To think the NHS isn’t fit for purpose?

[BrendaBubbles]

There’s a story on Mail Online right now about a woman with breathing difficulties who was left on hold for hours with her GP who died during the call. There have been a lot of stories recently about people with cancer that wasn’t picked up due to resource limits and a DH of a friend of mine has been told there is a six month waiting list for an MRI.

I know the people in the NHS are true gold but despite record amounts of money the service is getting worse. It was also in the news earlier that the number of people seen at A&E within four hours was 95% in 2010 and has fallen to 67% now and I’m sure we’ve all felt this when we’ve attended ourselves.

It’s clearly not just about money but is the NHS even fit for purpose now when people are dying through simple negligence and lack of reasonable diagnosis and in person access to GPs?

MN is not representative- plus I spot some serial nhs bashers …

No need to apologise - it is very draining.

NOT record amounts of money in proportion to population and inflation.

The Tories have been defunding the NHS for the last decade.

Where I live it's utterly on it's knees. As the government want.

I assume I am one of the 'serial NHS bashers'?
As a opposed to the serial NHS worshippers, who presumably are welcome to post?

It's hard to get a balanced view because you hear less about the positive achievements eg much improved life expectancy for certain cancer patients. I still feel in totally expert hands with them

Welcome to post ?? Who’s says anything about that ??

Nice to have a balanced discussion but it’s doesn’t often happen on nhs threads- bit like the school threads.

@PomRuns

Volunteers manned the vaccination sites in the roles of directing and supporting people.

Some people are professional moaners and love having a go at the nhs.

Please do ignore @Rupertpenrysmistress

For anyone with a genuine concern - please do go to pals, write to the service lead or chief exec. Incidents are not covered up and are investigated.

I made 2 formal complaints. The first was about withholding information about a complication in my op. I t was meant to be an investigative procedure where I also signed for possible polyp removal. He took away PART of fibroid. I did NOT sign for fibroid removal. It was minute and NOT causing any trouble. I was told it was a Fibroid-polyp. Bloody rubbish. I sent for medical records and found out it was incomplete resection. Part of fibroid left in and causing pain. They lied. NOW--The investigation was carried out by the same people in the dept that withheld the truth from me. Reply more or less that lessons would be learned. 4 months later was told I'd be passed on to Pain Management as apparently my prob not Gynaecological. When I was bleeding and in pain! They've caused me untold suffering. Can't say more as sensitive subject but new consultant very difficult to talk to as cagey about what's happened. Sorry don't mean to go on--Just so VERY ANGRY!!!

How do the people involved in formal complaint conduct the investigation themselves. They are investigating themselves!

Could you refer it to the Ombudsman?

In the end I think more people will die due to the reaction to the pandemic (cancelling cancer operations, suicides due to isolation etc ) than from the actual Corona virus.

Too much abuse of the NHS by the public. People who dont turn up for appointments sent another appointment!. They should be sent a bill not another appointment. If I asked a plumber/builder to call and I didn't wait in, I don't think he would come for a second time.
Some benefits for staff are too generous eg sick pay which is open to abuse and then at the other end of the scale staff leave after 37 years service and don't even get a letter of Thanks. (but than asked to go back during a pandemic, er ... No Thanks)

@Helensweet sorry that sounds so difficult. I don’t understand why the same people are investigating. You could ask for chief of staff/ass chief exec to lead. Understand you might not be able or want to do this though.

Yes I could, though I understand they get a huge amount of complaints and it would be almost like winning the lottery to have your own investigated. I'm so very tired and depressed and I have kept all documents, including reports, I've a huge amount of stuff. I had to leave the depot as I took overdose when I found out another lie/cock up about me having a vaginal ultrasound(which might have shown up something they'd caused) a lot sooner. They just said I'd already had one. which I hadn't. Sorry again - - - I get so stressed when I go over it.

@CourgetteGlutTony

It’s not underfunded. The NHS is stretched too far by offering too many treatments/services. Some modern drugs cost thousands if not millions. If we want the NHS to continue to offer such treatments, we need to pay more tax, or accept that we have to pay at point of use for appointments

This. Or accept some treatments will simply not be funded.

Thankyou Pomruns. The complaint was addressed to Chief Executive by name but its still her dept that deals with it and I got nowhere. It was a whitewash.

Enough with the “true gold” shite.
Plenty of staff in the NHS are lazy jobsworths. A minority it’s true - and no more so than other workplaces - but can we just have a serious discussion about the NHS without romanticising all the staff?

Ahh, that will be why me and 15 of my (Nurse and GP) colleagues went into base or logged onto laptops from home on our annual leave and weekends off because we’d had SOS texts about the sheer volume of calls on the Out of Hours GP telephone triage queue. Think I managed to speak to 37 people before I left and went home at 2am (I’d been up since 6am and hadn’t planned on working), leaving my remaining colleagues with 270 people waiting for a call back.

