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 !! 😂

@LaurieFairyCake

bhy123

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

(Sounds great service)

We're with AXA PPP and it costs around £1,000 a year for our family of four (through a corporate scheme). We pay one £100 excess per person for the first claim in any year and it provides £100k of cover per person per year.

In fairness, the quick access to specialists is not in their remit (although they typically authorise treatment over the phone). Either I or they provide details of which consultants are covered under my scheme and I call the hospital/consultant's secretary to find out who has the first available appointment. They cover a range of hospitals under my scheme (for example, the London Clinic) but you can use all the BMI Hospitals.

I appreciate that it's a cheaper rate through a corporate scheme but it's the one of the last things I'd stop paying for if money was tight. My GP sent my son to A&E earlier this year for a possibly serious condition that might have required immediate surgery. The specialist was a very nice man but his English wasn't good enough to know the name of the body part he wanted to talk about, even though it was his specialism. It made taking a medical history and discussing treatment options difficult when he couldn't understand what we were saying nor say what he wanted to tell us.

Thank you

YANBU but if they don't have the staff in then they don't have the staff in. Unfortunately most hospitals don't have the leeway to have other staff cover clinics, and depending what it's for they might not have the experience/knowledge. That said, unless they were due to start work just before your appointment and hadn't phoned in which seems fairly unlikely, they should have let you know sooner. We have had this before and it's as the admin staff wasn't in even though they knew over the weekend that the person running the appointment wouldn't be in.

I can understand your frustration, and it’s a pain.

However, as a specialist nurse, I also run my own clinics, and our staffing is currently running at 60%. Perhaps that doesn’t sound too bad to you, but we are a small, very specialised team, and there are only 8 of us when fully staffed, covering multiple clinics and clinical activities across 2 hospital sites, 30 miles apart.

I turned up to work one day, and the other 2 nurses who’s should have been working had rung in…. one had tested positive for COVID, the other had just found out her father had died on the other side of the world, and was awaiting a flight home.

It would have been physically impossible for me to cover 3 people’s work, so I took half an hour to make a plan based on priority. The clinic patients were rung by my admin team, and pushed back to later in the day, so that I would have time to do the other urgent clinical calls to patients. Fortunately, most of the clinic patients were video or telephone consultation, but each takes 45 minutes. Had they been coming to a F2F clinic, there is no way I could have balanced everything, and the clinic would have been cancelled. As it is such a specialist fields, and takes years of training, we cannot get bank staff to cover, because there’s aren’t any in the UK.

Believe me, cancelling is the the last thing that happens, our patients are 62 pathway, so must be seen to fit the cancer waiting times targets.

My colleagues and I work hard, and have done throughout this pandemic, and before, and I believe in the NHS. None of us go to work to a bad job, we go and give our best, despite ridiculous targets, poor staffing, and insulting pay. My patients deserve the best, and that’s what we try every day to deliver, but the systems, staffing and funding is against us at every turn.

This may be a bit controversial but I'm not sure all the support staff necessarily support clinical staff as best they can. At my outpatient clinic at a London hospital, the staff at reception are typically disinterested and rude to patients.

Two clinics run at the same time and there was a man from the US that had electronic blood and other test results that he wanted to find a way of printing out or emailing so the consultant could look at them during his appointment. The staff had no interest whatsoever in helping him do this and said it was impossible (although I know my consultant's email). Yet I'm sure his consultant would have wanted to see them given it was his first appointment. Maybe it wasn't possible but they didn't even want to try to help. The patient was speechless.

Whilst @nhy21’s insurance sounds great, I’m fairly certain most private medical insurance in this country relies on existing alongside the NHS - £100 K per year per person would definitely cover quicker access to consultants, a fair few normal births and a spattering of endoscopies. It would not cover a prolonged stay in hospital and something going majorly wrong.

I would be interested in knowing more about how the European systems work. I had my first born under the American insurance system. I remember waiting and appointments being cancelled. I don’t think these issues are totally unique to the NHS.

@nhy21

This may be a bit controversial but I'm not sure all the support staff necessarily support clinical staff as best they can. At my outpatient clinic at a London hospital, the staff at reception are typically disinterested and rude to patients.

Two clinics run at the same time and there was a man from the US that had electronic blood and other test results that he wanted to find a way of printing out or emailing so the consultant could look at them during his appointment. The staff had no interest whatsoever in helping him do this and said it was impossible (although I know my consultant's email). Yet I'm sure his consultant would have wanted to see them given it was his first appointment. Maybe it wasn't possible but they didn't even want to try to help. The patient was speechless.

I think like anywhere some are crap and some are great, although usually they get lots of applications for these jobs, as they are often band 2 a lot of people either move on quickly or find something else. As they are lowly ranked in terms of pay and responsibility, I wonder if the official standard for tasks performance is fairly low so hard to manage. Most though are worth their weight in gold, deserve more money and support as many do lots of overtime (as everyone else in a hospital does) and work well above their job role.

But agree that it can make a huge difference to a lot of things.

Noterook

That makes sense and I'm not criticising the vast majority of admin staff, whom I'm sure work tirelessly in a stressful and demanding job.

But I am shocked by the attitude of our clinic admin staff; it's not uncommon for five patients to be stood waiting to book appointments for 10 minutes while they ignore them and discuss their plans for the weekend. Appreciate that staff may need to discuss work matters but not general chitchat or at least acknowledge people and say you'll be with them shortly. I would have been sacked if I'd spoken to my clients in the same way as I hear them speak to patients. Everyone deserves a basic level of politeness and respect (granted that I'm sure staff cop a fair amount in the other direction from patients).

@nhy21

Noterook

That makes sense and I'm not criticising the vast majority of admin staff, whom I'm sure work tirelessly in a stressful and demanding job.

But I am shocked by the attitude of our clinic admin staff; it's not uncommon for five patients to be stood waiting to book appointments for 10 minutes while they ignore them and discuss their plans for the weekend. Appreciate that staff may need to discuss work matters but not general chitchat or at least acknowledge people and say you'll be with them shortly. I would have been sacked if I'd spoken to my clients in the same way as I hear them speak to patients. Everyone deserves a basic level of politeness and respect (granted that I'm sure staff cop a fair amount in the other direction from patients).

Oh yeah absolutely agree! I guess what I was trying to say in a roundabout way is that as the pay is crap I don't know if they have the pick of the bunch, or if the performance management is that high. Absolutely though that's ridiculous, and obviously there's a culture within that team that's it's acceptable which of course it isn't.