To be actually really worried about you? NHS related

[Itsonthestairs]

As a highly skilled NHS nurse of 15 years I had to leave my job due to the stress and not being able to provide the care I wanted to, I was burnt out following covid (my mum died), I have definaly save a fair few lifes in my clinical time, I loved my job and I was good at it (emergency department background). Reading the posts on MN has really upset me recently, the disrespect, dislike and darn right hatred for healthcare professionals really worries me. My friends are on their knees and this abuse doesn't help, people are getting crap care because there is no staff and this awful attitude is just adding fuel to the fire. I'm really worried about you, me and our families future healthcare.

Sadly both things can be true.
I can't express as a 50 something my gratitude for the NHS. Saved my life as a child with pioneering surgery. I have had 3 kids and a hysterectomy on the nhs. As well as other little surgeries.
Yet the NHS has gaps and holes and is underfunded. It cannot be right that in some areas the service stops at 5.00 on a Friday and starts again at 8.00 on a Monday. If you have an acute illness during this time, the path to get something as simple as an antibiotic involves hours on the phone followed by driving miles to a large town to sit in an endless queue. Just why?
I've also witnessed negligent care of a relative who is blind. Food left whilst they are asleep and then taken away when they couldn't see that it was there.

@Sanwin
"I am not convinced NHS staff are working as hard as they could be to move down A and E queues...unpopular but true."

I am curious as to why you draw that conclusion?

To which staff do you refer?

Waste in the NHS is criminal.

You need to remember that any thread like this will attract the people with a complaint, legitimate or otherwise.

And the majority of people haven't experienced any other health service so don't really have anything to compare it with except their ideas, which may be unrealistic.

Sorry, but if you receive crap care or your family members die due to insufficient care, you should be allowed to be upset and complain without being accused of having a bad attitude towards the NHS.

The hero worship helps no one.

I dont think you're being unreasonable to be worried, although the attitudes I see on mumsnet are thankfully rare.

The NHS is not run by nurses. Nurses are not responsible for the state it is in.

Incidences of poor or substandard care should always be acknowledged and tackled. The NHS spends a huge amount of money on QI. (Most of it pointless box ticking)

However there are lots of incidences of completely unrealistic expectations and entitlement.

Pts who complain because they lack the understanding and insight of what is actually possible. Or because they think the nhs should be run like a boutique there to cater to their every whim.

I'm not sure how you marry the 2 realities.

Lots of people on mumsnet call for a European part private/part funded model.

They often fail to understand the costs involved.

If we're going to spend that amount of money, why not do it within the system we already have?

I'm not sure the nhs can recover from the tories, covid and some users ridiculous expectations. Tackling true incidents of substandard care should be a priority.

How we do that when every day is a cluster fuck of too many people fighting for too few resources I dont know.

Like any job, including teachers there are good HCPs & bad ones, you remember both.

When having ds2 I remember the midwife who took the piss out of me (for coughing so much) to my face while flirting with a junior doctor & I remember the one who realised I was seriously ill and got me a blood test to diagnose & IV antibiotics to treat the pneumonia I had. (same stay).

Google says the NHS is the worlds 5th largest employer, the money to pay for it has to be generated somewhere and spent more wisely within it.

My folks lived in the days before the NHS, it is a precious thing but cannot sustain the demands we make on it in it's current form.

@Sanwin

"I am not convinced NHS staff are working as hard as they could be to move down A and E queues...unpopular but true."

I am curious as to why you draw that conclusion?

To which staff do you refer?

Yes, I am interested in this too. My colleagues and I work damn hard every day on a ward to keep flow through the hospital. Every single bed is precious and discussed several times a day as to why that (equally precious) patient still needs it. If it turns out at the end of the day that someone is still in too much pain, or their blood results aren’t quite right, or they haven’t managed to wee after surgery, or their care home can’t accept them after 4pm or they need a vital drug from the pharmacy to take home but it’s out of hours…. they stay in that bed and someone in A&E stays on a hard plastic chair.
More beds and staff= better service I’m afraid.

I agree with @Duke4

My experiences have been fairly poor, over a number of years, & getting poorer.
My Mother recently died of Cancer, metastasized just everywhere, after seeing HCP's 11 times over the previous 6m (during which she looked pregnant with the ovarian cancer, incr. skeletal elswhere). She died still vomiting & in great pain.
My children have had pretty poor care. ExH was blue lighted in with a cardiac issue & left on a trolley & told to 'get a cab home' (pre covid).
Lack of money isn't the only problem. It's the management & the attitude of (some of) the HCP's who appear to be untouchable (the good ones overlooked)
Patients are so easily dismissed. the excuse of Covid' is such a gift to the Tories.

If people really want care and availability in the nhs to improve we have to tackle expectations around elderly care.

Around 40 to 60% of pts in a local hospital dont need to be there.

Waiting times in ED are so high because beds are blocked by elderly pts waiting for social care.

Yet their families (presumably some of whom will complain if they can't get seen) won't help. They're happy to leave them in hospital. For months.

@Itsonthestairs are you claiming that it’s patient’s attitudes that is driving you out of the NHS or something else?

If it’s ‘something else’ such as the chronic underfunding and the Tory drive to under budget because the party has always been against nationalised medicine free at the point of need and the lack of properly funded HCP training in the uk to ensure sufficient staffing and the introduction of a managerial class without medical backgrounds that implement unhelpful targets and the PPIs loading hospitals with debt and the endless expensive restructuring and how restrictions at GP surgeries drive people to A&Es to be topped off by a pandemic that should’ve been and could have been prepared for and better managed etc etc

Well, then you have my full sympathy.

