Am I being unreasonable in thinking that we are suffering from a collective Stockholm syndrome re the NHS

[Newbutoldfather]

This is inspired by another thread about a mother with a child in pain being kept hours without painkillers without being triaged, and the responses on that thread. However I have also had an awful experience with my own child over the last year.

it seems amazing to me that in one of the richest countries in the world (we still are), people are content to accept substandard care which would embarrass a country with 10% of our GDP.

In France, MRI’s are standard for muscular injury or complex fractures. They happen within a few days and, often, on the day. ( my reference is Paris btw, not sure about rural France). In addition, you always get a same day GP appointment, regardless of seriousness, no hassle, no waiting for an hour at 8AM.

Finally, although there are some real heroes in the NHS, my own experience (and that of the other poster) are that many lack compassion, which is about culture, not money.

I don’t know the ‘solution’. Any solution is multifaceted and will take time. However, if we don’t admit the scale of the problem and continue to say how marvellous free-at-the-point-of-use is, we will never get acceptable medicine in this country for any but the rich.

This.

If Labour win the next election will they just do the same as they did last time and run up a huge amount of PFI debt which will take decades to pay off?

They're different roles though aren't they, and better pay/progression usually. I'm also yet to hear of any physios/OTs/dietitians ignoring patients, being cruel, or standing around the nurses station gossiping.

This was far worse than just cooking the books (a lot of which went on too, including at Stafford). It was deliberately (and unsafely) overcrowding bays in order to keep the figures of patients waiting in corridors down. If a bay is designed to accommodate four beds, then that's how many oxygen, suction and defibrillation outlets will be installed, and that's how much room there will be for beds with space for staff to crowd around them in an emergency. Cram a fifth bed in (in response to demands from Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn) and patients who could have been saved will (and did) die.

"Normally we take off the bed’s head so we can get round the patient to put lines in the blood vessels and a tube in the lungs. But we couldn’t move the bed forwards because it kept hitting the two other beds. At that time he was pink and warm. I was trying to do all the stuff we normally do. Then, he starts going blue in front of my eyes, bleeding in the gut and vomiting. We try to put the heart-tracing machine on, but we’ve got nowhere to plug it. We’re jumping up and down trying to keep this young guy alive. I use a piece of apparatus to expose his airway and, bang, I’m staring at a huge clot. I ask the nurses for suction. I put out my free hand. No suction. Where’s the suction? The suction tube is a certain length and it’s by another patient’s bed and won’t reach. So then I’m desperately trying to grab the clot with forceps, but they won’t reach. I’m thinking “If I push it down far enough, sacrifice one lung, we can give him oxygen and save him”, but we can’t get the oxygen to him either. I ask a nurse to go to the theatre to get a portable oxygen canister. This guy is now blue and his heart’s stopped. I ask for the defibrillator, but the wires won’t reach. I had to make a decision to wedge the clot down, but we had to wait five minutes before the portable oxygen came, by which time he’s so oxygen-deficient there’s probably very little to retrieve even if we had kept him alive."

The NHS did not work for the 35 year old patient. Nor for the next patient to die three weeks later. Milburn got to boast about reduced waiting times though. Target culture for its own sake kills people.

The trust blew tens of millions pursuing the whistleblower - a respected cardiologist - including fabricating 200 malicious allegations about him. Is it any wonder that people like a PP's daughter are too terrified to speak out about patient mistreatment when senior management will go to such desperate lengths to protect their own arses? Needless to say, the executive responsible for this loss of life, the ruination of a good doctor, and the waste of millions of pounds in legal fees (not to mention the GMC and WMP time wasted) not only got promoted but was awarded a CBE. He carried on harassing whistleblowers at his next position.

Why does that not fill me with confidence?

@FallSpringing

Oh yeah.

I'd forgotten that part of the degree.

Yeah.

Let's scrap it

🙄

For those championing privatisation, I don't get it?
Look where privatisation got us with utilities.
The water companies are polluting our waterways with impunity and say it's too difficult to upgrade the systems. Yet they are still allowed to make a profit and pay dividends to shareholders. The gas and electricity firms are sucking the life out of people and making record profits.
These were public services, not for profit services and now look at the result of privatisation.
Another is public transport: look at the strikes, the expenses, the delayed and cancelled journeys.
I'd renationalise the lot. Greedy bloodsucking bastards. This country is on its arse.

