NHS

[ginislife]

I've calmed down now but was absolutely bloody fuming this morning. My 18 year old has had an appointment booked for months for today at 10.30 to see what i possibly assumed was a consultant. We live an hour from the hospital. We were 5 minutes from the hospital and 22 minutes from his appointment time when they rang up and cancelled it. During the call it turned out it was with a nurse and she'd not turned up for work so the entire clinic was cancelled. I'd taken a day off and booked childs theory driving test for the same day in the same town so a waste of time going home to go back again. I'm self employed so already losing a days pay. I can't believe they didn't know earlier than 10.08 am that they were cancelling !! And now I'm cross again !! 😂

@Nengineer what would the provision have been like for your smear and endoscope if you had chosen not to pay privately?

Nengineer - a “a crappy nurse”
Don’t you sound utterly charming. I know who I would rather have doing my smear thanks.

Just having a medical degree doesn’t make you better than someone who is doing something all the time.
It is a different system here with more specialists and less reliance on Drs for everything.
I am a sonographer. I scan all the time. I teach Drs to scan on the wards too. I regularly teach Drs that have been working abroad with more autonomy as they have less reporting sonographers there. Most of them have no clue what they are doing when they start despite assuring me they are expert scanners in their home country. Much safer to have a lowly sonographer scan who sticks to protocols and knows their limitations than a cavalier Dr, Jack of all trades, master of none.

@Nengineer= crappy nurse? Don’t judge everyone by your own professional standards.

Any other doctor and nurse would have their own full diaries
In my role im lucky enough to control my diary. I leave some space in my diary for emergencies, but in general if someone calls in sick I can only take maybe one of their apts on and it would be the most urgent.

Equally I often don't have much of a buffer between clients so if you are 20 min late then often you could already be arriving in another patients timeslot or if its a longer appointment then your appt needs to be 20 min late.

We often get grief for running late but usually its due to patient delays

I think the words ‘crappy nurse’ aren’t helpful because there are some amazing nurses and other healthcare professionals.

However, I think Nengineer has a real point. Why do we put up with a system that allows very limited choice if any at all, and in some cases makes us feel grateful for getting our health services despite paying tax? I opted out for the private system 20 years ago - apart from real A&E emergencies. Has cost a fortune but I won’t put up with such an appalling service offered by the NHS. Hoping a government will thoroughly reform and save me my £500 a month!

DH had a scan on 2nd June, an oncologist was to call him with the results on 2nd July. No call came and we are still waiting despite calling PALS every day. The NHS is beyond repair.

[quote ginislife]@Carycy I cannot believe that they don't have more than one nurse in the department. It's totally unacceptable to cancel like they did. [/quote]
Yes, they should have held the clinic with any old nurse regardless of whether they had any specialist knowledge. Someone’s off in the fracture clinic so let’s just send a midwife down to cover for them. Shit happens.

@Nengineer

Nurses aren't crappy!!!

The practice nurses in the U.K. are highly trained nurse practitioners who usually can prescribe too, most are educated to degree level or taken equivalent qualifications. A nurse is completely capable of doing smears, had mine recently

Surely clinicians are reluctant to see late patients as they dont want to affect other patients too much...?

It would most likely have been a specialist nurse that is taking the clinic, who probably covers various locations within the trust, there really isn’t a store room full of waiting hospital staff waiting to step in when someone is sick. It is frustrating for you to be put off at late notice but what alternative is there, the NHS really and truly doesn’t pull these stunts to piss people off.

It's pretty galling to be sitting waiting for your appointment having booked time off and travelled at great expense to see your consultant breeze in, laughing and joking with colleagues and clutching a starbucks 45 minutes after your appointment time.

If you are 20 mintage for your hairdresser or beautician your slot is gone so why would being late for a medical appointment be any different?

In my role there is times routine appointments are cancelled to facilitate urgent appointments from a member of the team who is unexpectedly sick, no one wants their client being cancelled but unfortunately it happens

I cannot believe that they don't have more than one nurse in the department. It's totally unacceptable to cancel like they did.

Most specialist nurses that I know of work in quite small teams of 2 - 5 nurses, so it's hard to find cover for clinics at the last minute, as the other nurses will already have commitments booked.

It's annoying, but what else could they have done? They didn't have the right person available to see you.

I don't doubt that NHS staff work very hard but the standard of care can be poor. I've been going to a clinic in one of the big London hospitals as an outpatient for 15 years. I always book the first appointment of the clinic and the consultant is at least 30-40 minutes late every single time. It's not a clinic that has emergencies so why not start the clinic 30 minutes later if the timing is overly ambitious?

