The state of the NHS right now is terrifying

[Faciadipasta]

I am feeling genuinely scared for us as a country health care wise. I was reading today about a chap who died of internal bleeding while his family were kept on hold to 999 for 10 minutes as nobody even answered the phone.
Then there are all the people who die while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, because they are all lined up.outside the hospitals unable to offload their patients.
People can't see a GP at all, so there are bound to be loads who are dying of things that could have been prevented if they'd been seen. Waits at A and E are enormous and they don't even have enough chairs so people with serious injuries or illnesses are having to just sit on the floors in the corridors.
We're actually starting to feel like one of those warzone countries that you see on the news and it is scaring me shitless.
I mean even in the US you wouldn't just be left to die because there was nobody to answer the phone although admittedly you'd probably end up bankrupt for paying back the care, but at least you wouldn't be dead!
I personally feel like we have no care, no safety net. And it's scary.
Will it get better? What can be done?

👏

94% positive experience

That's amazing

I agree. I tend to ask whether they'd be happy getting on a plane at Heathrow if there were no managers, no safety staff, no ait traffic control staff, no security staff or police and no complaints pr compensation for delays or cancellations. Just a pilot. Get rid of cabin crew as people bring a sandwich and nobody listens to safety announcements. The pilot can close the doors. Pilot can look to make sure there's a gap to get up.
Clearly entirely unacceptable but we expect the NHS to do so.

Isn't it just! Information readily available but rarely reported.

I don't think it's Trusts where the managers are a waste.

The central NHS (NHSE) and the complex layers of commissioning organisations are largely pointless though. The NHS is not a free market, so let's stop pretending it is. Stop trusts having to bid for services or for funding to undertake essential work - it's a waste of time and effort.

Each region probably needs 1 health board, with representatives of the region's trusts and other related services on that board. The regional board should determine where certain services are needed and provided (e.g. not everywhere can be a major trauma centre), and apportion funding and resources accordingly. Work/services should only be procured from private sector providers as a last resort.

It is also wrong that trusts have to spend time and money submitting bids to commissioners (both local and national) for funding to develop their systems, or undertake essential capital development work. Absolute madness - these would not be considered optional extras in any other industry!

The only services that really require a specialist national body to commission them on a selective basis are the super specialist services, in my opinion.

Fully agree re: the manager positions in trusts though - I've worked in Trusts and didn't see much that wasn't totally essential.

People go on about the public sector paying "Equality and Diversity Officers", but I never met anyone with that job title. There are people who act as "E&D lead" alongside their day job, e.g. someone in HR might be involved in championing fair recruitment practices. But that won't be their main day job.

And the private sector orgs I've worked for had similar - people volunteer to be gender equality champions and the like.

Except of coursecthey do now have to tender against private providers for more lucrative work. It is a relatively free market and being more so. There is one ICB for each region that covers primary, secondary and adult social care another patch.

Far more services are 'super specialised ' than one might imagine. Paediatric surgery being one. Most cancer services being another. Not all trusts offer all services. Some trusts offer a very limited service.

I agree OP, I wonder why we accept it.

Having experience of living abroad, there is absolutely nothing worse than having to work out if you can afford treatment, the cost of the initial treatment, the cost of any meds, the cost of having stitches removed.

Recent family experiences of the state of our NHS, due to underfunding and lack of value placed on it by our Tory government…

• friends DH having a heart attack last weekend - no ambulance for two hours, suggested she drive him herself to the nearest hospital, 40 minutes away. She said the most scary drive of her life, not knowing if her husband was going to die beside her. Care by NHS staff was amazing.
• MiL - 89. - driven to the hospital - left on a trolley, in a corridor, for 9 hours, including soiling herself
• MIL ( with dementia and severe paranoia) lost in the system after being admitted. No one at two different hospitals could find her, calls to find her took three hours, staff passing us on to someone else, no answer to phones, staff saying she wasn’t there, other staff saying she was.
• DM and DF aged 80 and both I’ll with COVID - DM collapsed at home, 111 call, made by me because he couldn’t access online and couldn’t manage the endless call centre instructions. Took me an hour to speak to anyone, he was told, at 10pm to drive DM to a walk in centre. DM spent the night sitting on a trolley waiting for help.
• Friend who is a junior doctor, leaving her role, after striving to train. Too much responsibility placed on someone new to role, having to make life changing/ending decisions way beyond her experience and knowledge. No support with this. Exhausted too, through such long hours.

NHS staff are ‘fire fighting’, not enough of them, adding to the stresses of those that are employed. Shocking that the Tory government are allowing this to happen to us all.

Equality roles might seem irrelevant but there is strong underpinning evidence that this improves patient outcomes. Health inequality is a serious issue highlighted more by Covid.

I know. That what's I think needs to stop.

