed more?

PAYE can’t be hit much more, it needs to gone from wealth & housing. House value needs to be included in care in the home too.

@IMustDoMoreExercise but voters tend ti vote in their interest,,,,look at the outcry over means testing winter fuel for gods sake.

It’s terribly sad, but we now have many hundreds of thousands, millions even now of elderly folk with heart (and a multitude of other problems). Modern medicine has kept us alive long past when we might previously have expired, and the reality is we are living longer in our millions often with several co-morbidities, frail and in very poor health. Doctors surgeries are full, acute hospital beds, outpatients, A&E, ambulances….
I’ve been a nurse for over 37 years and think too many people are living too long. Not that I think this man should have passed how he did, but he was elderly and at the end of his life. We do actually have to die. But with mor dignity. Difficult conversations needed.

I think a huge part of the problem is that we have lost so much of the community care. If you are ill today basically your only options are GP or A&E. If you are well enough to be discharged from hospital but not well enough to go home alone you end up staying in hospital taking up a bed. We used to have community care, cottage hospital etc so patients that could be stepped down from hospital could be cared for in the community before going home. We used to have more district nurses, outreach centres etc.

all of this has been chipped away to save costs but means hospitals are now overcrowded and full of patients that don’t really need to be there but can’t be discharged because there is little to no community care anymore.

I don’t have any answers as to where the money comes from but I do think that unless the community care aspect is addressed to take the pressure off hospitals and GPs then it won’t get any better.

Yes, they don't even care about their children and grandchildren!

It is so selfish.

If anyone gets to 85, that should be it. They should not receive life saving treatment unless they want to pay for it themselves.

So a very unhealthy overweight smoker 84 year old with multiple health conditions would say qualify for a heart bypass or something but a fit and active 86 year old with no previous medical history would be left to die?

This is a great example of the rhetoric that prevents any meaningful discussion about the issues we are facing.

Yes, they don't even care about their children and grandchildren

@Dwappy & anyway why would the above prevent someone from voting for their own interests!?

When I worked in a&e the consultant s didn't like the triage nurses re directing patients to pharmacy / gp etc because it "had a negative impact on their numbers "

I'm in Northern Ireland
Population 1.9 million
5 health care trusts . FIVE
so for each trust that's 5 chief medical officer/ chief surgical...
Then each nursing directorate has co director ... divisional nurse .. service manager .. assistant service manager ..
And not one decision can be made without their input
Meetings about meetings...

My uncle had his 4th heart attack last year. My aunt rang an ambulance at 7pm, they were there in 15 minutes. He was blue lit into the county hospital, and then sat in the back of said ambulance until 6am when A & E finally admitted him. He then needed surgery and had another 24 hour delay while they found a bed on the cardiac ward. The delays caused extensive damage and he's been told he likely won't survive another.

My eldest DD is a healthcare professional in the NHS and says it's utterly fucked behind the scenes.

For balance, my DF had quite severe back pain and phoned 999 as he was on his own. The call handler asked a range of questions and as a result of his answers an ambulance was dispatched, arriving 10 minutes later. The paramedic examined him and suspected a ruptured aneurism. Within 45 minutes of my DFs initial call, he was in surgery where his life was saved as he had indeed had a ruptured aortic aneurism. He spent a total of 10 weeks in hospital receiving the best care, had follow up stent surgery on his carotid artery a month later. 2 years later, he received palliative care for lung cancer and passed away very peacefully and pain free in hospital with us by his side.
The only complain I had over all of his treatment is the cost of hospital car parking. The NHS saved his life once and ensured his death was dignified and pain free.

I doubt that's true in practice. Didn't one government take money out of the social care budget to give to the NHS? And one PM (Theresa May?) definitely announced an increase in mental health spending, to much fanfare, then admitted that the money would have to come out of the NHS's existing budget.

A few years ago, Boris Johnson promised to rebuild several hospitals which had been in a shocking state for many years. This included our local hospital. Then it came to light that the Tories had never put any funds aside for this, so the money wasn't there after all.

If they have been fit and healthy until 86, then they probably won't want life saving treatment. I know I wouldn't. I have never been to hospital overnight at 60 years old and I certainly wouldn't want to start when I was 86.

You have to draw the line somewhere. We have to put young people first. They are the future. 86 year olds are the past.

Df nearly died in an ambulance as his ambulance waited outside a and e for 8 hours.
He got in and spend three weeks dying there.

The reality of a geriatric ward would have us all voting for assisted dying.

@EstoyRobandoSuCasa I'm no Boris fan but how long was he in power before covid hit ?