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.

That's the crux of it. The NHS was struggling before but now as a nation, we have to pay for the millions of people who were paid for doing nothing for months or years during covid.

And I'm not saying that could have been avoided but it has to be paid for.

And no individual ever wants to fund that. They want 'someone else' to.

Would you charge everyone? Regardless of age? Or would the same old groups- pensioners (many very comfortably off and the users of more healthcare than other age groups and already getting free prescriptions) those on benefits, children? Leaving just the poor sods in the middle yet again.

If the nhs was safe with Labour why is the Welsh nhs in a worse state that England.

It Need modernisms. And Staff

No because the welsh government doesn't have that much control and has a much poorer population which means worse health and less money for social care ( which comes from council taxes , whereby the well off areas get greater funds and need less)

I'm sure they aren't either but dd was really shocked. They just left her to attend to patients as well despite not having any nursing training including giving an elderly gentleman a suppository which she'd never done before and had no idea how. She did it though and did everything she was asked. She has spent a long time learning about the need for consent and safeguarding and said there was none of that. Not bothering to get a slip mat and just hoiking an old man up the bed by his armpits while he cried out in pain.

She felt traumatised, not by the caring part but just the attitude of the nurses. The ward sister just stayed in her office all day.

And this is a cultural issue within the NHS which I'm not sure can be fixed with just money.

@gerbilcrocus but how does that account for people's awful experiences with NHS staff under labour?

I'm no Tory voter, but there's something fundamentally wrong with the culture.

I have no doubt that many, many patients themselves are awful to deal with. And this will impact the staff.

I've also no doubt that underfunding has a great impact.

But the experiences of myself and many other women are too common to ignore.

For example, the 'you're pregnant not ill' mantra repeated to the postnatal ward over and over by all staff. This comes from the top. It's the culture. And it needs to change.

IF its true NHS nurses stood around laughing at a dying patient who asked for spoon to eat with, got an unqualified member of the public to insert a suppository, then hauled a man up by his arms as he screamed out in pain & a ward sister who sits in her office all day long....then yes indeed no amount of money is going to fix that.

Sound more like a concentration camp than a hospital, there are just too many people around from different wards depts and disciplines for terrible and quite frankly criminal treatment to carry on unchallenged.

Our local hospital is graded as one of the worst performers in the country yet none of that happens there.

The satisfaction surveys on the NHS when IN the system is very high, its accessing the NHS that is the problem.

@GPTec1 ,

I think those satisfaction scores are why I referred to it as a Stockholm syndrome.

people wait forever and then get average treatment, but because they feel it is free, they feel that they should be grateful for getting treated at all.

This is a big part of the problem.

Don't be silly.

Under New Labour, NHS waiting lists were the lowest they'd been for 40 years.

Of course it's true. She has absolutely no reason to lie about it. As I say she was shocked and a bit upset afterwards as her grandpa died in hospital a few months ago and she was worried that this was how he was treated (and I fear he may have been tbh)

Not in Wales under Labour

Member of the public -I mean, she's a physiotherapy student so has some caring experience, but yes she said she got the impression they'd have dragged any warm body off the street to help in the ward.

Where's you next comedy gig going to be? I'd love to hear more of your jokes.

Something has broken down. You can’t treat patients like that. Elderly vulnerable people who can’t oppose it.

Hard to read that, poor people

"The concept of a completely free healthcare system where nobody pays anything worked fine in 1948 or whenever it was launched. It doesn't work now."

It didn't work then. The fledgling NHS burned through its entire annual budget for spectacles and dental work within a few weeks of starting

The NHS is a sacred cow and bloody rightly so.
The only reason we’re having this discussion is because this Conservative government, in its various iterations since Cameron, has done what every previous Conservative government wanted to do but wasn’t stupid/callous/psychopathic enough to do and actually started the longed-for dismantling of the NHS.
They’re doing it with the backing of the mass media who will not report it for exactly what it is, because there’s so much money to be made out of it at every level - marketing, insurance & financing to name but three.

Vote these lying, corrupt, nepotistic bastards out of office, go to hustings and hammer your MP about the importance of making the NHS more fit for purpose and more efficient but above all keeping it free at the point of use, because we will never ever get it back if we lose it.
If we do lose it, there is no way this country will try a European model: it’ll be the American system 100% and that, as we all know, is the primary driver of inequality and it will make this country even more fucked than the bastard Tories have managed to make it thus far.

The thing about the French health system that I do love is that private-level health care is available at an affordable cost. It’s not NHS-or-Harley Street and nothing in between. If I want the ‘free’ option then I can go to the public hospital and queue with everyone else (and French public hospitals can have big queues and long waiting times, especially in the A&E). But if I have a half decent mutuelle, I can instead choose to see a private consultant, knowing that of his €65 fee €16,10 will be reimbursed by the govt, €29,90 will be reimbursed by my mutuelle, and I will pay only €19 to see the private consultant of my choice. I won’t wait as long, I won’t have to trek out to a massive hospital somewhere, I can book my own appointment online, usually.

so yes France’s public healthcare system is definitely struggling as well. But it is supplemented by a huge range of private-but-subsidised healthcare providers that are affordable to those on modest incomes (like us).