It's an insane waste to time and money, and leads to the profitable services generating income for shareholders while Trusts are starved of cash.

I don't think the specialised commissioning needs to stop - in case that wasn't clear. But lots of routine services and pieces of work are going to bids unnecessarily.

In many cases trusts are having to bid for money to undertake very basic capital spend to improve their sites snd equipment - this is not an optional extra for them!

The state of the NHS IS 100% engineered. This is what they want to happen so they can say "look it's failing" and dismantle it. In 5 years I don't think we will have an NHS

A medic upthread asked “why don’t you do it then?” - and my answer to that is that I would absolutely love to be a GP (with all the shit it entails).

having not picked up a textbook in 20 years, I have the CAT tests a whirl and sailed through them. But the medical schools I contacted wouldn’t consider me because I totally and utterly screwed up my a-levels when I was 18 (undiagnosed autism/cheating bf/homeless). A world ago. You’ve really got to have your shit together at 16 to make it work - and even then, how many are doing it for the love of the job vs appeasing parents.

so yeh, if anyone out there in university admissions is watching - there are clever, dedicated souls out here ready to get stuck in - being held back by immaturity 20 years ago.

Edit: to make it make sense (!) - unis won’t accept resits.

I agree sadly.

Would be if it were true but the Kings Fund found that the NHS has a satisfaction rating of just 36% in March 2022.

The NHS has a huge staffing issue, as does social care.

We helped that along with Brexit, esp in large cities, then came CV and the world woke up to the value of HCP's.

Changes in funding and/or re organisation, will not conjure up more staff.

If i had any say in healthcare, it would be to improve the populations overall health - atm the majority of us don't exercise and are obese.
We could do so much but would rather use our cars than walk or cycle.

That depends on who we vote for in 2 years time, i predict a Tory win, so this will happen.

@walkinginsunshinekat

Changing in funding would conjure up more staff

Better pay and working conditions always will

This is the path the Tory government have planned though isn’t it.

It is the same with education and children’s social care.
Removal of local authority democratic rights, budget cuts to central services and schools. It brings about private initiative for services, with companies taking their cut for shareholders and large CEO wages.

• We are in an illogical place where academy trust CEO’s earn more than their LA counterparts - LA education director responsible for schools ( 300 schools) and inclusion for all children within the county, earning £30,000 less than the CEO of a trust with 8 schools.
• LA’s not legally able to open new schools.
• Private companies owning special and residential schools. With too few LA places, LA’s legally have to provide an education. Some of these school places are costing over £100,000 per child per year, in company owned schools. Money coming from tax payer funded LA money to private ventures.

Yes, because apparently the tories are safe hands for the economy or something 🙄

Where on earth did that myth come from? Is it because the tories were traditionally the party of the wealthy (landed gentry) and people assumed that those who have money must be good with it? It's a load of tosh, but the myth seems to persist.

I don't think it's just that tbh. Med school placements are hugely competitive, we train far to few doctors AND the government cut med school placements this year by 25%.

@Kendodd true (to all). But I won’t be going on maternity leave or emigrating any time soon. Old enough to be realistic about what the job/life entails. I’ve met a couple of GPs who retrained in their 30/40s and they were excellent.

@walkinginsunshinekat

Interesting break down of that survey of 3 k people

The main reason people gave for being dissatisfied with the NHS overall was waiting times for GP and hospital appointments (65 per cent) followed by staff shortages (46 per cent) and a view that the government does not spend enough money on the NHS (40 per cent).

Of those who were satisfied with the NHS overall, the top reason was because the NHS is free at the point of use (78 per cent), followed by the quality of NHS care (65 per cent) and that it has a good range of services (58 per cent).

The overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that the founding principles of the NHS should ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ apply in 2021: that the NHS should be free of charge when you need it (94 per cent), the NHS should primarily be funded through taxes (86 per cent) and the NHS should be available to everyone (84 per cent).

I don't think so.

Reasons:
There isn't enough people in the UK to do the jobs we need doing & HC is quite specific, its a not a job anyone can do & now as a country, we've not got the money to do it, even if Sunak wanted too, which he doesn't.

The survey is weird because though it shows overwhelming support for a free health service, we keep voting for the exact opposite :(

I'd hire more doctors.

It doesn't have to be an all or nothing service.
It can be income-based.
When I moved to the UK, I couldn't believe how low taxes were (at my salary - 20%, vs 25% where I'm from). Included in that, you get free healthcare.

If we can't sustain that, something has to change. OAPs get free healthcare, children get free healthcare, the unemployed get free healthcare and working people usually get private healthcare. The ones who fall through the cracks where I'm from are those who have employers who don't offer private healthcare as a benefit and they're struggling to pay for GP visits.

You could very easily adopt such a system. To be fair, it's not like the current system actually works so it can't really get worse?