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

The wards were empty because they were shut and staff deployed. And stop spouting crap about nurses doing tik tok dances.

@quarentini are you a HCP ? Do you work at a hospital ?

@Juliettbravo they were doing dances in my local hospital.
And they were not all deployed.

Dd1 is a nurse. And she does.

Agree. Disgusting.
I'm having a frozen shoulder operation next week. Afterwards I'll need lots of physio . The NHS physios are not doing hands on work. But they are doing hands on work privately. My surgeon is furious.

I'm really really sorry OP it sounds shit. And it is really crap that we ration healthcare (even more so since Covid). But we also went into this pandemic with far fewer hospital beds and consultants per head of population than similar developed nations. We spend less per head on healthcare too. Shortly someone will be along to point out that it's not about spending more because the NHS is inefficient and wasteful (they will have had experience of some arcane and needless inefficient process). Whilst this is not without merit as as criticism on a macro scale the NHS is actually efficient (again compared to many healthcare systems). We have not trained enough staff built enough infrastructure and paid enough for the level of care that our population deserves and it sticks, and I am sorry you're on the receiving end.

@Natty13

Ive never told anybody to be quiet or stop. I've offered my perspective the same way everyone else is on here and I wont be bullied out of here by you. As you said everyone is allowed to be sad and what I'm sad about is having to tell a woman she couldn't go to visit her miscarried baby in the chapel because she was too sick to leave the unit. Sharing experiences is an important part of getting support or moving towards healing.

I would like to point out that 99% of people on here say they blame the higher up decision makers yet find it funny how that translates to a hell of a lot of attitude to nurses and doctors on the shop floor. People are CONSTANTLY having a go at us for decisions we've had nothing to do with and can't do anything aout. A year ago I'd ove to have a lovely conversation about how this had all been managed and what could have gone better when my patients want to rant about it instead of talking about what the appt was for but I'm fucking exhausted, I haven't seen my parents or siblings for over a year, and I have a lot of the stressors at home as everyone else does. I do wonder how all of you behave when you go in for appts because there is constant NHS bashing on this site and I'd be surprised if half of you aren't the ones I'm seeing who want to have a rant whenever you come for an appt.

The government are to blame for all of this. Full stop.

To be fair I don't think many people blame nurses themselves, it's not like they have much power in making important decisions.

@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.

So true about pain, especially if you're a woman.

@quarentini So you aren't a nurse then ? And maybe they did them before their shift started.
Our hospital shut most of the surgical wards and redeployed staff. We couldn't have managed without them. Don't know what your point is. It was bedlam on the wards. Presumably your area wasn't as badly hit as others, doesn't mean none of it happened.

My point is not every single person working in a hospital was dealing with covid patients.
Our area was badly hit!'they were tik tok dancing in empty wards and corridors!
Not every doctor and nurse was slammed with work!

Call me harsh but I'd rather have treated significantly fewer older sick patients with Covid in order to maintain treatment for other issues for younger, healthier patients.

It's harsh but it's logical. It's only going to get worse with an ageing population but no one wants to address it.

Yup. Very small example, but the phlebotomy service in my area used to be walk-ins at about six different venues daily 08.30-12.30. You might have had to wait 20 minutes or so if it was busy. Now it’s ring up a centralised number / visit a website, specify where you’d like your blood test, and get a call back with a date three weeks in the future. Add in a week to get results and that’s near a month.

Now some blood tests are non-urgent but if, I dunno, you’re severely anaemic and pregnant...

I’ve spent £650 on blood tests over the past few months. What are people supposed to do if they don’t have the money?

And why the chuff are waits the way the are, if there are the same number of clinics and clinicians working? I imagine non-attendance is also high.

@BuggerBognor

DH (consultant) has had a pretty easy 12 months ringing his patients and deferring chemo and radio. He was not redeployed. He got under my feet a lot at home but had a pretty good pandemic.

That appals me, my partner is now dying because this is exactly what he has experienced.

Ask the Government that have underfunded and under resourced our NHS for over 12 years now. Ask the people that keep voting for them. Ask the people that agreed with austerity measures. You get the NHS that you vote for.
Yes we could have a first world first class healthcare system - if we were prepared to insist our Government spend the necessary money on it. But most of the public seem to be strangely resistant to that.
Much easier to blame the NHS and it’s staff for mismanagement and laziness eh?

Well realistically some who work in the NHS will have voted Tory so I don't think you can necessarily separate the two. Look when Theresa May tried to bring in the "dementia tax". Nobody wants to pay.

So patients do not need care during shift change then?
Its a seasonal virus like the rest of its family so cases drop dramatically during summer months why were we still not treating seriously ill cases then?
I know in my area the nurses were not deployed (seconded) and we are still one of highest suffering areas.
A&E was empty, orthopedic wards still had nurses but no patients.
And yes the medical staff were posting dances on tiktok which if they were run off their feet don't really see how they would have had the time or energy.

My view is that you can be very grateful to the individuals within the NHS; the overwhelmingly majority of them work extraordinarily hard and provide amazing service. (I reserve the right to exclude a persistently rude and hugely ineffective receptionist at my local hospital).

