A question for NHS staff

[Glowinginthedark]

AIBU to think that no amount of money throw at the NHS in it current state will fix the issues? What is the real problem? Lack of funds or people completely abusing and misusing A&E or both?

Waste due to health tourism is a pittance compared to the cost of bed blockage and treating diabetes. Let's focus on the important matters we as individuals can do something about, not those which we can just blame on others.

Food menu? When I was last in hospital I was not getting paid because I do not get paid if ill. All the bills still had to be paid at home and DP was paying hospital car parking to visit me. I could not eat a great deal and before being admitted to hospital was eating no more than a £1 a day worth of food e.g. some porridge and tinned soup. Charging us cafe prices in the NHS would simply put an additional burden on us. For many ill people there are additional costs for being in hospital.

I would have refused to pay anything and drank tap water and asked my DP to bring in soup.

There aren’t enough staff or beds. You never hear of a young person who wants to become a nurse when they leave school. With all the negative publicity around overworked and underpaid nurses in the NHS it’s hardly an attractive career choice. More needs to be done to attract and train nurses and auxiliaries so there is less reliance on expensive agency staff.

Sorting out social care would have a massive positive benefit.
I also think identifying people who are at risk of developing diabetes and offering places on a prevention course, would help. I have a friend who is not fat. but got diabetes at 40. All her family have it so she just saw it as inevitable. But she takes very little exercise. It may have been preventable with some education and support.

You never hear of a young person who wants to become a nurse when they leave school My youngest did and is now a nurse. I know kids who didn't get places of nursing courses so they must be oversubscribed. I think retention is a big problem.

-Charge for lifestyle medical treatment, e.g. extreme sports, smoking, obesity, drinking etc
So ban people who DO exercise and ban people who dont? This idea mainly punishes people who have already been failed.
-Allow assisted dying
-Ban financial payouts to people suing the NHS
We should never be immune to scrutinty AND until theres better social care provisions people will need to use the litigation route. This is a result of a conscious push from the Tories to reduce care funding and encourage people to sue for their care costs instead. My tory mp told me this directly. Face to face. Straight from the horses mouth
-Do more to stop health tourism, make it compulsory for anyone not permanently resident in the UK to have full medical insurance before getting on a plane to here
-Introduce a food menu that patients pay for no. Food is medicine. A 2 tier system for food is an awful idea
-Once patients are ready for discharge then charge anyone the full cost who does not leave. At least some money could be reclaimed off their estate when they die
People dont bed block for fun. They do it because they're homeless, their carers are struggling, the fear due to lack of convalescence provision in the community

A lot of your ideas aim punishment at the people who are already being punished due to poverty, failings of mental health services, failings of social care funding etc..

They have always remained named on the local UK doctors using my aunts address and kept their British Passports too.

There's no reason why they shouldn't have a British passport - you don't get it taken away for living abroad. It is the local doctor's fault that they don't check who is actually eligible. I am an expat (actually an immigrant is more truthful) and I can only use the GP in the UK as a foreign citizen for emergencies (using an E111 equivalent).

People are living longer with more problems. Medical advances mean more treatment options which increase pressure both financial and time/beds. Drugs are increasingly expensive. Ditto equipment. We've just bought special episitomy scissors at £200 a pair. Single use. Because the managers are worried a staff member may make an incorrect incisions. Never had an issue but its a risk.

*Same here. The demand on these roles is so bad, we can't recruit to that level. Local people know what the jobs are like so don't apply and those further away are not interested as cost of living is so much higher. Those who are left to pick up the pieces are leaving one after another.

Would love to know where Band 8s have it so easy!*

I am honestly working well in excess every week of my contracted hours ( I would say an extra 12-15 hours per week) PLUS my Trust mobile is never off so I am picking up emails almost 24 hours a day. I feel like I have to be contactable at all times to ensure that the already burnt out work force feel supported. Im exhausted. God only knows how ill keep this up until 2045 (when I can retire!!!)

grannietomine most health tourists we see ARE white british ex pats.
Whose relatives dont report them for using their addresses to defraud the NHS because they believe that the "problem" is caused by brown health tourists. And "the nhs should be for the british" (its not, its for people who live here and pay into it!)

Gingerbread, I think that is how it is presented, people don't seem to see that ex pat British people shouldn't be doing it. I know a couple who worked abroad, on lucrative Middle East and African contracts. They lived an expensive lifestyle and when they hit retirement age they came back and were disgusted that they weren't immediately given a council property because they were British. They moaned about the pension they got, don't know how they got one as they never worked here.

My issue is an awful lot of times someone goes to their gp and tells the gp what they think is wrong with them.

The gp will waste money and time testing for anything and everything other than what the patient knows what they have.

Or in my case i was told I needed a new hip. I was treated by consultants, physios and anything and everything for 5years. Probably the best part of £30-40000.
A £300 MRI would have proved i had nothing wrong with my hip but actually had slipped a couple discs.

The money the NHS has wasted on my family alone runs into £100,000s..

Dp is terminally ill because several gps mistook bowel cancer (family history of bowel cancer) for a hernia, constipation , stress, poor diet.

I know we are not the only ones this has happened to.

