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.

The few times my children have been really very ill, the NHS has been amazing I have to say. We use private healthcare for the whole family now. If I am ill or injured I don’t want to go on some long waiting list to see someone. I would be happy if the NHS started to charge for appointments. I think most countries do. The American system is not the only option. Look to other European countries instead.

Sure...

Because the level of customer service I get from the average utility company, courier or anything else is something to aspire to.....

It's not about private or public, it's about investment in resources...

My trust is about to reduce my emergency operating capacity by a third in order to save money, not that any of the managers making these decisions deal day to day with pissed off patients.

I promise you I do care, but after the umpteenth time of apologising for why someone has waited 3 weeks to have a broken ankle fixed, the words have no meaning anymore.

@pjani you are deluded. I gave birth a few weeks after the Tories came into power. They hadn’t had enough time to fuck it up. My experience was absolutely dreadful and I still have PTSD almost 13 years later. THE NHS IS SHIT and has been for a very long time.

Erm…no. I was never able to get an appointment in 48hrs when that creep was in power. It’s always been crap and is worse now as the population has vastly increased and the services have not.

Without commenting on the reasons why things have gone wrong, I agree completely with the title of your post.
Having lived in France for 10 years, it makes me sad and frightened to hear my parents talk about the complete lack of resources are care as if it were normal. Most recently, having to wait 1 hour for an ambulance when they agreed it was a suspected stroke. That was a priority call. It is NOT NORMAL. Here, I have access to specialists and tests when needed. Prevention is the key.

We really don't need to accept that.

It is your view, but other views are available!

I'd like to give the NHS another shot with this hideous Tory government gone.

This, OP.

There are companies who can, for example use AI to reduce GP waiting lists and prescribe. We are not talking silly generic chat bots you get when you go to online chat for Sky TV either - these are sophisticated models designed hand in hand with doctors that take into account medical history, circumstances, safety, etc. Some places ARE trialling these systems but it needs to become the norm. Voting Labour won’t fix the GP recruitment and retention crisis. It won’t reduce the population. MH problems won’t be solved overnight. We need innovation in the NHS - an overhaul whereby things change at pace and at patient level. Not just the same old crap, the same idiot managers in high turnover roles who don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

We have a low tax economy. This patchy care (and I still maintain it can be - and often is - brilliant) is the direct result of that + an aging population. If social care worked well it would take a helluva lot if pressure off the NHS. But that would require investment and a forward-thinking government. We have neither.

I think a lot of what these discussions ignore, over and over again, is the preventative needs to avoid crisis in health care

Another poster mentions closing swimming pools, its an exact example of the disjointed nature of public health and why prevention is virtually non existent

Some (not all) of the countries that people like to use as examples of better health care forget that as a culture, they have healthier populations anyway due to the nature of their environments/eating patterns/family set ups/leisure facilities etc etc

We dont have those advantages, we have very poor public transport infrastructures, poor cycling provision, poor leisure centres, libraries have closed left right and centre, we eat crap as a nation, we have poor working practices, the list is endless of all these factors which impact on health overall

Far more public money needs to be put into sustaining good public health across a number of areas before you even look at 'the NHS' as an entity.

The target was 48 hrs and it was mostly delivered.

It is not population growth that is the primary issue, but an ageing population + fewer GPs. Those either coming into the country or being born are, due to their youth, less likely to need health services.

Labour isn't the answer to the NHS, come to Wales, Labour have managed it or not managed it would be apt. It's a shit show.

I dont regard the NHS as this amazing thing. If anything I'd rather a European model having experienced both France and Swedens health care systems, they are superior.

You feel more like you are genuinely getting what you paid for with European models.

I'd scrap the whole NHS, I really would, it's not for for purpose, the population size and the demand placed upon it has sunk it. Time to scrap the old ship and bring in a new one.

I wouldn’t be in favour of means tested top ups. Me and my husband are in the stretched middle and it would just be the final straw. We don’t get any of the freebies- free glasses/dentistry/prescriptions etc and already pay a large amount of tax/ni.

Basically there’s not enough people paying in for long enough. Retiring at 60 and dying at 90 is 30 years of increasing healthcare usage is unsustainable (I know many people die earlier/work longer.)

We have chaos coming towards us as well because the obesity epidemic means people are in worse health at younger ages. Add to that the exodus of staff and poor wages and we really will be in trouble.

