To hate what covid has done to the rest of the health service

[Dishwashersaurous]

I need an operation. Haven't seen a consultant in over a year due to covid. Finally, following telephone appointment I've been listed for the surgery.

I'm in constant pain and barely able to get out of bed most days.

I phoned to find how long the waiting list is. Due to covid its over a year.

I then investigated taking out a loan to go privately. The private wing at the hospital have just told me that due to covid they are not doing any overnight stays for months.

So I will probably lose my job ic I have to wait until a year. And I will be in constant pain. And all due to covid

Yeah they've handled this badly really. I think that they could have managed to keep going with some operations, very reduced of course, but they would have kept going rather than letting more patients build up. Patients in Scotland are now having to go to England because they can't be seen otherwise.

My dad is also thinking of going private because thanks to NHS Scotland, he probably won't be seen in over 2 years and he's in agony. They had a backlog anyway, this has just made it worse.

Im really sorry to hear this. Unfortunately I just don't know what the answer is. There is nothing worse than constant pain. Could you ask your GP for stronger/other painkillers till your operation?

So badly. I'm sorry to hear you're going through this. It's not fair.
My son was born sleeping in June and I was refused a 6 week appointment with GP. This was my first pregnancy. Spoke to a friend who also went through it. My dad cousin has had concerns for months and was refused appointments and now has found out he has terminal cancer.
And our incidents are far from isolated. It's awful.

It's bizarre how the nhs has virtually closed in the UK. I have friends and relatives in other European countries who have had non life saving surgery in the midst of the pandemic.

The NHS has never been very interested in pain, I'm afraid. If you're not imminently going to die you were always likely to be on a long waiting list pre-Covid. Personally I think in a world of finite resources there should be less spent on prolonging life at all costs and more on stuff that transforms the quality of life, but no-one is willing to have that hard discussion.

I completely agree. They said lockdowns were to protect the NHS but the NHS shut down along with the rest of the country. Completely ridiculous. Those NHS big wigs have blood on their hands and not from Covid but from all the other treatments they stopped doing.

@CirclesWithinCircles

It's bizarre how the nhs has virtually closed in the UK. I have friends and relatives in other European countries who have had non life saving surgery in the midst of the pandemic.

The problem was lack of beds and ventilators. Most of Europe had more ventilators so they didn’t have to use the ones normally used in theatres. Obviously in the first wave absolutely everything shut down to ensure safety of staff and patients as it was all unknown. They needed to ensure the beds were empty for the influx and that ventilators and staff were available to treat Covid patients who were clinical priority. As things opened up there’s been a massive discrepancy in areas what is happening. My work has been back to pre Covid operation since July and hasn’t changed with further lockdowns. The next town is still not returned to normal. I’ve seen my GP regularly face to face after triage telephone appointments yet others are refusing. Unfortunately this is down to the devolution of the NHS and the fact that it is up to each trust, GP and CCG what they offer rather than being ce really controlled.

It’s awful, but without the lockdowns it would have been even worse sadly. They only have limited capacity.

Ds had a procedure delayed for a year - after the test he has now been diagnosed with a condition that without the emergency medication we now have could easily be fatal but the diagnosis was delayed.

Thankfully things do seem to be slowly kicking off again but there is a lot of catching up to do!

YANBU

YANBU.
I'm sat here at the hospital, waiting to discuss surgery that was urgently needed April 2019 🙄.
The surgeon is running an hour late on his morning clinic so I'm sat outside with a pager.
How is he an hour late already 🤷‍♀️

@DrRamsesEmerson

The NHS has never been very interested in pain, I'm afraid. If you're not imminently going to die you were always likely to be on a long waiting list pre-Covid. Personally I think in a world of finite resources there should be less spent on prolonging life at all costs and more on stuff that transforms the quality of life, but no-one is willing to have that hard discussion.

@DrRamsesEmerson I agree with you completely.

Some of these comments are making my blood boil. You have NO IDEA what NHS staff have gone through in the last year despite news reports, articles, social media posts....

I'd love it if any of you keyboard warriors could have come in a year ago or before the second wave and explained how, with havong to cram insanely sick ITU patients in every space with an oxygen and power supply. That includes all operating theatres, recovery areas, A&E, 2 floors of the elseparate children's hospital, rehab units....we had to pull staff from everywhere: pre op clinics, specialist cancer nurses, A&E, wards where elective patients go post op, wards which were already slammed with less acute covid patients. And we still struggled to deliver even the most basic fucking care.

In the last year I have had to make decisions I never in a million years would have though possible. I'm not alone in that but I feel really fucking alone. Despite stopping ALL other treatments and operations I was still REGULARLY having to make decisions between 2 or 3 people crashing at once and only being able to attend to one. Imagine that for one second. How would you decide? I've had no magical training, there are no policies to show me how to decide who lives and who dies and I lie awake at night going over and over the decisions I made. Imagine having to call someone's family and explain they died because you were with someone else.

We are human beings and the lack of compassion for what we've gone through is absolutely disgusting. No wonder 40% of nurses have responded to a union survey stating intention to leave the profession.

But yeah, keep telling yourselves that the "big wigs" could have found a way to keep other services going you absolute ignorant ***.

