Do the general public know how bad the conditions in the NHS are?

[Gakatsbsk]

Hello

Expecting to be roasted.

However, I’m an NHS staff nurse. Qualified almost 2 years. I’ve worked through the pandemic. I initially worked in England and now work in a different UK nation - which is better but only because England was so poor.

My union is about to start a consultative ballot for industrial action in light of the nhs pay offer. I have had two family ‘acquaintances’ (who do not work or have immediate family that work for the nhs) complain in one breath about delayed appointments, delayed A+E waiting times, cancelled surgeries etc but then in another tell me that nurses going on strike is disgusting, lucky to have a job, NHS more secure employment etc. These are of course English Tory voters who said this

For reference, I have never and will never cross a picket line and will be voting in favour of industrial action (whatever form that takes due to emergency cover staffing etc).

When I was a few weeks qualified as a nurse I was looking after double the safe ratio of patients in my speciality. Completely unsupported, me and my (equally junior) colleagues having to consult google for solutions to our patients problem, if a medical emergency occurred (in ICU there should always be medical cover - this isn’t the case) we had to pull a buzzer, put out a page and get on with it until a medic appeared. This has not improved post pandemic.

In my current workplace (same speciality area), different country we are the only part of the hospital that is safe staffed, because of this every single day nurses and HCAs are sent to general wards, A+E and different hospitals often to be the only RN on a ward for 30 patients. There is such a crisis of care home beds, and ward beds that patients are staying in critical Care for weeks waiting on a ward bed. On the wards patients aren’t able to be washed each day as there might only be 1-3 staff members for 30-40 patients, meds rounds take 4 hours and ultimately patients who are sick go unnoticed until they are peri arrest. Nurses from day shift often have to stay on to night shift as there is no night shift nurse available.

I have only had negatives from the general public - it’s our fault for having degrees and being too posh to wash, bring the matrons back, etc etc. our colleagues who trained in the 80s and 90s pre degree say it is the worst it has ever been for safety and staffing. Racism and xenophobia towards our brilliant overseas colleagues is rife when they keep the NHS clinging on by a shoestring.

Four and a half years ago I was a first year student nurse and times were hard for the NHS, it has only got worse and worse for my patients since then. For the sake of my patients I will take industrial action.

However, it is so concerning how anti union, anti public sector and pro Tory the English public seem to have become? The decisions and government of Westminster negatively affect every nhs patient and worker in the UK. Just look at the widespread abuse, disdain and disgust directed at the RMT workers recently. I fear the same or worse for NHS workers.

So, is this NHS worker wrong for not enjoying being told to be grateful to work for the NHS? Is there any future for the public sector of the UK?

I apologise if I seem to have generalised England but I am English and from a northern Tory heartland. An area completely brainwashed.

My MIL was admitted with D & V yesterday (apparently due to a UTI) around teatime. She returned to her care home at teatime today. Care home reported that she was sent home in a terrible state of soiling on herself and on her clothes and had spent the whole 24 hours in A & E. We were pleased that she had returned home to people who could clean her, return her dignity and care for her correctly.

If all public sector literally worked to rule the country would crumble.

The thing is when you work in a role like this there is a culture of "make the job work"
Killing yourself to meet the bare minimum standard because of chronic under staffing and under funding - it has to end

We are not paid enough.

However when it comes to it- I know I couldn't walk away, I would have to make the job work for my moral compass- this is what the tories rely on and exasperates the problem.

Is there no way to campaign for what you really want OP? (Better conditions)?

paying more won’t fix what you describe :(

I feel so much of what you have said.
I work in a contact centre and I am a team leader. I started off in care and my career path was nursing and I had got accepted for the degree. My mum is a former nurse (trained in the 80s) and she implored me not to do it. Like other nurses here, she left when it got too much.
I now make as much money- if not more - than friends I went to school with who are nurses. I have long, stressful days at times but they are not a drop in the ocean compared with what they deal with every day.
I like so many others would likely have made a great nurse/HCP had I stayed on that trajectory but the reality of the life that road would have taken me down has lead me in another direction entirely. I also happen to work with former nurses who have just found it all too much and decided to leave in the end.
We really have to make things better for our amazing nurses as we will be even further up shit creek without them.

