To be scared the NHS won't go back to 'normal'? Does anyone actually know if it will?

[leafyclover]

I'm not sure if this is a case of unreasonable or not or it's just my anxiety. Also, I'm not trying to start a political bunfight nor am I NHS bashing, I'm genuinely scared.

I'm on a low income. I can't afford any form of private healthcare.

After being lucky enough to be in relatively good health most of my life, I've recently developed a gynae problem related to my births years ago. I'm in a lot of discomfort every day and it's causing symptoms which are really impacting on my life and I don't know how much longer I can continue to do my job like this.

I've been to my GP who has referred my to the hospital, but she says it will be at least 8 months, possibly even a year. A YEAR!! To even speak to a consultant?? Then presumably waits for tests etc before I even start any treatment??

I'm almost more depressed about this than I am about the condition. I remember being annoyed about waiting 8 weeks 16 years ago.. It feels so incredibly unfair and scary that I am mid 30s and could be looking at years and years of my life like this until I get treatment.

Please tell me that this is temporary backlog and things will get better..

I am so down about it and scared for the future.

I don't think she is deluded at all. People can't help genetic, inherited or random diseases but a lot of us can.
When I got to 15 stone I was rushed into hospital with a stroke after my blood pressure shot up to 210/200. I was also pre-diabetic.
Now I've lost the weight, exercise and eat very healthy food my blood pressure has returned to normal - I was lucky I didn't have any permanent damage from the stroke as I went in for treatment immediately and my knees in which I have osteoarthritis are no longer painful!
My blood sugar levels are completely back to normal.
A lot of diseases are entirely self inflicted by obesity, eating junk food and not moving, we know this, it's not my opinion it's scientific fact.
Also fact smokers get vascular dementia, arterial and vascular disease and are much more prone to amputations and disability.
We can all do a LOT more to help ourselves and take the pressure off the NHS.

The funding is controlled by central government which is conservative, so it very much is.

This post isn’t just nasty, it’s downright inaccurate. Being born in good health is absolutely good luck.

Children die from different forms of cancer every day. Type 1 diabetes, meningitis, Strep B, Cystic Fibrosis, heart problems. So many illnesses are just the luck of the draw.

I don’t know how anyone could try and apportion blame when people are suffering. I count myself lucky every day that my dc are ok and I haven’t had to experience the heartbreak of anything like this.

It’s true we could be healthier as a population and it would help

But your post is just going to rile people as obviously many do require a health service entirely unrelated to lifestyle choices

OP Send this to Liz Truss and ask her if cutting taxes will improve things?

The NHS will never go back to normal as long as you keep voting conservative. Expect it to get worse

While of course this doesn't apply to everyone, there are many people taking up nhs resource at least partly as a result of their own choices.

Tackling the obesity crisis would be a valuable move in parallel. This is also a complex, challenging and long process.

The NHS will never go back to normal as long as you keep voting conservative.

I'm not sure what you're expecting from Labour, but I hazard you'll be disappointed if you put your faith in them to save it. Their track record in Wales is appalling.

Funny how other health care systems quite learned to function based on people's needs.

I absolutely hate this putting the fault of system on individuals.if the healthcare system cannot evolve, it needs to be scrapped and redone

@SpeckofDustUponMySoul its not that your aren’t considered urgent, it’s that there’s thousands who are equally or more urgent waiting. Our hospital has to cancel surgeries sometimes due to the fact that there are so many walking through A&E who need surgery now. We don’t have enough staff to cover everywhere. The Doctors are covering theatres, wards, clinics and A&E. The NHS quite simply is swamped. My DH works in A&E and the minute he walks in it’s a huge wait. The pressure is intense and staff have had enough of working under stress and pressure and getting no where. There’s no lull, no decent days, just another day of feeling like shit because you know people believe the NHS isn’t doing enough. So more people leave and recruitment isn’t working. It’s absolute shit for the public and the staff.

Funny how other health care systems quite learned to function based on people's needs.

The U.K. has some of the highest obesity rates in the world. There is more pressure on the health service as a result.

I absolutely hate this putting the fault of system on individuals.if the healthcare system cannot evolve, it needs to be scrapped and redone

I don't disagree on the need for radical overhaul, but the bottom line is in that most other countries in the world people do take more responsibility for their own health outcomes. Not necessarily in a conscious way, but the impact on services is the same.

One problem with the Conservatives & health is that a large proportion of the party oppose anything that they consider "nanny state".

So offering policies which advise people to buy/eat differently aren't sufficiently supported.

Ditto advice on how households can limit heating costs.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11069973/amp/Liz-Truss-vows-halt-Nanny-State-ban-buy-one-one-free-deals-stop-taxes-unhealthy-food.html

Unfortunately, this is what the Tory party and Brexit has brought us ... it's only going to get worse.

And it's terrifying thinking we may head into our retirement years with the inability to pay for healthcare if the NHS is failing us...

Find out how to get on the cancellations list. My DD who is 2 had to wait until she was 3 to be put on a waiting list for a procedure, but the waiting list just kept getting longer and by the time she was on it, it was over 2 years! I called a number once to be put on a cancellation list and got a call the very next week with 2hrs notice. We dropped everything to make it in time but well worth it. I'm lucky I have the flexibility in my work to allow this though.

Will they want to come though?😕 After the referendum I remember at our local trust a lot of nurses and a few Consultants left because they said they no longer felt welcome in the UK. Our hospital could definitely not afford to lose those staff and 2 of the Consultants posts are still unfulfilled!
Brexit has damaged the image of our Country.

Some will, but many Europeans are now aware of the quality of life being better elsewhere. You might get some to gain language skills properly and then leave, but with the lowering of living standards and not particularly friendly environment to foreigners now, why would they come here to build life now....