@HotSauceCommittee

It makes no sense to me that people think private is better when we can all see that it not.

If people want to pay more money, why not just pay more to fund the and social care properly?

People talk about compassion and funding like they are entirely unrelated concepts. Staff burnout is a huge issue in the NHS, and was a focus during COVID when the general public were happy that low paid staff were taking risks. Low funded, poor quality services take a toll on staff too, this leads to burnout. The attitudes of a large portion of the public don't help.

I know. We don't give a shit about people anymore, we just seen to think that there has to be a profit in everything worth doing.
I hate what this country has become and all the people who voted to make it so. I can't even bugger off to live somewhere else in Europe because of Brexit!

@forcedgeneric

The moral injury being suffered by hcp during and post covid is severe

If people think trying to access healthcare in a failing system is bad, they should try working in it.

That being said I appreciate that not all staff are as professional as they should be and negligence does occur where it absolutely shouldn't

@Botw1 yes, COVID has had a huge impact but I'd argue the ongoing underfunding and moral distress of not being able to provide good care has a bigger impact. There are definitely incidences of unprofessionalism etc, but the systemic issues are much larger. Most staff I have worked with want to provide better care, and know where it falls short.

The problem with changing over to an insurance-based system is what about preexisting conditions. My daughter has type 1 diabetes which would be hugely expensive to insure for. The treatment costs £thousands every year and is currently free on the NHS.

Have you forgotten how absolutely awful British rail was? 🤔

And rivers so polluted they were ecologically dead. There may be issues now, but under public ownership the water authorities were truly terrible.

Our local hospital has had to turn corridors in to "holding areas" for wards now, & according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, around 350 to 500 people EACH week are dying because they are not getting the care they need.

We have around 20 plus ambulances outside, treating patients in a large tent in some hospitals.

Quite frankly anyone who compares the NHS of even 10years ago to what we have now is not paying attention, it really is dire in AER/GP and Social Care.

The inability to support whistle blowers has not stopped and is not limited to the NHS, take a look at the Police now? and the Met in particular.

Was the NHS brilliant under Labour? no, it was not, far from it...... but it functioned, now it does not.

I’d love to know how many people are being asked to parrot the “NHS privatisation is a good thing, and if it isn’t then nationalisation was just as bad, and especially so under Labour”, on this forum that caters to a demographic the Tories know is one they need to win over to beat Labour, along with rigging the vote by needless restrictive voter ID methods.

This old chestnut!

https://www.gov.wales/nhs-duty-candour

From 1st April. This is a new development. Worth a read

Nothing new in England and various guises of this have been around for years plus they are built into clinicians’ codes of conduct

The SNP Scottish Government renationalised a shipyard - that is going well….

Primary care (GPS, dentist, opticians, pharmacists) have been private companies from the start.

Welsh Water is not-for-profit and we're still seeing pollution incidents at roughly the same rate.

It functioned better perhaps, but I'll still argue that it didn't function in absolute terms, not for the many victims of this outrageous mismanagement.

I don’t think it is reasonable to compare post-pandemic NHS/global cost of living crisis to when labour was last in power. The situations are not comparable

Over the last 40 years or so, i ve had a few reasons to use the NHS, my Mum worked in and my DD did until very recently.

There may have been 100s of needless death in the NHS under Blair, i don't know, i'll take you at your word... i do remember reading a book on NHS whistle blowing a few years ago under Labour, though the Dr did say it has been an on going problem for decades, however, it also followed 18 years of under investment by the Conservatives BUT now we have 1000s of unnecessary deaths.

The stories my DD has told me are beyond belief, its so bad that its now routine and no one bats an eye lid, a Junior Dr i know is on sick leave (stress) due to her being unable to handle seeing so many people dying because they cannot get care for very treatable illnesses, one lady died of the cold whilst waiting in corridor, shipped out of AE to met targets & she died.

If we had sort of Govt accountability, ministers would resign and the Govt would collapse, its a scandal.