The NHS has been used as a political pawn for years. It needs a longer term strategy that rests in the hands of an independent body, we need to stop the manipulation of health and social care depending on who is in government.

for example, we have an increasingly ageing population living longer and with more complex needs. This is hardly new information and yet where is the planning?

In the last 35 years the number of hospital beds have decreased by 58% (The Kings Report). Care was diverted to the community but headcount wasn’t increased. The number of care homes, convalescent homes and assisted living facilities have also decreased. So what was the plan for an aging population with complex, multi faceted care needs?

The NHS spent £9.2 billion in agency and bank staff in 2021/22 (data gathered from FOI requests and reported in Nursing Times). No private organisation could withstand an unbudgeted outlay of that nature on their operating expenditure.

Our health services are being severely impacted by multiple factors; an ageing population that once medically fit, but not fully fit to return home unaided, that end up as bed blockers; excessive alcohol and drug use by the population that puts a massive strain on every A&E department each weekend and national holiday; an increasingly obese and unfit population; and a chronic shortage of staff (that is only going to get worse due to the underfunding of medical places at university).

The NHS is constantly firefighting and can’t shift into proactive care. However, I, and so many others with long term conditions, owe my life to the NHS. Is my care perfect? No it’s not and I do spend a great deal of time ensuring I’m the conduit between different medical teams that fail to communicate effectively.

It is far from perfect and it’s not free, I’m a high rate taxpayer and I pay a great deal into the system, I know it’s not free (but I also take a lot out due to regular hospital treatment for a life limiting condition). But a US system would bankrupt me and many others so that isn’t the answer either.

I think a European style system should be evaluated. Ultimately, health and social care is too important to be left in the hands of successive governments. It needs a clear longer term vision, strategy, stability, funding and independence.

In the meantime I remain very grateful for the care I receive and hugely thankful for the staff that cared enough to risk their own health during covid to keep working and treating me.

I will leave this country in the next decade unless health care drastically improves. I'm terrified for my elderly parents and in-laws who might need to access care. And I'm furious at politicians of all hues who prioritise short term election success over genuine leadership -- we should have been having a vigorous, no holds barred debate about health and social care in this country around 30 years ago, but the NHS is the ultimate sacred cow and must never be questioned. Let's get this thing properly run, properly invested in, properly privatised so poor people don't fall through the gaps, and so we can have an expectation of speedy, high quality treatment rather than be grateful for the crumbs off the NHS table.

That elevation is long gone. Our hospital trust have had to agree on body cams because violence has gone through the roof in our A&E. Currently we are expecting a shortage of GPs to look after over 65 million people. These people are now spilling over into A&E. A&E staff are burnt out and fed up because there’s often not enough physical space to give people what they want and they end up receiving appalling treatment and often that’s what they are expecting before a patient has even opened their mouths because it’s expected. It’s an awful situation for patients but also staff. I spent 45 mins trying to help a lady who lied to me for most of it. She told me how shit we were and was abusive but I try to keep in my head that people are scared and in pain but how do you do a job when someone is threatening you and it’s happening more. People come in and think we will cure them, coming in with long term pain and expecting to be pain free because they are so fed up. Thing is in 45 mins I was supposed to be helping 15 other people because we were flooded with patients. So I got shouted at for that too. The reality is the NHS is swamped and covid has really made it worse and it was bad before. Staff are leaving for higher payer and less stress and I don’t blame them, problem is it then compounds the situation further. Something drastic needs to change.

A Physio student will have a Band 6 fully trained Physio supervisor, who she should complain too, indeed reporting cruelty to patients is an essential part of being a HCP.... there is also the issue of why she even attempted to insert a suppository into a patient, with no consent, and not qualified, that would be assault.

Why was she being supervised on a ward where are learning is not in acute medical care?

There is sooo much wrong with all of this.

This does sound good the thing that stands out is the fee you pay. We could emulate this with NHS model by attaching £15 or whatever but I don’t think either party could win with that in the manifesto.

People want funding but it usually means someone else is paying. I doubt the electorate would actually vote for a system where they pay.

I love that a PP thinks voting labour will solve the problem. The UK was a very different place when we were under Labour last time. We have too many people, too many public health problems, too few resources and a system utterly unfit for purpose

Labour have form for trying to put right the wrongs of previous Tory Governments, the NHS was a mess after 18 years of the Tories in 1997, it took them 10 years to get public satisfaction levels back up.

Its in an even bigger mess now so take longer this time around but the alternative is to stay with the Tory model of healthcare.

Completely disagree with this. NHS satisfaction rose steadily under labour government peaking when they were voted out, and has been on a steady decline ever since. The underfunding of the NHS and overworking of staff which contributes to lack of enthusiasm of those staff members can be linked to Tory policy i.e. removal of bursaries, increase in uni fee's and Brexit meaning we have a huge shortage in staff. If you believe politics isn't involved then I think you are seriously misguided and sadly the most likely to accept the Tory storyline which will enable them to privatise the NHS further in the coming years.