Pre Covid, I arrived (it's a 90 minute journey) to find my appointment was cancelled and no one had told me. I went to reschedule at the admin desk of the clinic but apparently they couldn't do that as it was cancelled. I had to track down the consultant's secretary to authorise a new appointment to be made by the admin team. How is this an efficient use of anyone's time?

Honestly, I'd lose Sky and other luxuries before I got rid of my private healthcare. It's a world away from the NHS. I've had appointments with consultants within 48 hours of GP referrals on three occasions this year. I had a 30 minute slot for each consultation. Tests are carried out there and then if possible and you don't have a long and anxious wait for results. They've started offering a free GP service now which I'm sure will be popular.

I think the NHS has a lot of good aspects but at times we seem unwilling to consider that other countries have much better quality healthcare than the U.K. so that we can learn from their systems and processes.

He's 18. Couldn't he go on his own? Can't he book his own driving test?

[quote NotPersephone]@Nengineer you are entirely correct. I’m British and I do not understand why on earth we suck up such a shithouse service.

A PP who was asking for understanding for the nurse while refusing to see patients who were late sums up the grandiose attitude and lack of insight that typifies “our” NHS.

Thank fuck the seals aren’t clapping any more.[/quote]
We suck it up because we pay a pittance for it.

I'm presuming the same people that complain about the NHS not being good enough also expect their Ford mondeos to do 200mph and to be able to pay 59p for a burger in macdonalds and order it medium rare with Wagyu beef.

Once it's funded to an equivalent amount as most other developed nations, then we can legitimately complain when it underperforms.

By every reasonable metric I've seen, it actually outperforms almost all of services per £ spent.

It's pretty galling to be sitting waiting for your appointment having booked time off and travelled at great expense to see your consultant breeze in, laughing and joking with colleagues and clutching a starbucks 45 minutes after your appointment time.

Granted, this is annoying to witness. But it may be that your consultant is 45 minutes late because they got called away to see a patient urgently on a ward, or to operate on someone, or one of their previous appointments overran because they were breaking bad news etc, and they ended up missing their lunch so nipped to the Starbucks in the hospital. It's irritating to be kept waiting, and patients should be informed if there is a delay, but when it does happen it's usually because of one of the above reasons, rather than they've just been sat on their arse drinking coffee.

Yep same thing happened to my mum on Wednesday. Has waited over a year on the waiting list to see a consultant in severe pain. They called her last week to bring the TELEPHONE appointment forward 2 days, even better. Then 10 mins before the call was due to take place she got a call to say it was cancelled and she will get a new appointment in the post. It's an absolute Joke. I'm sick of seeing doctors surgery's being bashed but the real issue is people higher up consultants, surgeons etc not doing clinics at all and having waiting lists of over a year and then cancelling clinics.

I think the National Health Service should be re-branded to - National Health Provision. It is clearly not and can never be a "service" because the consumers have no - or very little - comeback when they do not get the service they expect.
However, what most people fail to realise, is that the NHS was originally set up to provide basic health care. It branched out, without making any profit, into areas that cannot be considered as "basic". This is why a major rethink is very long overdue.
On the patient side, common sense has been bred out of most of the population, so they "expect" to be cared for in circumstances (sometimes of their own making) that are unreasonable for the provision available.

I always book the first appointment of the clinic and the consultant is at least 30-40 minutes late every single time. It's not a clinic that has emergencies so why not start the clinic 30 minutes later if the timing is overly ambitious?

Consultants will usually have other stuff to do in the morning, cover board rounds and ward rounds, and can be called out for emergencies happening in areas other than the clinic depending on their speciality.

@Nightlystroll not sure how that's relevant ? But we live due east 20 miles so would be a bus and 2 trains then another bus to get to the hospital. No direct route. And I booked the test because I had to pay for it - and then they failed ! Not a great day all round really - and to cap it all I bought a 99 and the ice cream fell off the cone onto the floor !! 😂

"crappy nurse" -
Get off your fucking high horse. Disgusting.

"Consultants will usually have other stuff to do in the morning, cover board rounds and ward rounds, and can be called out for emergencies happening in areas other than the clinic depending on their speciality."

I understand that. But not every time for 15 years. I don't want to out my poor consultant's specialty as he's a really nice man, but I very much doubt he'd be called for other emergencies given his specialism and his role is quite research-based.

I don't have an issue with them having other jobs pre clinic nor the occasional unforeseen thing cropping up. But I don't think it's good practice to schedule a clinic to start at a time if you simply cannot ever get there on time. Some of the patients are elderly and suffer with restricted mobility so don't want to sit on hard plastic chairs waiting for an hour every time they attend clinic.