There needs to be complete honesty. The NHS wasn't great, at all, when I had my DC in the mid 90s. It wasn't great, at all, when my DC, sporty, started school and broke a few bones, split a few heads. It wasn't great when aging MIL broke her wrist in 2009, even less great now she has Parkinson's related dementia. LGI. It stopped being great in about 1948 and from the minute St Nye stuffed the GP's mouths with gold to sell it to them.

It certainly wasn't great when Mr BLiar created a new tier of bureaucracy in the context of the PCTs just as GP fund holding was beginning to work. Even less great when Mr Brown embraced pfi.

My local overworked CAMHS reckons a young person aged 17 is too old to have ADHD. (SABP). The most experienced person on the CAMHS team with 20 years' service. That wasn't about resources, that was about basic competence and an excuses culture.

It isn't great that my local hospital call all the men Mr and all the women by their first names. Sexist and misogynistic much? Only today a person from a Private patient dept of a major London Teaching Hospital phoned me up because I am privately funding medicine for a drug for which I don't reach NHS thresholds. Circa £3k for two years and I have taken that decision because I am over 60 and still work full-time and wish to remain as well as possible for as long as possible. 72% of people from 50 to 64 work. She inquired if I could afford it and I said, yes, I still work full time and in my early 60s I need to stay as fit as possible. Her response "oh wow!". My inner response "how very ageist". I did note that actually in the UK the state pension was not payable until 68. The NHS is yet to catch up with that fact.

Such discrimination from an institution that has introduced chest feeding, and pregnant parent. I would venture that an institution invested in equality needs to get the basics right before it moves onto other things and to seriously Co sider the cost of E&D Managers and consultants.

Epsom Hospital and St George's. Both need a kick up the backside. Staff at both need to catch on to the fact that no patient is a subordinate stakeholder, notwithstanding a senior partner at my GP practice who recently assumed he could use my first name and introduced himself as Dr Pompouslyhow. When I tackled him he told me he'd forgotten my surname by the time he walked from his consulting room to the waiting room. He was most affronted when I asked him if he also forgot his first name was "John" and to have introduced himself as anything else when he assumed he may use my first name was reductive. But, hey, in his eyes I'm probably only a person with a womb rather than a woman.

I'd certainly support a strike by hard working and qualified NHS staff but not necessarily one by a bunch of mainly well paid unqualified men who have union practices that are rooted in the 70s (seriously, starting your lunch break again if a manager says hello to you? Rejecting modernisation of practices that have been standard in other countries for years?). The UK has the most expensive railways in Europe and its not all due to lack of investment.

All opposition to strikes is not automatically Tory, right wing, biased, anti-worker, etc.. There are a number of primarily male dominated roles which have been overpaid for years - thats what all those legal cases brought against local authorities who paid painters and decorators unfeasibly high salaries compared to mainly female dinner ladies and cleaners, although the work was found to be like work.

@RosesAndHellebores
Utter rubbish. I'm not sure the point you are trying to make about your surgeon neighbour not clapping either.

Let me tell you about our local NHS hospital situated close to a private hospital. Whenever people need emergency care, very specialist management, or their insurers stop paying, patients are treated in the NHS. Currently, there are patients seeking an opinion in the private hospital and then ringing us up to shout and insist on a scan, that we feel isn't appropriate. We spend hours dealing with these patients and the complaints they write.

You are foolish if you think you earn enough to pay for private care if you have a serious and or a chronic condition. You don't. Insurers will drop you at the first opportunity.

I had to leave. I don’t regret leaving even though I no longer have a stable wage or a pension.

I would actually support strikes at this point. Somethings got to give. It can’t keep going on the way it is. It’s becoming unsafe for both staff and patients.

People would sympathise more, but the NHS is a bit shit.

We all know someone who died ‘avoidably’. We’ve all seen the ‘eldercare’ with our own eyes as a starving, deranged granny comes out of hosp worse than she went in. We know there’s 0 mental health services.

Ironic, OP, given the staff and the customers are complaining about the same things - low staffing, low pay, etc.

But how shit is too shit for us to care any more? Let alone write a cheque for people who’ve got bigger pensions and more holidays than we’ll ever get?

