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 !! 😂

@ginislife Sorry, you've had a rough day and I didn't make it better for you there. Can't help you with your cancellation but here...🍦 It's the best I can do. x

@Hobnobsandbroomstick

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.

In that case, it should be included in their schedule. That way they don’t make people wait for 20+ minutes just for the sake of it.

I agree with some PP, they wouldn’t accept a patient to arrive 20+ minutes late. Or if they cancel right at the last minute etc…
So why is it ok for consultants or nurses to do so too?
They might be very busy and patients have a life too and are busy. Like busy to work so they can put food on the table…

@VictoriaLudorum

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.

Can I ask what the NHS is offering now that isnt basic healthcare? @VictoriaLudorum

@MyriadeOfThings

Because there is a finite number of consultants, and emergencies are fairly common in healthcare unfortunately.

They can’t magic staff up. It’s horrible when it happens but at the moment with the issues of staff having to isolate then it’s even worse than normal.

Hope it’s rearranged quickly

Ds has been one of the ones to cause clinic delays. He chose about 8.45am to take seriously ill and they called a consultant and two registrars to come and stabilise him. At least two of him where due to start clinics at 9am, they left us about 10am and I hope they got a drink before heading too clinic.

It happens. We have been on the other side of being sat waiting many a time but that is a much more preferable position rather than being the reason for the delay!

[quote Hobnobsandbroomstick]@MyriadeOfThings

Because there is a finite number of consultants, and emergencies are fairly common in healthcare unfortunately.[/quote]
But that doesn’t cover rounds in the morning etc…
If it is likely that following a round, said consultant will have to see a patient as an emergency (aka it happens 7 times out of 10) then that time should be included and the clinic should start later.
I’m pretty sure that, seeing how busy these people are, they will find something to do during the 3 days when there is no ‘emergency’.

FWIW I’ve seen the same thing happening at my surgery (GP arriving 20 mins late with bags of gifts in her hands after whatever celebrations she had and then spending another 10mins getting ready before seeing me.)
Same with dentists late by 15 mins on the first appointment of the day (they don’t have emergencies!) etc….

@Grainjar

Drs and nurses get ill sometimes and the job is not one you can turn up and wing it with. These things happen.

This

We very much have the "we will send you out an appointment at random, then, after you've booked leave and told school they won't be in, we will send you a letter the day before changing the appointment to a few days later a couple of times before we will see you" system in play for DD2's clinic sessions.

They do all of this by post and second class post (obviously to save costs) but our post comes so late in the day and is so bad it's hit and miss if we get the notification things have been cancelled in time.

@Nengineer you wouldn't get that on the NHS because its a complete waste of resources.

A nurse is fully qualified and more than capable of carrying out a smear. They are just as qualified and capable of doing the smear as the consultant, and tbh if they do it day in day out probably better. The consultant can get on with tasks the nurse cant do. Obviously a GP is going to refuse a referral to a consultant when they've got a perfectly qualified nurse available to do exactly the same procedure.

You don't need to see a specialist for every condition. What are ENT going to do about your allergies? Fuck all. They arent allergy specialists, they are a surgical speciality. A GP again is perfectly capable of managing basic allergies and referring onto an appropriate specialist

Op the nurse was off. What else are they supposed to do?

Its frustrating I agree, and not ideal. But a random nurse cant see another nurses clinic. They probably didn't have another specialist nurse available to run that clinic, no. You can't just pull a nurse from the wards and get them to run say an eye clinic. Or being someone in from another speciality. If there was another specialist nurse present they probably had their own full clinic and can't run two.

If the nurse is doing the clinic, they are capable and qualified to do the clinic. Specialist nurses will see the patients they need to see, and consultants can see the patients they need to see. But a consultant isn't necessarily the best person to see the patient, often a nurse is.

@Hobnobsandbroomstick

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.

Then they shouldn't commit to clinics then! It's not a rare occurance. I used to attend a regular clinic with my ex DP and it was very very rare the clinic ran less than 45 minutes behind. Even with an appointment first thing. People have lives.

It's shit but happens a lot. Speaking as the poor person that generally is the one ringing to cancel the appointments

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

Yes.

There are reasonable questions about NHS structure and so on--but you probably couldn't wring an ounce more care per pound.