However we can also be dismayed at the institution and it’s ineffectiveness. It’s so, so bloody hard to get a GP appt around here. For the last 12 months + continuing care for chronic conditions has been non existent. If you get a system designed to deal with emergencies only you will as a result get more emergencies.

@BuggerBognor

DH (consultant) has had a pretty easy 12 months ringing his patients and deferring chemo and radio. He was not redeployed. He got under my feet a lot at home but had a pretty good pandemic.

With his level of training, he didnt ask to be redeployed? If he didnt, he is a cunt!

@rarari

Ask the Government that have underfunded and under resourced our NHS for over 12 years now. Ask the people that keep voting for them. Ask the people that agreed with austerity measures. You get the NHS that you vote for. Yes we could have a first world first class healthcare system - if we were prepared to insist our Government spend the necessary money on it. But most of the public seem to be strangely resistant to that. Much easier to blame the NHS and it’s staff for mismanagement and laziness eh?

Well realistically some who work in the NHS will have voted Tory so I don't think you can necessarily separate the two. Look when Theresa May tried to bring in the "dementia tax". Nobody wants to pay.

It shouldn’t be a choice though. As a supposedly civilised society we should be getting our priorities right. And we should be able to rely on our Government to lead by example and get their priorities right - ha ha if only!!

@Sirzy

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

My condition has worsened so much I cannot get to the appointments I keep being sent, but they won't let me cancel as they've no evidence of my condition being so bad. I was refused treatment for a potentially serious hip injury over a year ago which is just getting worse. I've been offered many appointments since being unable to get into a car which is essential to get there to be assessed for transport and treatment.

Many many are in this position.

It's not fair for the NHS to complain about people not bothering to turn up when many lost out on essentially needed treatment to continue to be able to attend.

My healthboard a couple of months ago did a drive on social media to complain about people missing cardiac and orthopaedic appointments and got their asses handed to them. It got so bad the posts were removed and no one has dared put other such posts up. Hundreds of people replied saying they'd been told not to attend as there were no clinics, others turned up to be turned away at the hospital, others like myself are too ill to now travel hours by car to appointments due to loss of clinics.

In my area, Drs and nurses rarely bothered to turn up to any meetings about the future of rural healthcare where I live. I went, I was a manager in the NHS, and I got thrown out for asking the questions others like medical staff needed to - they wouldn't accept that a broken bone couldn't just be dealt with over two hours away by taxi from me, but they would from a dr. But they didn't bother to go, why? Because they saw no point as its the NHS. It made my blood boil when I worked there the number of medical staff who would happily whine and complain and say "it's the NHS it's crap" repeatedly but do nothing to try and sort out the problems.

Chris Hopson again

Politics For All
@PoliticsForAlI
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11h
Police cars revolving light NEW: NHS chief Chris Hopson says the UK will need a “new normal”

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Some previous posts of mine

MercyBooth Mon 14-Dec-20 15:42:42
A lot of the public are realizing that whatever they do and whatever they sacrifice it will never be enough to please some others. If Christmas was "cancelled" people would not accept a January lockdown and you would get very low compliance if they did both.
And NHS CEO Chris Hopson has got a fucking cheek with his tweets. Many NHS workers have been bullied and emotionally blackmailed into coming into work when ill pre Covid. So the NHS management etc should get their own fucking house in order rather than using the same emotional blackmail tactics on the public that they use on their front line staff. I suppose the higher ups are frightened they will actually have to do some work for their bloated pay.

MercyBooth Fri 08-Jan-21 22:35:08

The public arent allowed to criticise the NHS but there has been plenty of it vice versa. So it doesnt seem to work both ways. The guilt tripping and emotional blackmail of ppl in the run up to Christmas should they have wanted to see their families was bloody appalling. From ppl like Chris Hopson. It was also coming from the Government too. Asking ppl not to see their families for all this time is a big ask. But now im seeing tweets from NHS workers citing what the public did at Christmas as the fault of this surge. Over 85% stayed at home. Yet it still isnt enough. It will never be enough no matter what we do. Yet we have come in for loads of criticism guilt tripping, emotional blackmail, bullying etc. NHS workers on the frontline are great. But please realise guilt tripping and emotional blackmail affects peoples mental health.

@BuggerBognor is hopefully lying. If not I’m appalled and angry.

Sorry first paragraph got garbled.

I meant I've been sent many many appointments but since my condition has worsened I cannot attend and that's not recognised as a good enough reason not to attend as I cannot prove my injury until I attend so the appointments show as "wasted" on the system. Same goes for other illnesses I have.

I hope that's a bit better. Sorry. Have had seizure and it messes with my head.

Call me harsh but I'd rather have treated significantly fewer older sick patients with Covid in order to maintain treatment for other issues for younger, healthier patients

What would you do? Leave them in a room alone to die?
Send them home alone to die?
Send them back to the care home (with covid) to die?
Refuse to send ambulances?

What does "not treating" older patients look like in reality?