Threads like this illustrate why no political party dare grasp the nettle and institute radical reform.
People are poles apart, loyalty to the principle of the NHS but not the reality.
Labour will tweak the edges but stay loyal to the free at point of use.
Conservatives won't spend the money.

Agree with pp that money alone isn't the solution but it would certainly help.
Fundamentally we need to change to a different system. Pretty much any of our European neighbours do it better.

Agree with @Newbutoldfather that management is appalling. I briefly worked in the NHS and had never seen such dreadful management. Internal promotion of people way beyond their abilities.

But they oppose the recent pension changes which were designed to keep senior NHS staff from going part time / retiring?

Yup.. UK is so run down in every area,most people believe in the govemrent hype and hane no clue how backward and even to a point of how dirty UK is,litter everywhere etc.

I never did the seal clapping or the pot banginf,it was lame,like the super busy nurses findinf time for tiktok dances and of course, roll your sleeve up for an untested vaccine to protect your neighbour,kind of the same logic like use a condom when having sex to prevent your neighbour getting pregnant.

as for the nhs, where is the money going i come from a small country in europe where the hospitals are clean,new,bright, private rooms for patients, healthcare system is the same funded by taxpayer or you can choose to pay privately, during the plandemic the dentists and doctors apps happened as normal- why did nhs cancel and cause a massive backlog and missed diagnosis?

lets not go into the 40billion “nhs” app, what a smooth theft of taxpayers funds

Well I agree. It's frightening really. I'm about to go private to have an operation, because I'm on the urgent list but the wait is still "50-60 weeks" according to the hospital...

Private I can have it done in 6 weeks.

Yep. Some of the horrific maternity scandals started in the noughties and continued past 2010. This idea that the NHS used to be fine pre-2010 is a fiction.

With that said, GP access was MUCH better back then.

I know an A&E consultant. She was recently offered a job in Switzerland- on 600% of her current salary. You can't blame doctors for leaving the UK.

If your cancer surgery gets cancelled on the day because intensive care is full because a) the hospital is full and b) we don’t have the itu beds per capita that everyone else has and c) we don’t have enough staff.. how can I be held personally accountable? What can I honesty do about that?

I'd lack compassison if i was working for 12hrs without a break, unpaid overtime, underappreciated, poor staffing, high responsibility and being blamed for it all. Its not individual staff members faults, although that's not to say there are no actual bad eggs, as there are with all other jobs.

That child should have been seen of course, we all want good quality and prompt care.

Don’t be fooled. It was never this bad. The Tories found billions when it suited them to fund pet projects. They’ve driven this country into the ground, all public infrastructure.
I had a horrific wait in a&e recently, 11 hours, because my local a&e seems to operate on a queue system and not by urgency? Absolute madness. However yesterday at a same day emergency care everyone was prompt and helpful, a battery of tests were run and I saw a doctor as soon as the results were available.

Average wage of doctors in other countries and how many hours a week do they have? GP : patients ratio I. Other countries?

Let's do some stats on cost at point of use and numbers Vs population.

I think the point is that the Tories know full well the NHS isn’t fit for purpose in a low tax economy with an ageing and rapidly growing population. They know it needs to be dismantled but they also know the political party that dismantles it will be out of power for at least a generation, probably two. They’re right on both counts.

So they’re starving it of funds and resources in the hope that performance will become so poor that public support for it will wain and then they can dismantle it without a huge political backlash.

But that approach is immoral in the extreme because lots of people suffer and die as a result. And also I’ve no faith in the Tories to replace it with to something fair, equitable and workable.

Labour believe in the NHS and will throw money at it, but that’s a fool’s errand.

Personally I think we’re fucked either way.

I am pleasantly surprised I finally see a constructive thread without "but USA" mentions only.

Re the pre 2010 NHS. I am from another EU and when I was immigrating to UK before 2010 I was already warned not to expect more than paracetamol for anything and difficulties seeing doctors.

I agree, move tpwards some European models would be possibly way forward, however, as someone mentioned, we pay more into system.
Eg. Person pays 13.5% in (part them, part employer) , everyone must have the state mandated insurance, if you don't work state covers you or you are self-payer. Employer puts in.
They get souch more than we do here for it. It's worth it

When I co