I accept that charges would be unpopular but these are for things that are not strictly medical. A nominal fee for staying in hospital, a fixed charge for hospital transport. I was shocked at the huge number of people who used free hospital transport just because it's free when they could comfortably afford a taxi. A small fixed fee to see the GP would make people think twice.
As always those who are exempt wouldn't pay.
But wait, exemption is another thing to look at. Why are all over 60s exempt? I currently pay for my prescriptions by direct debit ( I have a lot) and I notice that they will be free when I'm 60. I can afford to pay why should I be exempt?

In my experience the main issue is staffing. We don’t have the funds to hire the correct amount of people. As a result the service suffers and the staff are demoralised which also leads to higher sickness rates, compounding the staffing issue.

Misuse of the NHS is not nearly as bad as it is made out to be and is jut a way of a neglectful and reckless government deflecting blame.

All systems are "missused". Shops will loose X% of stock to shop lifters. X% of train travellers will hop the barriers. NHS abusers are not a higher % than abuse of any other system and it is not the rot at the core.

Went to hospital yesterday for a specific follow up appointment for ds. 1 out of 6 doctors and nurses was a native Brit, the other 5 were from Asia, Africa and one from Finland. They had very poor English and communication skills. I am sure they are brilliant nurses and doctors but they really were not at all fluent. I don't mean accented, which wouldn't matter but they spoke broken English even the doctors. They were all lovely and kind and hard working but I feel HCP need to be able to communicate well with patients, these could not and everything took longer and was less satisfying.

I think the UK has not sufficiently invested in educating British healthcare staff. We are near London so maybe it's different in other areas.

Also patients.... many, many patents do not turn up for appointments without cancelling. So rude. In our trust they double book all slots because that works out better as at least some people will turn up.

Many people are ignorant about their health and there are nasty lifestyle diseases that could be reduced if people lived more healthy lives.

all in all the NHS is brilliant but I believe people should pay more taxes to protect it.

I think charging is a slippery slope but perhaps we should stop all free prescriptions unless your poor?

I accept that charges would be unpopular but these are for things that are not strictly medical. ....
As always those who are exempt wouldn't pay.

Not strictly medical, but nevertheless a penalty for being ill. If so many of us are saying we'd be happy to pay something, but should exempt those who can't afford it, then why not just increase taxation? It's a system already set up so that (in theory) those who can't afford to pay, don't. And those of us who don't use the NHS should be happy about that, and not begrudge that we're paying our "NHS tax" to support someone less fortunate healthwise.

I like the idea of a "dummy bill" but that could panic people with cognitive impairment if they thought it was real

The number of NHS beds has reduced from nearly 300,000 in 1987 to almost 150,000 in 2015 whilst the number of patients treated has increased significantly .

The number of the population aged 65 and above has increased by 3.8% since 1971 . It is not as though we all woke up today and everyone has suddenly aged 30 years .

Life expectancy rates in the UK have plateaued .

Social care is in crisis , add to that people are now going to have to work a lot longer before reaching pensionable age or indeed work past pensionable age as pensions have been massively devalued , the number of people who were previously able to support older relatives will reduce significantly .

I still cannot help feeling as though there is a whole dialogue occurring which is designed to make the UK public become acclimatised to the idea of the dismantling of the NHS .

A lot of "beds" are physically there but "closed" because they cant be staffed. They get reopened during a crisis with bank staff or redistributed non ward staff (who hate every second of it and often quit)

Health tourism, health tourism, health tourism. (My best friend worked for a big London Hospital so am not just guessing there ....) plus anyone watch some of the 24 Hrs in A&E? Folk sitting there for a lark? Chatting, laughing away - is that an emergency then? Nah. An emergency is when you are in agony, not a ripped nail etc. Go to the GP - not sexy enough eh? So we will all go down for a laugh (and a few selfies) to A&E. This is why there is such a waste of resources - that and middle management just attending meetings all day (and these aren't medically trained folk who have in-depth knowledge). All this from my best friend who has now retired.......

A nominal fee for staying in hospital

I would object to this. In the example of dd. I knew exactly what was wrong with dd. I would object to paying for a hospital bed for 4 nights that was unnecessary. If they had tested for what I said she had in the first place then a bed wouldn't have been necessary

As for missing appointments. I know of a
Department that sends out the appointment notices after the appointment has been and gone.
Whilst it says when one person has dictated it and a couple of weeks later it has been typed up it is not sent out till in some cases a week after the appointment.

Gingerbread Ma you aren't quite right - the abusers of the NHS system are everywhere I am afraid and cost the NHS millions. They then fly off into the sunset - this includes embassy staff and pals of theirs. Anyone fallen ill in Spain on hol? PASSPORT PLEASE. HOTEL NAME & ROOM NUMBER, THAT'LL BE 100 EUROS AS A START - this is t r u e it happened to my partner - give us the money first then pay more as we see what treatment you need. Here? Yeah, pay us later.....

Gerty the people shouting and screaming about their pain are not necessarilly iller than the ones sitting quietly smiling and laughing it off

One of the worst injuries Ive seen this month belonged to a lady who had the best poker facw bless her and was sitting up and chatting...