To feel more than horrified for this 2 year and the treatment by the NHS

[diaimchlo]

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/10691684/Sick-child-on-a-drip-was-forced-to-sleep-on-plastic-hospital-chairs.html

Cannot believe this

As scientific advances have created more treatments and cures for more illnesses, so the NHS has more and more to deal with.

Premature babies have a greater chance of survival now than 30 years ago, but often will need care for many years to come.

Fertility treatments hardly existed 30 - 40 years ago.

My friend's 93 year old father, who has severe dementia and is bed ridden, recognises no one or anything was resuscitated recently.

I don't wish to offend anyone by writing this but maybe some treatments will have to fall by the wayside.

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies make their vast profts with the aid of the NHS.

We're not allowed to use camp beds for children as firstly they can roll off and secondly there's been a couple of incidents where a child has died when the camp bed has collapsed and folded up on itself.

It's not just a case of buying more beds

You need bed spaces to put them in, with oxygen, suction, call bells, emergency buzzers and lamps. You need nurses and doctors to staff them. You need toilet and bathroom facilities to accommodate the increased numbers of patients. You need more theatre time if you wish to increase surgical beds. More staff in X-ray, phlebotomy and pharmacy to deal with the additional work

^^ this.

he was asked to wait on the chairs with his parents at 4 o clock in the afternoon.It was his parents who decided to make a bed for him there.He could have say on the chair, sat on their knee and lay against his parents chest.

They are closing beds. They are reducing staffing numbers so beds cannot be staffed.

When the NHS is gone, there will not be a carpeted shinier new version in the form of Private , there will be disjointed inferior services. Currently, Private Hospitals can't cope with sick patients, they are transferred to NHS beds if they become sick, for the NHS Docs to sort out.

The govt have really missed the point....the NHS is expensive because it takes a lot of money to train and pay Drs and Nurses, to organise the system and man the right areas. They seem to have not grasped that pts who are very sick need a well run service, not to be shipped out into imaginary community provision or looked after by a Fragmented service....

It's like going back in time by 100 yrs

It's all very well saying "buy more beds", but have you thought about what that actually entails?

More beds
More nurses
More doctors
More support staff
More tests carried out, so more staff and equipment needed
More outpatient appointments needed for post discharge, so more doctors and/or bigger clinics, which mean more nursing and more admin staff
More letters sent to GPs and more appointments to be made, all with letters - so, again, more admin staff
More medical records needed - so yet more staff, or at least extra strain on another team
More work for portering staff ferrying patients around different departments
More pressure put on patient transport
More pressure put on estates, receipt and delivery, finance

And then of course there are those wonderful things called NHS targets. Yep, these are the ones that admin staff and managers spend hours (and I mean hours - entire posts are dedicated to these) making sure that the data that is entered shows that you're treated within the right amount of time, that follow ups are made appropriately, that things run smoothly. Otherwise there are financial penalties.

Then when there is a fuck up with your care, then more staff have to investigate it, and send it to even more staff to make sure that appropriate action is taken to try to stop it from happening again.

You can't just look at one issue in isolation. The NHS is a bloody enormous beast which, at the moment, is very very sick. As soon as you try to do one thing, there is an impact on another section, and it is going to take not only a huge effort from all of us (staff and patients alike) but, I fear, a miracle if things are to improve.

Also, Hospitals don't behave in a similar way to schools.

Except failing to have the needs doesn't cause universal savings either. I remember an hour in recovery after emergency surgery waiting whilst the staff tried to find me a bed to go to (I'd come from a trolly). Or sending people home too early so they need to come back sooner.

Also I can't believe this boy was too ill for an ambulance transfer but well enough to sit up on a chair for six hours (as the system demanded he did).

I understand that frontline staff do very well with what they have but we need more resources to cope with fluctuations in demand and t the politicians and nhs management are responsible to sort it out.

Sidge makes my point far more eloquently ^

Oh course you have Painty - you pay for a better experience!

I don't say that to be nasty, but you are always, always going to get a better service if you pay for it directly rather than indirectly through taxes/ national insurance

Actually, maybe not necessarily a better service, but you're more likely to have a positive experience.

