To ask what YOU would do to help save the NHS?

[TamiTayorismyparentingguru]

I don’t care if you’re an HCP or not, I don’t care who you vote for, I don’t care what you think about Brexit - all opinions welcome.

Opinions on practical suggestions on how to save the NHS only though.

Our local hospital is getting worse and worse with regards to staff shortages and waiting lists getting longer and longer. I will say that our GP is really great and we’ve never really had a problem with getting appointments etc, but as soon as you are referred to the hospital things go massively downhill. (We did have a GP misdiagnose/miss DH’s cancer which was pretty shit - but I wouldn’t say that was a particular problem with the system - more just one of those unfortunate things that happens, that really shouldn’t happen, but that are just a matter of course.)

The hospital is a different story though - wait lists for some departments are insane (current wait time for an initial cataracts appointment is 42 weeks and then up to 18m for treatment, paediatric dermatology is a min of 30weeks, paediatric podiatry is approx 30weeks also. I have been on a wait list for max fax for 14mths so far. I also had an 8week wait for an appointment at the breast clinic after seeing the GP with a noticeable lump.)

DH has also had to fight for every single appointment since his cancer treatment last year - instead of the 4-weekly appointments he’s meant to have had, most of his appointments have been 7-8 weeks apart and have been cancelled at the last minute (sometimes just an hour before) at least 4 times in the last year.

It’s awful and yet I do trust that the doctors, nurses, receptionists etc etc are all doing everything they possibly can.

What’s the solution?

Based on my experience of nurse incompetence I really really don't want them to have any increased responsibility for diagnosing or prescribing.

Almost 690,000 nurses and midwives registered at this time... of course we're all incompetent

My apologies stompy. I didn't mean all front-line staff. Generally I find Drs are far better and they are on the front line too. Only yesterday a nurse told me tjat due to GDPR my blood test results could only be released with permission of the consultant because if I left them on the bus it would breach data protection . Two words spring to mind. Chat and Shit. Too many experiences of it lovey, or darlin. My Dr or Consultant never call me lovey or darlin. Nurses do. Every. Single Time. Maybe I don't merit the respect of them using my actual name.

It's not nurse bashing. It's fact stating lovey.

A well funded social care system. Keep older people with multiple long term chronic conditions out of hospital because of the lack of care at home and enable them to leave hospital quicker.

Simple!

Plough money into improving staff retention. Rota gaps are the devil, a few small things will go a long long way to helping retention - stuff like providing food to people working unsociable hours and on call, water dispensers behind clinical desks, make sure that people have someone named that they can to go to for support, letting people explore other areas, being consistent. Reintroduce firm based training. Make sure roles are well defined to stop inter professional bashing over role creep.

And increase salary. If I can go elsewhere for more money and less hours, why wouldn't I? The free market works for me too.

It's not nurse bashing. It's fact stating lovey.

I didn't realise you were speaking from such a wealth of experience, having personally encountered incompetence in the practice of every NHS nurse currently practicing

Of course you are just nurse bashing.

Stating facts Love.

And just 90% of the one's I've dealt with. With Drs it's a 90% good experience; with nurses 90% bad. We are in London so perhaps it's worse here.

OhTheRoses

From your insightful posts I can conclude that

1. You don't understand the difference between a fact and an anecdote.
2. You are using passive aggressive terms like 'love' and 'lovey' in the hope of winding people up.

Therefore I'll opt out of the conversation now.

No, I'm sorry but I cannot remember a time when a nurse hasn't referred to me as "love" "darlin" "mum". I have a name. Generally drs use it, why don't nurses. I never hear the nurse call my consultant "love" they call him or her Mr Jones or Miss Smith. Why don't they call the consultant "love" or " darlin"? Serious question actually and one that I think reveals a lot about levels of respect for patients. If the doctor is Mr x, why is the patient "love". Might it be because the NHS is based on inequality and lack of respect and the people in it think the patients and carers are their subordinates. Come now it isn't hard to extrapolate that that level of disempowerment is the ultimate in passive aggression. Next time I have a hospital apt shall I call the consultant "dahlin" and when he or she makes a cat's bum face, shall I say "oh but the nurse called me "dahlin" is it wrong to address people like that then.

"There’s currently an advert telling people they now have to show proof they are entitled to free prescriptions jeez How much money has the NHS lost before those in charge decided to do anything about it" there's also been major issues with UC confusion on who is and isn't eligible for free prescriptions leading to people genuinely mistakenly claiming and then getting fines (and they're not small fines and remember ANYONE on UC will be on a low income), but also people paying for prescriptions when they didn't have to and being unable to get full refunds- a few threads running on this issue having affected mners - it's FAR too complex. I'm in Scotland and honestly think free for all eligible for NHS treatment would be better. Both simpler to administrate, eliminate the costs of administering and also means people don't avoid seeking or taking treatment due to cost of prescriptions and ending up more ill.