But if that’s the case, then I don’t understand why this post seems to be more about being upset at patient’s ‘crap attitudes’ on MN?

Anyhow, the Tories must be so pleased at how HCPs and patients are at each other’s throats while they stand back waiting to make absolute millions off privatised medicine. Soon people’s ill health will be the only way to make money as our economy tanks.

www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-economics-of-the-u-s-health-care-system/

And those of us who can't afford it can rot?

Nope, sorry. I was imprisoned in my own home and my civil liberties stripped to “protect” the NHS. After not having been to the doctor for about 5 years I had to attend a and e in the spring - I was treated like utter shit by the nurses, I couldn’t stand and was left to lie on the floor under a chair, with them smugly shrugging that elderly people needed chairs to sit in more than me. Got no medical attention whatsoever.

The NHS should be ashamed of what it puts the people of this country through when we pay such huge amounts in.

I have had good care from the NHS mostly because I've been lucky. I know many, many others who have had appalling care that has left them with lifelong problems.

I think partially its our veneration of the NHS that makes it so difficult to tackle the problems. Why are we so inordinately proud of a service that no longer provides timely healthcare and which has some of the fewest beds per 1,000 people in Europe?

If I said that Germany has 8 hospital beds per 1k people, and France has 6, what would you think an acceptable amount would be for the UK on a notoriously tight budget? 5? 4? It's actually 2.5. No wonder people can't be seen - where can they go?

Am so sorry that you have had to leave the job you love OP. That must be heartbreaking. And there is a connection between crap care and a workforce that is overworked and underpaid - and faced with having to provide care that they know is inadequate and then having to bear the blame if it goes wrong. I'm sure there are bad apples but many are burnt out after Covid and 12 years of reorganisations, budget cuts and the sell off of services to private companies. For those who think that privatisation is the answer - Centene, a US insurer that is now the largest GP provider in the UK, has faced multiple fines in the US for denying medical care. Imagine fighting not just for care but to get it paid for as well. For those thinking a European model is the answer German healthcare is excellent. It costs a compulsory 7.3% of employees wages and a further 7.3% employers contribution on top. And no NI doesn't pay for the NHS - it pays for your pension. Restoring NHS funding to pre-Tory levels is perfectly possible and looks like good value compared to that.

I think a lot of these stories with complaints about a&e in particular would be resolved with more doctors. Yes we're short on nurses too but the stories said there were nurses. The problem is not enough doctors in a&e so patients have to wait till they're available as nurses are only able to do so much. The nhs is a bit of a money pit but is also underfunded... treatments are expensive, there's more patients than ever, staff are underpaid, the more that leave the harder it is on the ones left. I think generally cancer care is good. I found the midwives when giving birth good but was less keen on the ones on the ward.... the area I work in is outpatients but we get a lot of patients telling us how great the nhs has been for them

I think the system is horribly broken. We were in A&E fairly recently and it was truly awful - but the children's ward was like an oasis once dd was admitted (dd was really poorly as a baby and needed heart surgery - my pretty extensive experience on children's wards has been very good - this time she was admitted for something else, but still the same lovely people).

Our once brilliant GP surgery has been completely ruined by covid - I loathe telephone appointments. I don't think healthcare can be done over the phone.

I am not opposed to at least some services being privatised - I think it would probably be a lot better - there would obviously need to be systems put in place to assure that everyone is still able to access care. Children's care and maternity care should probably stay free at the point of need.

@BaileySharp

I'd take some of these stories with a pinch of salt tbh.

There's always comments of 100s of nurses hanging about literally ignoring someone in a cardiac arrest or of nurses laughing at a woman losing her baby (wtf)

Some stretch credibility just a bit too far.

In any organisation you will always get a small number of people who are disillusioned, lazy, uncommitted or ineffective. However, when the numbers are significant, as is my personal experience of the NHS, the problem is not the individuals but the organisation that is at fault. The NHS is grossly mismanaged, used as a political football, woefully underfunded and patient expectations are unbounded. It's no surprise if many staff are not performing well. It is not their fault though and it is completely unfair to blame them personally.

Can't believe anyone want to privatise the NHS after how well it has worked for the consumer with water and energy... 🙄

I’m sorry your job as a nurse has left you feeling unable to carry on, it must have been very hard for you. Losing your dm must also be devastating.
Like every profession, there are ups and downs. There are some fantastic nurses and drs, and some not. I have been left traumatised by appalling treatment from a nurse whilst I was in ICU. The vast majority were wonderful, yet it only takes one awful experience to take away your trust.

A lot of people forget that healthcare staff are human and they can only do what they can do. Whilst the majority are inherently caring people who genuinely have a passion for the job, at the end of the day it is just a job and some do it who perhaps aren't best suited to it. As most people have no idea of the effect on staff of the shortages, challenges and the general shitness of the job their expectations and sense of entitlement doesn't match up to reality. Of course actual poor treatment should be reported and dealt with appropriately, but lots of HCPs get the blame for long waits, lack of services etc which are way beyond their control. The vast majority are doing the best they can, won't be long though before the amount leaving genuinely topples the NHS.

Queen Camilla, are you breathing and do you have a pulse?

People need to take more responsibility for their own health and start paying for their own healthcare. If they did that, believe me, there would be plenty of doctor appointments available for the really sick, and less at A&E.