@BrendaBubbles

There’s a story on Mail Online right now about a woman with breathing difficulties who was left on hold for hours with her GP who died during the call. There have been a lot of stories recently about people with cancer that wasn’t picked up due to resource limits and a DH of a friend of mine has been told there is a six month waiting list for an MRI.

I know the people in the NHS are true gold but despite record amounts of money the service is getting worse. It was also in the news earlier that the number of people seen at A&E within four hours was 95% in 2010 and has fallen to 67% now and I’m sure we’ve all felt this when we’ve attended ourselves.

It’s clearly not just about money but is the NHS even fit for purpose now when people are dying through simple negligence and lack of reasonable diagnosis and in person access to GPs?

What happened in 2010?

Tories got into power.

And people have been voting for them ever since.

The NHS is underfunded. It is NOT having money thrown at it by any measure other than a non-adjusted gross currency value, which is manipulated to be essentially meaningless anyway.

The UK is a wealthy country, we spend less of that wealth per person per year on healthcare than most similarly wealthy countries. We have fewer beds, scanners, nurses and doctors than similarly wealthy countries, yet we perform disproportionately well - or at least did until we had a global pandemic and realised how close to the line everything was being run.

We could increase spending on health by 50% and still spend less per person of our wealth than countries like belgium, germany, france or the USA. Imagine what that could buy us.

Too many managers paid far too much. More jobs have been made lately for managers to do with diversity in NHS earning 170 grand per annum-more than prime minister.

Also, I’ll tell you, there’s a huge proportion of society who don’t want to take any personal responsibility for themselves. Not ordering or collecting medicines in time and then ringing and demanding them form an emergency GP over the weekend, people calling about a child who developed a temperature 40 minutes ago who haven’t given so much as a dose of calpol or removed any layers, but demanding to have them seen, everyone that rings on day 2 of covid absolutely flabbergasted that they feel shit and have all the typical symptoms and nothing more than that, and the people who decided to visit a pharmacy and spend their own money on effective OTC treatment before demanding an emergency appt are like unicorns.

You see it on here all the time, people advising A&E for anything and everything.

Thankyou ZealAndArdour for doing such a stressful job in such a chaotic mess that NHS is in.

I agree that it’s all a massive mess, it’s broken and I don’t know what the answer is to fix it, but of all the many and varied reasons behind its failings, a few lazy staff wouldn’t even register.

@ZealAndArdour and with due respect there are many, many of us who don't conduct ourselves as you describe and when we do have to use services are patronised and spoken to as though we have fewer than two brain cells and as though we are a form of subordinate scum.

When I am ill, I have respected the NHS. It hasn't always respected me or others. In fact the last time I attended a hospital some of the nursing staff were shouting at people more vulnerable than I and it was utterly disgusting.

What were they shouting? That’s odd. Did you report it?

Yes I did report it. They let rip at an ambulance crew for not notifying them they were waiting (they were standing in front of them), a nurse absolutely ripped into a patient who asked how much longer they would have to wait - they had been waiting for 3.5 hours without any communication. Thirdly a nurse tore into a carer who had taken a bottle of water which I accept was wrong but after 14 hours they hadn't been offered a drink at all and weren't minded to take a break bearing in mind the conduct they were witnessing.

These people are highly qualified, post graduate professionals we are led to believe. Well in my world that's not how post graduate professionals behave and speak to people. TBF I was seen quite quickly by a nurse practitioner and in and out quite quickly

Why was I there - I thought I could feel drips running down my arm from a wound within a cast. It is a phenomena I gather of internal healing felt by some people. My consultant's secretary advised me to go to A&E. Wound was perfect and it's neatness was remarked upon. Recast quite quickly.

I had my accident in France. The emergency care was so far removed from my local A&E it is ludicrous. In France I was admitted to a bed within 90 minutes - Xrayed, reviewed by an orthopaedic consultant, plastered, stayed overnight and was pinned and plated the following afternoon. All staff were polite and kind. My consultant in the UK (private) has said that wouldn't have happened in the UK.

I don’t think the public realise how much healthcare AND social care cost - govt has been too chicken to address the latter for years. Social care impacts on healthcare because hospitals have to pick up people with inadequate social care.

We have an aging demographic, so we should expect to have to spend more on healthcare as elderly population grows.. compared to other developed countries our healthcare spend is not that great - so first fund it to the level of other developed countries - and after that you can look at the ‘inefficiencies’.

The public are also not aware of the amount of money PFI costs - I think there should be a review of whether they start any further PFI projects. The private companies just milk it.

It’s working well enough for me. I personally think though, it depends on what service you had pre pandemic. For example, I have a condition when here I have an assigned nurse and can call her if I’m not feeling well and she will either reassure me, book an ad hoc appointment with herself or as a last resort book an appointment with the neuro registrar/consultant. Had I been newly diagnosed, I think my experience may have been different. I got an emergency CT scan through casualty on the day when it was deemed necessary so this does still happen.

This is all NHS, just to clarify.