To be proud of the NHS

[littlebillie]

I feel we need a thunder clap on MN for the NHS of how good it is and the individuals who make this their vocation.

I can think of many personal examples of the NHS showing brilliance kindness and compassion,

I just want to say thank you

U2HasTheEdge trouble is it will never improve for as long as we are all so very grateful. When was the last time anyone said with a smile "I'm sorry to keep you waiting". Some of it is very good but even the good bits are overshadowed by the disorganisation and Little Britainesque gum chewing all too often.

There are jewels such as QMUH Roehampton where generally there are high standards throughout and all staff are unfailing pleasant but this is not replicated throughout in my experience. Contrast with other local hospitals and it isn't so pretty.

When was the last time anyone said with a smile "I'm sorry to keep you waiting"

Erm a member of nhs staff said that to me yesterday

I am not proud that MH services have been cut to the bone. I see how that affects people in my personal life and my job. I have seen the devastating consequences of that, time and time again. I have seen people with psychosis who needs to be in hospital, waiting for ages for a bed or sent far away from family and friends because there are no beds in the area.

And we should be proud of that?

I have seen elderly patients wetting the bed because there has not been enough staff to get to them on time. I have seen patients waiting in corridors in A&E for hours in undignified conditions. People in pain waiting for ages for medication because there is not enough staff. People dying who are not being turned in good time due to lack of staff.

It's not good enough. You should not be proud of that.

The majority of NHS staff are amazing. The NHS itself is shit. I am ashamed of it and I am ashamed that more people don't expect better and we think we should suck up the bad stuff because we are lucky.

We aren't lucky, we just have low expectations.

Its unfunded and its a mistake to think that just because individual staff are fantastic, that the NHS is also brilliant.
No other country operates its healthcare like the NHS, we should look at how other countries achieve far more on a similar amount of money.
Isn't there a scheme where NHS patients can have routine op's in a french state hospital within 4 weeks OR they can wait for months to have the same op in the UK.

Nothing to be proud of.

A young F1 Muslim female doctor was so lovely to my elderly mother in A&E when she had a fall, putting her arm around her. I am mentioning that she is Muslim because she made such an impression on my mother, who hasn’t met many Muslims.

The behemoth that is the NHS has reasons to be proud; the incredibly caring nurses that sat up beyond the end of their shifts with my DF at the end for example, but many reasons that we should not be proud also. The incredible waste, the layers and layers of non- front line management on massive salaries, pensions and holiday allowances who seem unaccountable for anything. The huge number of paper pushing admin staff. Contractors taking the absolute piss. How the NHS has become a total cash cow for dentists (many now earning an obscene amount of money.....more than heart surgeons for doing basic dental work shows how fucked up the whole thing is) The waste. The inefficiency. How many times do you go to a hospital and someone is pushing a trolley of paper files around?!

I work in the NHS. It’s absolutely marvellous and we are so lucky to have it. So many people dedicating their lives to helping others. The majority of people i work with really do care, and give it their all. If it was properly staffed if can be a great employer as well. Our trust offers excellent benefits. I have come from the private sector (various ones) and still can’t beleive how much sick pay I get, maternity pay, annual leave etc. (Although this is needed given the current working condiations

As an ex NHS staff member this attitude just sums up the attitude of far too many NHS staff. First and foremost to them the NHS’s purpose is not to heal the sick but to give them money and holidays and great working conditions.

Even the rest of this post was money, money, money with a small mention of health at the end.

Too many NHS staff have a vested interest in keeping the status quo so it’s in their interests to keep problems denied and covered up.

There are brilliant trusts, but there are too many failing ones.

It’s great in theory, but It’s on its knees at the minute. My mum has received some brilliant and some appalling treatment. In my experience it’s much better than Ireland’s health service which is in an even bigger mess, but nowhere near as good as the treatment we have received in Oz. Here I have a doctors surgery ten minutes away which has free walk in appointments seven days a week up to ten o’clock at night, and when my son had a burst appendix the care he received was second to none. The childrens’ hospital top floor was converted into a free gaming arcade/ basket ball court/ teenagers retreat, I’ve never seen anything like it! And all the kids who were bed bound had access to PlayStations and DVD players, all free. Each floor also had a parents kitchen stocked with healthy snacks, and they were happy to bring parents a meal if they needed one. My son didn’t want to leave! So the NHS is good, but not the best in my personal experience.

I’m very grateful for all the hardworking, wonderful staff who work under difficult conditions. However I’m certainly not proud of the system. I never understand how ok threads like this people give examples of the US. That is only one other health system, there are many, many other countries who have much better health systems!!