Painty: Private doesn't do A & E though, does it?

Private uses nurses and doctors that the NHS has paid to train.

Private leeches from the NHS.

When private fucks up, patients get sent to intensive care in the NHS.

Even if a nurse had risked breaching policy and put him a camp bed (for which she'd have got a massive bollocking if she had been reported or he fell out) where would they have put it?

They're quite wide......so too wide for the corridor as it would have blocked it. Only other option in most wards would be right next to a bed where a patient is, ie; in their bed space. Can't see the other kid's parents been thrilled at that. All sorts of infection control issues possibly.

Its a shit situation but not the nurses fault.

Painty, private hospitals only dea with elective surgery of youngish fittish people.
If they get sick it's over to the NHS with them.

Wonder where sick patients will go when it's all private, Cameron style?
Will the penny finally drop then?

FFS. You all think it would have been better to transfer the child than to put him up in a jury-rigged chairbed? I speak from bitter personal experience when I tell you that it was a kind and clever and thinking-out-of-the-box not-just-Elf-and-Safety type who came up with those chairs.

Blame the people who cut the NHS budget while claiming not to. Don't blame the people on the front lines, who are doing their best. Please.

Oh for heavens sake. I don't think anyone on this thread suggesting there should be more available beds is just talking about frames and mattresses. OF COURSE what we're talking about is the full package of resources for each bed.

Why are we being distracted repeating that or about designs of camp beds?!

THIS is the important bit:

"The NHS needs massive injections of cash (as well as better management) but unless the politicians review tax and wealth distribution it isn't going to happen. In the meantime situations like this will happen."

We also need to decide what are priorities are, and how as a nation to achieve them. Punitive cuts to social care and welfare support are part of the same picture.

Also, it's interesting this newspaper has contradicted itself.

First few lines: He was denied a bed.
Later on: The parents were told no beds were available and they would have to wait until one was found.

Very different meanings here. He wasn't denied at all.

That's why a lot of people sneer at these newspaper stories.

Some of it is sensationalist reporting.

Blame the ones who cut the budget while claiming not to

^^agree

I've spent a lot of time in children's hospitals etc with my child.

This sadly doesn't surprise me, however what the parents are forgetting is that the NHS saved their child's life.

Personally I'd be so glad of that.

I could write a book about similar things happening to my daughter but I complain to the NHS don't rip use to the papers to make money

Oh, Twighlights. Clearly we're coming from the same place, but I am still perplexed enough to contradict myself. If those of us seeing this stuff on the ground don't complain, who will ever fix the problems? yet, it's a question of whom you complain to -- nurse on the ward, Daily Wail, or your MP? If I had the energy I would work on the MP more. Since I don't, I just try not to take it out too much on the nurses. Maybe if I thought they'd pay some money I could use to take my child private, I would complain to the Daily Wail. Or do you think Hello might be interested? No, thought not. Is that a criticism of the DM or of Hello, anyway?

The main thing is that the child got the IV antibiotics he needed promptly. The staff should be praised for that. Some hospitals may have refused to admit him due to not having beds and directed him to another hospital. Which would have delayed antibiotics which could have made a big difference.

Yes, a chair isn't comfy but it won't kill him. And to be honest most toddlers can fall asleep anywhere.

I think it's a sorry state of affair for people to be suggesting we should be glad a 2 year old with a blood infection got the antibiotics he needed even if it meant he wasn't in a bloody bed. The antibiotics are the minimum we should expect. A sick child should be in a bed with the monitoring equipment needed around him. We shouldn't be grateful he got the antibiotics. We should be furious he wasn't getting proper care. It's a bed for goodness sake. A bed. What is the world coming to if we accept that the sick don't even get a bed?

And if it is ok because he was 2, would it be OK if he was 14? Or 40? Or 80?

We should all be up in arms that this is happening in hospitals today in a country as wealthy as England. A sick child admitted to hospital didn't have a bed while being administered IV antibiotics. That is a bloody disgrace.

You can't just transfer a child. They need to be stabilised. There needs to be a bed available at a hospital with desired facilities. There needs to be an ambulance available and staff to transport the child.

It's not that simple.