The issue is that not enough is spent, there isn't willpower to change it, and too many arguments turn into the US and the NHS being the only possible choices.

I'd love to know what country you can get a next day visit with any specialist. That indicates significant slack capacity in the system, which generally doesn't occur. Other systems have better choice, fewer wait times, less of a role for the GP in controlling access to secondary services--but having that sort of supply of every specialist suggests to me that this is a system where specialists will push off publicly funded cases in order to take private ones.

Today 17:07 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.@ginislife

I think I heard on PM earlier that more people have been pinged today than ever before. What can they do if multiple staff didn’t come in?
In the current circumstances, it’s not totally unacceptable, it’s just the way things are.

It's fine to be cross obviously.. I would be too and have had my fair share of cancelled or super late running appointments, but departments dont have spare nurses waiting around in case someone is sick/isolating/crashes their car on the way to work other nurses will have other clinics to be running, the administrator was probably trying to cancel 30 appointments as well as man reception, sort out notes for the consultant etc, there just isnt that much slack in the nhs system to usually provide cover for unplanned absence..and if there was people would be really pissed off about that.

@knitnerd90
I'd love to know what country you can get a next day visit with any specialist.

You can in Portwenn and Doc Martin can get the results back the next day.

[quote Nightlystroll]@knitnerd90
I'd love to know what country you can get a next day visit with any specialist.

You can in Portwenn and Doc Martin can get the results back the next day. [/quote]
England. I saw my GP on a Wednesday who referred me and I saw a consultant gynaecologist privately on the Thursday night. I also had appointments within 48 hours for other specialists this year.

@Nightlystroll I'm moving to Portwen - and I bet the ice creams there dont fall off !!!

[quote Nightlystroll]@knitnerd90
I'd love to know what country you can get a next day visit with any specialist.

You can in Portwenn and Doc Martin can get the results back the next day. [/quote]
I'm not sure if I should use House or Grey's Anatomy for the American equivalent! Of course House magically does everything without nurses.

I've had specialist appointments be very quick (both UK and USA) but also had waits. Nengineer was saying that this is always the case, which is what I'm doubting--I certainly know people who have had to wait a bit even for private appointments in England. They're quicker because the NHS is taking the vast majority of patients. If lots of people wanted to do it, it wouldn't work.

In Canada you can't pay privately for most services, so you can't queue-jump.

@traintraveller

IME cancelling patients is a last resort and they would have tried all other avenues before phoning patients.

And my experience it is very much not. Im at the pals complaint stage now with my dad’s treatments. Hour drive the see consultants regularly cancelled with little notice. Sometimes even when he has been sat in the waiting room. One time i was with him in the waiting room as the receptionist came to say it was now cancelled.

It isnt a one off. It is very, very regular. And when you have relatives with ongoing poor health situations and longer term treatments, you see that clearly.

My mum has become disabled in the past year. Can she see her gp? Can she fuck. Gp just keeps prescribing painkillers on the phone, strong ones! yet my mother is not in pain.

Ive been sat int he waiting room myself before waiting an hour to be then told appointment cancelled.

People need to stop making excuses like theyre doing their best with what theyve got. Theres no incentive for the government to not run the nhs into the ground if people act like this is the beat we expect

And it is also an excuse to blame covid. This isnt new.

@ginislife
I'm moving to Portwen - and I bet the ice creams there dont fall off !!!

You should. I hear driving tests are a breeze there. 🥳 Good luck to your son (although you'll probably never see your car again!) 🚗 🚗 🚗 👋

I quit NHS bank work yesterday, I have worked for them for the last 4 years on and off and was asked to train agency employees yesterday, the agency trainer was not notified of who I am and shouted at me for not being logged on to their systems despite me being in 'coaching mode' and verbally abused me infront of our trainees I complained and offered to resign as I have a new F/T role/ was doing this as a favour and had enough of the treatment of staff, they tried to apologise but this isn't the first time it has happened I am DONE.

@Themeparklover that's so shitty. I feel really nauseous today I'm meant to be in work in 4 hours and I'm trying desperately not to vomit so I can go in. I feel utterly dreadful but my boss will make my life not worth it if I call in sick because we're so short staffed.