There is a fucktonne of money put into the NHS, I do not think it is underfunded but I do question the way it is distributed from personal experience working in it. Front line staff are overloaded, forced to provide treatment that is the cheapest but not the most suitable and effective for the patient (my experience working in MH). High up Managers who have no understanding of clinical work make directives which further cut our resources and ability to deliver effective healthcare whilst pulling in a rather fat wage (more than consultants, I shit you not) with a nice benefits package.
It is also thoroughly abused by many. In A&E recently a young woman in her 20's walks in demanding a pregnancy test. FFS love, it might be an accident but it's not an emergency.

All those posting that say other European systems are 'far better'; do you actually have any personal experience of them? And exactly how are they 'far better'?

I like in Switzerland. Our monthly insurance premium for 2 adults + 2 children is ~ £1,100. We have a decent level of cover and services are very good, but it's not cheap.

DH is French. Not surprisingly, his family live there, in Provence. In his Mum's village they are desperately short of doctors and currently have 1 FTE for about 12,000 residents. It is almost impossible to get an appointment, with the result that everyone who needs to be seen ends up going to A&E. Every time we visit she asks if we know any medics who might be interested in moving to the area. You also have to pay to be seen and then fill in a load of paperwork to claim it back afterwards.

The NHS is desperately under-funded and abused, but as systems go it's a pretty good one. The grass isn't always greener.... far from it in fact.

I'm grateful for the NHS, I had life saving surgery as a child, my daughter was treated for leukaemia, I had a hysterectomy and my family have been treated for broken bones etc at A&E.

I do think that there is always room for improvement, staff on the whole are womderful and put up with more than I would be prepared to put up with (I've been present when a family were threatening to punch the nurses and doctors because they were kept waiting in A&E - the son in his twenties had hurt his knuckles by punching someone; and at the other end of the scale an extremely well off family complaining about the meals and how disgusting they were - they were actually fine.)

I do think it is something that should be treasured and invested in, and of course the unnnecessary waste sorted out. I take my hat off to the hardworking staff.

Unfortunately, I have had many poor experiences with the NHS (my health issues have been minor, but relatives/friends/partner have had major issues). Without going into specifics, I’ve seen misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis, miscommunication after miscommunication. And I find that in these situations, there is a massive lack of accountability.

A relative of mine (to give just one example) was misdiagnosed with pneumonia and sepsis which turned out to be heart failure. That’s ok, mistakes can happen but when queried, not one person said ‘oh my bad’. Our questions were ignored, there was no transition (lacking a better word) between the two diagnoses. One day she was being treated for pneumonia the next heart failure, just like that, and if we mentioned pneumonia to the staff they looked bewildered as though it didn’t even exist in relative’s notes.

Again, I understand we’re all humans, and mistakes can be made, but in my case it hasn’t just been one mistake with one patient.

That said, I’m a bit indifferent. I don’t hate the NHS, or think we’d be better off without them. I understand they do save lives and maybe I’m just unlucky and know a lot of unlucky people.

I appreciate we don’t pay anywhere near as much as other countries (I imagine even if we didn’t have the NHS we’d still pay the same amount of tax for something else), and in that sense we’re luckier. But I’ll be honest in saying that I would be anxious if I became reliant on them for any major health concerns. I’ve seen too many shit experiences to put my trust in them 100% should I ever need them.

Wdeltag. We have horrific outcomes compared to the rest of Europe. All the comparative league tables put us at the bottom except the ones which rate on accessibility and cost into their calculations because the NHS scores highly on them whilst scoring terribly at actually curing people and preventing unnecessary deaths.

Basically the NHS is really easy to access, but you stand a strong chance your care will be rubbish.

Mixed feelings. Had a terrible experience with my late father which I wont recount as its a long and sorry tale. Just last night however a relative was ambulanced in, a long wait for that but once in, what a great service. Think we may have got a good night in terms of waiting times but triage, checks, scans, consultation and discharge home within four hours.

With very high obesity rates, terrible dental care, almost zero preventative medicine and an aging population, the demands on the NHS will sky rocket as will the bill.

Brexit is going to make hiring eu staff harder and if its true 10k eu healthcare staff have already left the NHS we are in deep trouble already.
My daughter wanted to become a nurse until she saw the pay and spoke to a Surgeon and nurse about pay and conditions......

deltag I think paying for healthcare doesn't mean you get a better system but perhaps access it more thoughtful than when paying for it

While I would happily pay higher taxes for a better NHS, i'd first want to be assured that everything had been done to restructure it effectively to ensure it's run as efficiently as possible. The NHS is massive, complex, disorganised and chaotic in many ways as well as being a postcode lottery depending on what kind of treatment you need. I have only ever been hugely impressed by the people who work in the NHS however and have similar concerns to @jasjas1973 about the impact of Brexit on staffing.