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 !! 😂

I sympathise with you op but I think people have no idea how bad staffing is currently. My husband and I are doctors. I’m a GP and husband works in hospital. Yesterday my daughter tested positive for COVID so I rang him at work at 0930 when I found out. He had to come straight home and his colleague covered the oncall and ward round meaning a clinic had to be postponed last minute. I had to cancel a patients surgery last minute for the same reason.
it is exactly this scenario that your doctor may have been in
Due to COVID isolation, holiday and already a shortage of GPs due to the recruitment crisis, there was only me covering a 9000 pt practice earlier this week. Yes I had to triage every demand for a GP consultation and yes I had to decline to see what I did not deem appropriate as an emergency. This does not make me a bad GP because you don’t get sn appointment you want that day. It is a relentless exhausting job and I am sick of complaints. The GP system isn’t perfect but individually most GPs are giving their absolute all at the minute. It’s so demoralising being constantly abused on social media. In the last month alone patients have threatened me with CQC reporting it ringing the police. I’ve not had that in 15 years of being a GP. I’ve also had a bunch of flowers and a large supply of kitkats- maybe that will be enough to stop me leaving the profession for now …

The seagulls will eat your ice cream before it falls to the floor @ginislife

It’s bad luck that your sons appointment was cancer. That’s all, bad luck.

I was once booked for an appt at a hospital in London. I don’t live in London but around 1hr 30 by train. I waited 3 hrs to be told that they booked me into the wrong clinic! They said the surgeon assigned to me had already left the building. They said can you come back tomorrow like it was so easy. I said no I’m working tomorrow!

@nengineer The NHS is stretched well beyond its limits, they don't have doctors to stand in when someone phones in sick! You've clearly been away for too long. The government are to blame, not the staff.

@NotPersephone

We suck it up because we pay a pittance for it.

Speak for yourself! We pay 6 figures in tax/NI every year. No help for our disabled DS. Not even a GP appointment for me. It’s third world quality.

I’d be happy to pay even more (and indeed I did when I lived overseas), but not for more NHS. Because it is, by any metric, utterly shit.

Per capita and as a proportion of GDP we spend less on health than just about every European country. We need to spend more and we need to spend it smarter. The 2012 Lansley reforms effectively sucked tens of millions out of patient care just to add to the existing underspend.

I struggle to see why anyone on the level of income needed to generate in excess of £100k in tax and NI would even bother with the NHS. There are plenty of private providers out there.

[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]
You have no idea why the nurse wasn’t available, or how many staff are working in that department. Presumably they do t have spare staff hanging around for just this kind of situation.
It’s annoying that you only found out t short notice, but if they phoned you half an hour earlier it wouldn’t have made any difference would it.

Such a shame the nhs can't pick and choose its patients and discharge all the ungrateful arrogant idiots.

@NotPersephone

We need to spend more and we need to spend it smarter.

What “we” need is co-pay and meaningful patient choice along the lines of a European social insurance systems. The NHS needs to be put out of its misery - it’s an anachronism.

Luckily GP’s are leading the charge towards collapse and rendering the entire service inaccessible. Go them!

What we need is wholesale reform, you’re right. What we don’t need is to throw the baby out with the bath water.

No, you didn’t mention income, you mentioned the amount of tax you pay on that income which amounts to the same thing. The fact that even the private sector has waiting lists you deem unacceptable surely indicates that we’re not spending enough on the NHS - after all, that’s where OTs are trained, regardless of where they subsequently work. Your experience is proof that there simply aren’t enough of them.

Well I hope none of you were clapping last year. We’ve worked our assess off during this pandemic, I gave up my maternity leave to go and nurse on a covid ward, non invasive ventilation is supposed to be 1 nurse to 1 or 2 patients. I had 5 on machines as well as 4 other patients to look after. THAT is how stretched we are, we are getting phone calls and app pings to isolate just like the rest of you.
A specialist nurse is just that. A specialist. Outpatient departments are usually run by people who are more knowledgeable in the field than other nurses or doctors. We can’t always just switch around departments, as every department is stretched. Those complaining about cancellations etc. Have you tried paying to go private if you are that bothered? Or are you just wanting something for nothing? And to complain about it in the process. NHS staff could quite easily go work private where the pay is so much better, but we choose to work in the NHS to help everyone we can, no matter how stretched it gets.

@NotPersephone yes do keep your contributions. Time wasted by senior clinicians investigating the complaints of the ignorant will let them get on with being senior clinicians.

Do try not to need A&E or ITU. They're very expensive.

DH ( consultant in emergency speciality) s working 10 days straight thorough as one of his team of 4 is self isolating , one post is empty awaiting a new consultant to start in September so the other 2 are working a one in two covering 24 hours service at e moment . So if there is two emergencies at once the clinic may be delayed or cancelled . I'm hoping we get to go on hols in two weeks time if he isolating colleague is back and no one else goes off . They have a shortage of nurses , OFSs and often have to wait hours for anaesthesia at weekends . He should have frites during the pandemic but couldn't bring himself to.
He's burning out.