I think that the individual doctors and nurses are amazing. However, I do think that some bad decisions were made. Millions were spent on the nightingale hospitals and a handful of patients were treated

The problem with the nightingale hospitals was you can’t magic staff out of thin air, those staff had to come from somewhere.

@natty13 please just stop. We are talking about our own experience and I am sick to the back teeth of basically being told to shush about my experience because of Covid. Yes our doctors and nurses are brilliant and I know this pandemic has been a shitstorm but I'm allowed to be sad, everyone on this thread is allowed to be sad and you do do not have the right to bully us out of this.

YADNBU

@Dishwashersaurous where were they to get the staff for these nightingale hospitals? They were a good idea and were likely built after seeing Italy doing the same. But they couldn’t work here because of how low staffing levels were to start with.
You don’t seem to understand the amazing nurses and doctors can’t be in 2 places. They can’t be treating the Covid patients who will die without treatment and run clinics for pre-op for example. So everything did grind to a halt when things were at it’s worse. So many people were redeployed to areas they’d never worked in, a friend is a nursery nurse in the NHS and was moved to a palliative Covid ward caring for mainly elderly patients for months.

@Natty13

Some of these comments are making my blood boil. You have NO IDEA what NHS staff have gone through in the last year despite news reports, articles, social media posts....

I'd love it if any of you keyboard warriors could have come in a year ago or before the second wave and explained how, with havong to cram insanely sick ITU patients in every space with an oxygen and power supply. That includes all operating theatres, recovery areas, A&E, 2 floors of the elseparate children's hospital, rehab units....we had to pull staff from everywhere: pre op clinics, specialist cancer nurses, A&E, wards where elective patients go post op, wards which were already slammed with less acute covid patients. And we still struggled to deliver even the most basic fucking care.

In the last year I have had to make decisions I never in a million years would have though possible. I'm not alone in that but I feel really fucking alone. Despite stopping ALL other treatments and operations I was still REGULARLY having to make decisions between 2 or 3 people crashing at once and only being able to attend to one. Imagine that for one second. How would you decide? I've had no magical training, there are no policies to show me how to decide who lives and who dies and I lie awake at night going over and over the decisions I made. Imagine having to call someone's family and explain they died because you were with someone else.

We are human beings and the lack of compassion for what we've gone through is absolutely disgusting. No wonder 40% of nurses have responded to a union survey stating intention to leave the profession.

But yeah, keep telling yourselves that the "big wigs" could have found a way to keep other services going you absolute ignorant ***.

I am going to blame the big wigs, not the staff.

Thanks to the big wigs decisions, they are closing the main maternity ward in a hospital up here, so if you have any kind of difficulty with your pregnancy, you have to travel for almost 2 hours to save you and/or your baby. They did this a few decades ago too, didn't work then either. But you know, why not try a stupid decision again?

Also in Scotland, they've decided to stop all treatment for any cancer patients except the very early stages, because they can't keep up. If we had gone independent, they'd just have to die. At least currently they can go to England.

The big bosses at the top have a lot to answer for, yet never will. They don't care. They have enough money to go private.

It all comes back to funding from the government. That is the answer. The NHS is underfunded and run in a way that is inefficient. It’s not each hospital it’s the government so maybe people should vote more wisely.

@Pupster21

It all comes back to funding from the government. That is the answer. The NHS is underfunded and run in a way that is inefficient. It’s not each hospital it’s the government so maybe people should vote more wisely.

I think so too.

Every time I log onto our GP's website it states there are no appointments available - up to the 28 May! And nothing is showing after then. What on earth are most people expected to do?

I also cannot understand why GPs around here won't see people F2F for consultations, as by now most of us are vaccinated and we are all wearing face coverings. My partner had a growth recently (on site he'd had cancerous growths before) but was told would have to wait 3 waits just for a phone appointment. In the end he went privately; got to see a specialist within the week who did some tests there and then and was able to put his mind at rest (cost £180 but worth every penny). However I'm aware that not everyone can afford to find such money at the drop of a hat.

Please be assured I have nothing but praise for all the hardworking NHS staff on the front line of the pandemic; it's just the way GP surgeries currently operating that puzzles me.

Oops meant 3 weeks not 3 waits!

My nephew has just had major surgery on his brain ,took from diagnosing what was wrong in Jan to two weeks ago for surgery . It was actually arranged for March but because of the nature of the surgery it had to be signed of a higher level or something so it was delayed by 3 weeks
He’s scheduled for more surgery this year
I do think it depends on where you are in the country though
my dad had treatment last year and my sister had an operation for her back

It's bad, a family friend had to have a very serious operation privately last yr. If she waited till it freed up then she may have died or at the very least deteriorated seriously. It was £££££ but they were lucky to be able to afford. What about those that can't?

The GPs are useless at the moment, why are so many not seeing patients.

And sadly even with all of this people are still not turning up to appointments when they do get them. I was with Ds at a children’s hospital last week and they had a sign up saying there had been something around 150 did not attends the week before! This is for a hospital who send plenty of reminders too so I doubt people didn’t know. So 150 children didn’t get seen and another 150 who could have been seen instead weren’t

@VegCheeseandCrackers it's inexcusable