Re nurses prescribing - this is yet another thing I think occurred in order to relieve pressure on junior Drs. Nurses are of course perfectly capable and responsible enough to prescribe but it concerns me they don't have the same protections as Drs if anything goes wrong. And yes part of the problem is joe public doesn't know nurses prescribe and don't always trust a prescription from a nurse.

Also as formerly says there isn't the TRUE support for nurses to even get the training to prescribe.

When I was doing my training, I think it was during an ethics seminar we were discussing the scapegoating of nurses generally, when there's been a medical "accident". The lecturer (male if it makes a difference) said that part of the reason was nurses don't support each other. That due to nursing being a women dominated profession, and further one by its nature peopled by passive, compassionate people, that women being socialised to be "nice" and apologetic, especially if men/patriarchy telling them to accept blame meant as a group nurses tend not to stick together to defend the profession or each other individually and to think doing so is somehow "unreasonable" to the other party and as a result often get shafted frankly!

Ohtheroses - really sorry you've had those experiences. I've had the opposite experience. Nurses have been on the ball, Drs (primarily GP's though I did also once meet a supposed gynaecologist who claimed he'd never heard of endo!) who not only weren't on the ball but arrogantly ignored not only me/dd but also even their own practice nurses who were backing us up!

You know what I'd like to see? A proper way of being able to complain about GP's that DIDN'T mean patients risking being "blackballed" by other GPS in their area and ending up without one!!

"Make sure roles are well defined to stop inter professional bashing over role creep" see to me I think what's needed is less territory marking not more!

I must admit I personally also hate nurses using "terms of endearment" or even first names without at least asking first. Not how I was trained and with older people particularly it can be very patronising & disrespectful. People have names! There's no call to be over-familiar, it's unprofessional.

If your biggest complaint about your clinical care is that a nurse has used a term of endearment instead of your name, I suggest that you should count your blessings. If I get the care I need - bloody brilliant 99% of the time - they can call me anything they like.

Stop getting the private companies involved, they're there to make a profit and don't actually make things run better.

Get the ordering sorted out. Give each departmental head a total budget and let them decide from week to week how to spend it, not chop it up and allocate a certain amount per cost code. Get the NHS to use it's combined ordering power to drive prices down. At the moment prices for a lot of medicines are much more than if those same medicines were to be bought over the counter. Either someone's not doing their job properly or someone's getting a back hander (and still not doing their job properly).

End inter-departmental/inter hospital rivalry. The number of times I've suggested changes to save our hospital money only to be told that we don't need to save money there because it's another department's budget so we won't get the benefit. We should be working together to save money for the NHS which we all work for.

Bring back bursaries for nurses, we need to encourage more, not put them off.

Link pay to local housing and transport costs as well as matching it to private sector pay. At the moment, London in particular is haemorrhaging staff like anything, we train someone up only for them to go somewhere where it's cheaper to live (no way that London Weighting is enough to keep them) and better paid.

End the stupid system of taking people off weekdays and putting them on nights and weekends instead - it just shifts the work, and I've known several people now who have left my profession because they're forced to do a lot of poorly paid, stressful night shifts which have no clinical relevance and destroy their sleep, health and family life, while the day staff struggle with lower staffing levels because the night and weekend staff need to have compensatory rest periods.

@Stompythedinosaur i wish every NHS thread didnt turn into an oppertunity for patient blaming.

@Graphista Excellent point about weight. Someone i used to work with has very bad health problems caused by blocked arteries. She was living on tea Galaxy and cigarettes when we used to work together. No one said a word to her about her eating including her GP Because she was/is a size 8.

@Graphista Im sorry for what you went through

They can call me anything they like bluelady providing they address the consultant similarly. It's called equality. For as long as patients are addressed unequally those in the NHS are responsible for perpetuating patriarchy and mysogyny. It is unacceptable. As most nursea are women I do not understand why they facilitate. At my local hospital St Georges, in orthopaedics all the men are called as Mr Jones, Mr Brown. All the women are called as Jane Smith. The last time I had an apt there the consultant said "hello Cressida (not real name but same genre), I am Mr Gascoigne." I politely extended a hand, said I am very pleased to meet you, "I am Mrs Roses". He blushed and stammered "oh, er call me Paul" Nice bloke and good dr except for his surprise that I didn't need four weeks off work for a broken fifth metatarsal, but just what gives any NHS worker the right to address a patient as their subordinate? It's ill mannered and unnacceptable. I'm sorry if any HCP finds that difficult but frankly their mothers should have dinned basic courtesy into them long before they got to med school.

www.hsj.co.uk/finance-and-efficiency/nhs-warned-of-crippling-pfi-charges-over-the-next-decade/7023612.article

Well ot wasn't the Tories who brpugh in PFI. No doubt someone will call me a BLiar.