@howshouldibehave

I support school and childcare staff in strike action ❤️

The best primary school teacher I had was an NUT steward, a brilliant teacher in a struggling school and a contributing reason to why I will never cross a picket line.

I hope NHS colleagues would support you in this also

I'm dreading getting older or being ill and needing the NHS because it's clearly broken and doesn't work that well any more.

@Supersimkin2

The thing is I agree that the NHS is a bit shit? I agree people are being massively let down. That’s the point - it needs to improve - all other methods have failed and the last thing I can withdraw is my labour. If the NHS was brilliant for patients and wasn’t shit I wouldn’t be in favour of industrial action.

NHS workers are small cogs in a big NHS machine, we aren’t the NHS - we get let down as staff, our patients get let down and as patients ourselves we get let down.

I got the impression that Roses was talking about self funding, not insurance. The health insurance market in this country is fairly unregulated compared to continental systems due to the existence of the NHS. In most countries, exclusions aren't permitted and neither are costs rises for cover should a condition develop and be treated. Both of those occur in the UK because the NHS stifles the private sector and also because it doesn't need to be regulated in the same way due to the existence of the NHS.

I was personally refused an MRI scan for what turned out to be a stress fracture. There are many reasons people end up paying twice (once through tax, once privately) where the NHS inexplicably fails to diagnose/treat. Given the amount of negligence within the NHS, its a good idea to be an advocate for your own health.

I've been called a whore , a prostitute and had a cup of tea thrown on me on my last shift. Nursing wages are piss poor in the UK you can get much higher salaries in other western countries. I'm thinking of a career change or moving abroad.

@TankFlyBossW4lk with all due respect, after my local NHS failed to diagnose a serious injury, after their specialist radiologists wrote an inaccurate report, and after my GP refused to help on that basis, I paid to see a consultant, paid to have an MRI, paid for confirmation of the problem.so I could seek the best possible treatment. Further, kindly do not assume what I cannot cannot pay for. You have no idea of my resources and it is ignorant to assume you do.

I'm a little older that most on MN but from my perspective we used to respect our NHS more years ago. Doctors and nurses were held in high regard, hospitals seemed cleaner, people weren't allowed abuse it, A and E was for emergencies, they weren't full off drunks at the weekend, drunks would not have been allowed in! My local hospital's entrance is awful, there are people outside smoking hooked up to drips. This wasn't the case years ago.
Why do we allow persistent callers to abuse the ambulance service? Some people are being taken in and being discharged multiple times a week.
We need to respect, value and treasure our NHS but we treat it so very badly

£50k is well paid compared to anyone I know.

£33k is well paid for most people I know.
I wouldn't consider nursing to be badly paid.

The conditions sound pretty awful but where I live, that's a good wage.

If the argument is about the pay not matching the level of responsibility then that's slightly different, but most jobs don't match on that front - ridiculous jobs earn huge amounts - social media influencers. That's capitalism.

I support you. Hopefully the government will listen.

@Wrongkindofovercoat this made me tear up. I want to hug you, I'm so sorry.

Okay.

What can we do to help, OP?

If there's one thing this country should fight for it's the NHS.

I dont think people do know until it affects them. And then they might blame 'the hospital' or the doctor or nurse that saw them for poor care.

Its been a political decision to not train enough staff for a long time.

Its clear the decision has been made to run the nhs to the ground so public support for something different grows. Im fairly sure the something different will be profit making companies delivering different bits of service that the tax payer funds so its still free at point of use. Somehow some the tax will end up in private individuals bank accounts.

If you do want better wages and conditions you would be much better within a privatised healthcare system, so maybe that's something to campaign for?

I do agree with this to an extent. Some of it is lack of public value placed on NHS

I think this is reflective of society at the moment unfortunately. There seems to be no respect for anyone or anything in general. People are also very quick to anger. It’s quite frightening.

Whilst people on here are saying they’re 100% behind you wanting to take industrial action, that won’t be the case when the action taken starts to affect their lives and that of their families, ie even more delays in operations, treatments etc. We’re all struggling with the cost of living versus pay at the moment and I can’t see it ending well if people start to make things even more difficult for each other by going down the industrial action route.