I see where @Davyjones is coming from.

The majority of people (who do not have pre-existing genetic conditions or who not develop chronic health conditions unrelated to lifestyle) need to take better care of their own teeth and bodies.

A lot of NHS money is being wasted on conditions that could be avoided through better lifestyle choices. Smoking, drinking, obesity, not consuming 5-a-day, lack of exercise. I wonder just how much:

blood pressure checks and medication
cancer
foetal alcohol syndrome (which I think is a hidden epidemic)
joint replacements
type 2 diabetes
pregnancy complications
heart disease
liver disease
STDs
tooth extractions

Would be avoidable if we took more personal responsibility for our own health on a day-to-day basis.

Would be avoidable if we took more personal responsibility for our own health on a day-to-day basis.

Avoidable for how long? Its not the people, who drop dead of a heart attack in their 40s,, 50s and 60s, that cost the NHS the money. If people don't die of infectious diseases, what's left? The three Cs - cancer, strokes and heart attacks. I believe over half the NHS spending on the average person, occurs in the last 6 months of their life.

How many people die in their sleep, in perfect health and without dementia? Dementia is one of the biggest costs I believe, facing the world at the moment - and staying healthy until dementia starts is of little use, when care costs say £1,000 per week for 4 years until they die! For people, who are too poor to ever be net contributors, this is a massive cost to the state.

What we need to be concerned about is the ticking time bomb of dementia as the baby boomers reach that stage; because how is the working population going to be able to afford those care costs?

Avoidable for how long? Its not the people, who drop dead of a heart attack in their 40s,, 50s and 60s, that cost the NHS the money.

No, it's the people with diabetes complications, from 50s/60s up. A huge proportion of nhs budget is spent on diabetes care.

@TheSummerPalace

I think you are right too. We need to be investing far more into Alzheimer's research and encouraging people to look after their heart health.

I know someone who works in a dementia home. That is one place I would not want to go to.

It is back to normal. 8 months for a gynae problem that isn't life threatening is what it was before Covid. It took around 2 years for my bladder prolapse to be sorted.

In my very busy trust we have a long wait list for most things, cancer being the priority of course. We are also a bariatric specialist center, I am amazed at how many of these surgeries we do on a weekly basis. I find this difficult, as, I know other patients with other life threatening/changing conditions have waited longer than these patients. But, it brings in good money to the trust and they are often quick turnaround.

The NHS is broken, we are always at least 50% staff down and it feels like everyone has just accepted this, staff are leaving, are burnt out or off sick and of course the patients keep coming. There are NO plans to find more staff, I could cry but I to now feel broken. I am saving for my daughter who needs a neurology review (weekly migraines) and my son who needs braces. It's very depressing.

Not looked into private insurance yet, but my DH has an auto immune condition so likely to be difficult to get cover.

Having worked under labour it definitely was much better. The cons never wanted the NHS and now covid has handed it to them on a plate. How can we save it? it does not seem to be a priority for the government.

As an NHS worker I echo the other posts here. I am afraid the tory government achieved what they planned all along in destroying this institution. They dismantled public health and are currently hammering the last nail in primary care coffin( if you wonder why you cannot see your GP? ) just as they are destroying other institutions as well. I don’t think those people understand that none of the private sector would be good enough to save their or their kids life should they need an emergency or cancer or frankly any major lifesaving treatment, also they don’t seem to understand that without a good primary care/GP their life expectancy is very much likely to be shorter independent of how much money they have got to spend on private care, without primary care hospitals will not and are not coping already, lack of doctors and nurses and most of NHS staff and getting rid of the EU and non EU NHS staff who already worked here for years and know the system, the financial burden of property ownership by GP partners or PFIs spiralling hospital trusts further into dept those are just few of many problems the government was constantly told about for yeasts before the pandemic. I only guess their reasoning is why should they be paying anything towards maintains other poorer people health even if that thinking will harm their own and their children's future . I am afraid the Welsh argument does not stand at all , with lack of staff and difficulty in recruiting and they are in the same rickety boat financially as the rest of the country.

There's clearly a number of NHS workers on this thread so I hope it's all right to ask this question

What do patient facing staff think of organisations like the NHS Confederation?

Years ago, I did a very short stint supporting on a project at the Dept of Health. I had to leave because I just couldn't endorse that crap. The project was effectively about getting nurses to do more paper pushing bollocks and something about IT procurement.

It feels like there's a lot of resources put into stuff that might belong in a private org, but has nothing to do with the NHS looking after patients.

Someone mentioned Nye Bevan. I don't think the NHS was ever intended to do all the things it does now. I don't think it's realistic. But if the model is going to change, I wish the Conservatives would take charge instead of letting it just collapse.

Some posters have mentioned long waiting lists in the private sector. Doesn't this tell us that 1) we have an overpopulation problem and 2) we have unrealistic ideas about what can be done?

At the moment, I have a younger relative who is very unwell. He was born with a health problem and always knew his life would be limited - he has long outlived what we expected. But the wider family seem to be quite convinced that something else can be done and quite angry that it's not being done. The doctors lack the...something...to say "sorry, there are no options left".

I feel like we've become so unrealistic. My dad died of cancer and the amount of last minute treatment offered to him when he was clearly dying...I actually know the costs involved as I overheard two consultants arguing about it. Do we really want to keep spending 6 figures to extend someone's life by a couple of weeks?

My best friend's father refused all that and the burden he saved himself and his family was immense. That money would go a long way to getting resources allocated to people like OP. We are too focused on extending life, in extreme circumstances, and not on quality of life.

Oh yes I forgot @Elsiebear90. Westminster is to blame for all of the SNP's failures😁😁😁