"i wish every NHS thread didnt turn into an oppertunity for patient blaming" " agreed!

And thanks

My ex - slim until very recently but eats utter crap and copious amounts of strong sugar loaded coffee! Kept the weight down by exercise (was army so required to keep a superficial imo level of Fitness) meanwhile has had episodes of serious palpitations and Drs have repeatedly said he needs to cut down the sugar - 6-7 teaspoons per cuppa, 8-10 a day, plus adding 2 big spoons of sugar into high sugar cereal for breakfast, often had choc bars for "lunch" instead of real food and would munch on a whole pack of biscuits after dinner in the Eve's. He's recently started to gain weight now he's out the army and looks grey and not well at all. Idiot! He has 6 DC inc dd.

Seen friends/colleagues who live on processed food, coffee and smoking but still be slim so diet not usually raised by their Drs BUT with conditions I've no doubt were impacted by their poor diet - anaemia, heart problems, varicose veins, high bp...

Plus less serious but still annoying for the patient issues like acne, repeated low level infection etc. Well yea that'll happen if you regularly eat a diet that means you're lucky if you get 5 a WEEK!

Apparently their Drs unfamiliar with TOFI

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOFI

For an easily understood outline.

I'm sorry if any HCP finds that difficult but frankly their mothers should have dinned basic courtesy into them long before they got to med school

I'm the reverse Roses I really struggle to call a patient by their first name , even the ones who say "Call me Ted/Annie"
It was drummed into us while training , (in the 80s so a very old fashioned view now) that we didn't use first names or let our patients know our first names !

(Complete opposite now !)

I don't think calling someone Jane instead of Dr Brown or Mrs Brown is necessarily good. It can give the doctor authority and possibly respect. I was quite happy to have Mr Osman removing my breast lump, mature experienced surgeon, I don't think I would have liked friendly chatty Mo instead.

I quite agree witchy. In which case Mr Osman and other staff should ask if the patient prefers Mrs McWitchface or Witchy. My view is it's either Mo and Witchy or Mr Osman and Mrs McWitchface. Not a mixed portfolio. Would the nurses call Mr Osman "darlin"? Of course not, they have too much respect for him. I don't understand why that respect isn's afforded to the patient in what is a professional relationship.

The first name business has to work in both directions afaiac and that extends to the staff around the doctors too. I have significant qualifications and am respected in my field. I do not expect my clients and admin staff to call me Mrs Roses whilst I use their first names - it would be deplorable in the 21st century.

When I'm ill - which strangely is when I'm in contact with the NHS - the last things on my mind are patriarchy and misogyny. I just want them to make me better and they can call me anything that springs to mind. If you're in severe pain and/or distress, there's something very comforting about being called "love" or "darling".

I'm actually getting very tired of modern feminism which detects and pounces on perceived misogyny at every tack and turn. I'm from the generation of feminists that fought for maternity leave and equal pay. This generation also has bigger fish to fry. Focusing on this kind of trivia doesn't further the cause.

Really Bluelady you regard equality as modern feminism? My grandmother ran a farm during the war and her foreign usband took her name. Under no circumstances would a nurse have called her love or darling and her physician who remembered his bills being settled directly before 1947 would never ever have used her first name whilst expecting to be addressed formally.

It has nothing to do with modern feminism. It has everything to do with equality and basic courtesy. Both issues long forgotten by the modern NHS where a nurse ( graduate level) is nowadays likely to be chewing gum.

It's nothing whatsoever to do with equality, it might be if male patients weren't treated the same but they are. As I said, if that's the only complaint someone can make about their clinical treatment it's gone pretty well. I save important issues to twist my knickers.

My father was very ill and at first was in a private hospital. He hated being called Mr Lear. He had lost his dignity and wanted kindness and reassurance, not people standing on ceremony. He was mightily relieved when back in the NHS he was called "love", "dear" and his first name.

I don't care if people call me "mum" when I take my dcs to a medical appointment. I am mum at that point. It's really not about me and my name preferences. Anyway, I think a lot of staff use the term "mum" or "dad" in order to avoid awkward wrong name usage. It Really Doesn't Matter and those who say it does clearly are not that ill or their dcs aren't.

I always ask what people want to be called and have told my service users (long term rehab so we have them a while) and colleagues to call me out when an occasional "love" pops out. I can't help it sometimes, and that's with everyone, including the stand by your beds old fashioned consultant we used to have. It's just part of the local dialect but I always apologise if I realise I'm doing it or someone mentions it. The client group I work with now have mostly spent time in prison so at first tend to call me miss but they eventually get used to saying frik.

I've never looked after anyone that wanted to be called "Mr, miss whatshisname". I have looked after a lady that wanted to be called aunty her name, which felt weird but she had dementia and I'm not about to argue over names with someone with dementia.

But I agree that if the extent of the "incompetence" you described earlier is the use of terms of endearment then I'd be glad.