To be upset with the NHS?

[EarlyBird123]

It’s my first pregnancy, and i am extremely anxious since I don’t know what to do and what is going on. I am 10 weeks now. I had an appointment with the midwife almost 2 weeks ago and she said that the hospital will be in touch with me to arrange the scan. I heard nothing so i rang them, and they have no record of me whatsoever. The midwife says she sent all the information to the hospital.

Am i being unreasonable to be upset with the whole situation, given the fact that my every interaction with the NHS is such a hard work?

I have a foreign surname, but i am a British citizen and i pay my taxes, for goodness sake.

@avocadoincident

Why let the later posts get in the way of a good pile on

Have to say as a community midwife I'd be wondering how they had lost the paperwork I'd sent them to book the scan if I'd sent it two weeks ago - though I have known clinic swear blind they haven't received it and when I've gone over there and looked in the pile of appointments waiting to be booked it was in there

Or (a different) clinic swearing the maternity notes I'd sent didn't arrive - so emailed a duplicate copy - and they still claimed not to have received the handheld notes - I wrote out a duplicate set and took them to the woman - and the clinic had given them to her!

Try not to let this colour your entire view of the maternity care so early - hopefully once the scan gets booked it'll all go straightforward from there

Try not to worry to as of yet, I didn’t have a community midwife as there wasn’t one I had a stand in for all my appointments. I had to re do my booking appointment as they lost all my notes. It was a lot smoother once I got my first scan around 13/14 weeks and my notes weren’t lost again! Give them another call at 11 weeks

It’s frustrating and anxiety provoking when you get lost in a big system like the NHS but fortunately, you’re not late for your scan. Try to keep as calm as possible about these things but do let your midwife know your anxiety is affecting you, so they can help.

Your surname is not relevant. Admin staff, who will be the ones booking you in for your scan, have a job to do- which is to meet the targets and book appointments. They don't give a shit who they are booking them for, they don't get paid enough to care.

That said, you are not being unreasonable to be annoyed that your referral went missing. The NHS should really have better ways of making sure details get sent between departments. They still use fax machines FGS.

The NHS is beyond inefficient and much of the time offers substandard care which we are meant to accept because it’s free. I doubt your name was an issue but you are correct that the way the NHS is run is beyond a joke

My first midwife appointment was mistakenly booked with a podiatrist :)

Things get missed or go missing - it's only happened once and you're now back in the loop; really not worth all the anguish.

There's a saying amongst some in the health service that if you're ever wondering if it's a cock-up or a conspiracy, it's almost certainly just a cock-up.

Since DD was conceived almost every contact we've had with the NHS concerning her has been a cock up in one way or another: notes not being passed on, consultants' instructions being deliberately ignored by community midwives ("it's not our policy to do that") without them telling us or why and numerous, numerous occasions where services have failed to deliver because someone 'forgot' to enter an appointment on a calender, 'forgot' to file the paperwork, 'forgot' to turn up to work, and so on.

The level of administrative incompetence in community midwifery, health visiting, and imms/vacs services is eye-watering and I absolutely resent being taxed out of existence for such a substandard service.

If anything an unusual surname probably helps. It's the Jane Smiths that tend to get more admin errors and for the love of God if one of your surnames is also a first name don't consider double barrelling. I've seen no end of admin errors with patients that have names like that.