This is the NHS you voted for o

@CoffeeWithCheese

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.

Yeah, we’ve turned up twice for appointments for our son only to find out that they’ve been cancelled the previous day and a letter sent 2nd class to inform us of this. Unbelievable, especially when they have phone numbers on file.

However, on one occasion we received a cancellation letter the day before we received the letter containing the appointment date. The appointment must’ve been set up and immediately cancelled after the letter had been generated and that letter took longer to reach us that the other.

The NHS isn't fit for purpose. I say this as someone who has a lot of family members working in it. Most British hospitals look grim and unclean, staff are chronically overworked, and waiting times are far too long.

I have heard and witnessed many examples of shoddy care (a serious health issue of mine wasn't diagnosed for seven years), but some recent family examples have left me seething.

My heavily pregnant sister with a serious pregnancy complication was refused a face-to-face appointment by her midwife and GP for weeks and then was made to wait six hours in A&E, where she was told she needed to go back to her GP.

My sister-in-law had to battle to have a c-section in an emergency situation while the midwives continued to push a natural birth despite the clear risks for her son. Clearly for cost cutting reasons. Her son ended up in NICU and would've, at the very least, needed to have been resuscitated if born naturally, according to the doctor who performed her c-section.

My cousin (a specialist surgeon) used their influence at their hospital to push forward a family member's cancer treatment as believed it would be fatal if they had to wait, as per their appointment.

Other family members working for the NHS have spoken about how they have to argue about why a certain patient should be treated first. It's healthcare rationing on a large and dangerous scale.

People literally die because GPs put off referring people or they die because of the long waiting time to see a specialist.

I don't understand why people hold it up as this marvellous health system when it's chronically stretched and people are dying because their treatment is so delayed.

I live in a European country with an exceptional healthcare system, but nobody makes a big song and dance about how wonderful it is, like the British do with the NHS. They expect good and prompt treatment in clean hospitals. The NHS needs to stop being treated as a sacred cow and reformed.

I wish all those that complain about the nhs could go and work in it for a week. I’m lucky in oncology as patients on the whole are truly grateful for the service they receive so we don’t get many complaints or abuse.

Like the rest of the country we are still having to isolate if required. and desire being double jabbed we still have staff off with covid themselves. Many staff in nhs will have young children so there can often be childcare emergencies.

I get how annoying it is to be cancelled at short notice but there is probably only one admin person having to ring all the patients on that list on top of their usual workload.

"Crappy Nurse"
My God.
Have you ever visited ICU and seen what goes on there? You are an utter wanker Nengineer.

Reminds me of the time a colleague was off sick and a patient screamed down the phone to reception 'THE NHS SHOULDNT EMPLOY ANYONE WHO WILL BE SICK'. I almost died laughing.

@QueenCremant

I wish all those that complain about the nhs could go and work in it for a week. I’m lucky in oncology as patients on the whole are truly grateful for the service they receive so we don’t get many complaints or abuse.

Like the rest of the country we are still having to isolate if required. and desire being double jabbed we still have staff off with covid themselves. Many staff in nhs will have young children so there can often be childcare emergencies.

I get how annoying it is to be cancelled at short notice but there is probably only one admin person having to ring all the patients on that list on top of their usual workload.

Covid has just put more stress on an already broken NHS. Nobody disputes the hard work of the medical and support staff, but the system is deeply flawed.

I have two family members working in ICU specifically (along with many other family members working for the NHS) and they have complained about their workload, working conditions, and the dire state of the NHS long before covid. For some weird reason they won't countenance the NHS being reformed, I find that bizarre.

The horrendous state of US healthcare is always used as arguments for protecting this broken dinosaur. Why is the US the only healthcare model we can benchmark the NHS against? Why an earth aren't we looking at our European neighbours and copying what they're doing? Nobody in France or Switzerland is dying because they can't afford health insurance. People are dying in the UK because they're forced to wait for life saving treatment or being fobbed off by their GPs.

The staff are part of the problem, trying to paper over the cracks. The fact is that it is unsafe, unfit for purpose and kills people. NHS staff should be striking and taking other actions to demand safe working conditions and to publicize the fact that funding is at an all time low. The NHS is not something you are lucky to have, the people who say that clearly have zero experience of the real world.

bhy123

Could you give me an idea of how much your private healthcare is and whether you would recommend your provider ?

(Sounds great service)

She was probably isolating due to covid or had a child whose bubble had burst.
If she was doing a clinic she was a highly qualified specialist nurse ( so no a different crappy nurse couldn’t have done her job).
They probably spent the hour before desperately trying to find a replacement abs making phone calls to cancel patients.
YABU !

Yanbu. Come on guys ...