To hate the whole NHS heroes mantra

[Whatsthepoint1234]

As the title says. I’m a nurse and to be quite honest the whole ‘nhs hero saves the day’ tripe really pisses me off. I’ve worked in healthcare since I left uni and the amount of useless colleagues I have who genuinely don’t give a shit about patients annoys me. My ds is disabled and the attitude of some staff towards him has been disgusting. I think as nhs workers some of us are good and some bad and we don’t need worshipping.

I work for the NHS myself. I think the people working in it are generally great and professional, but getting prompt treatment is a nightmare. You get passed from pillar to post, there is no joined up care and everything takes for ever. It's no wonder staff become frustrated and demoralised.

I worked in MH and there really wasn't much hero worshipping then. I met some lovely people, but I was also assaulted and abused by patients, but it is usually because you couldn't meet their needs or the environment was not appropriate for the care they needed.

My ds is disabled and the attitude of some staff towards him has been disgusting.

Actually, the attitude of society as a whole towards the disabled was really revealed during the covid nonsense. Especially over mask wearing. Disabled people were positively discriminated against and all decency and humanity went out the window.

It was shocking.

As regards the NHS, I never use it myself, but my elderly clients are completely neglected by the NHS, no-one gives a toss.

Totally agree. There’s a lot complacency and wastage within the NHS.
The only time I’ve ever experienced NHS services for an actual life or death emergency, they v busy but obviously couldn’t cate less, they totally failed to prioritise. My DCs life was put at risk.

This was during the hangover of the “Thank You NHS” phase and I thought it would be ungrateful and rude to be more demanding. I wish I had been, I know now that you actually have to be to get things done.

We hear a lot about junior doctors, long hours and poor pay etc but there are some pretty hefty NHS salaries too.

Healthcare is a really unhappy industry at the moment.

The population aged over 65 is rapidly expanding and ever more treatments are available, which means that the 1% annual funding growth above inflation that the Tories proudly proclaim to have ring-fenced is in reality hopelessly insufficient.

Services have been underfunded for the last 13 years; staff in all disciplines have seen their pay fall sharply relative to inflation and have been expected to work harder to bridge the gap between services and demand.

And then the pandemic came

People won’t put up with taking clinical responsibility for an understaffed, overstretched service while taking home falling pay forever, and the industrial action and staffing churn that we’ve seen are evidence of this.

It was only the inexperienced and silly that fell for the NHS hero nonsense during covid. Staff want terms and conditions that reflect the work that they do and the responsibility that they take, not claps

I received amazing care when I was in ICU with covid.

My son received poor care at accident and emergency when a triage nurse decided his o2 level of 88% was just him being lazy with this breathing (he was 2) thankfully another nurse had more sense.

I read this last year and it's quite interesting

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9749900/

Remember the morons stood outside their front doors banging pots and pans during Covid. For NHS apparently. I wonder if anyone would admit now they were stupid enough to fall for all that crap.

@EmilyBrontesGhost YES i saw that behaviour on Twitter from certain NHS blue heart activists They were also berating the public for wanting to do completely normal things. One of them has had her book turned into an ITV drama but you can bet a penny to a pinch of shit what you mentioned wont be featured in it. And there was one who was always selling masks. The attitudes on the MN Covid board towards disabled ppl and ppl who couldnt wear masks stunk too.

When i see the NHS logo now i think of bullying and psychological abuse. Those activists caused that reaction

NHS doctor here. Husband ICU consultant throughout covid, I did hot clinics in lockdown.

The Thursday clap made us both cringe SO much. We were still working, with PPE, earning and had our nanny as a key worker.

We weren’t locked up in our homes trying to do demanding WFH jobs from our bedroom whilst fielding school tasks and home education.

We weren’t grappling with losing our income, our mental health or our business.

I clapped for my elderly patients carers, our supermarket workers, our delivery drivers and post service. For single parents trying to keep a roof over their children’s heads, for mums living in shitty little flats in cities with small children.

I'm with you lovely x

And the two doctors on Twitter you mention, I'm familiar with them. Just awful people, only out for themselves.

I wasn't around on MN during covid, but I can imagine it was disgusting here towards the disabled.

Masks were virtue signalling to some, and a comfort blanket for others. But either way, the maskists were disgusting in their irrational and inhumare treatment of those who couldn't wear one.

Yes I am sick of it. I worked in a gp surgery during covid, all our nurses spent all day making tic tok videos, hardly being heroes! Why were the government making the NHS out to be heroes? It is their job to nurse the sick and help people recover. So glad the clapping bollocks stopped. When they put it on the telly that was when I thought it was too much.

I was in hospital for a little while for an operation. One nurse told me what the other nurses were saying about me and it was awful. She said she couldn’t understand it because I seemed perfectly fine. I’ve had absolutely dreadful experiences in hospital with nurses and doctors, the few that were nice, were wonderful.

Why were the government making the NHS out to be heroes?

To perpetuate the myth that there was a deadly virus going around when there clearly wasn't.

It was all gaslighting.

I do understand where you’re coming from. But from another perspective- NHS and firefighters are constantly glorified by the press. Try being in the police or a teacher. Same package - some are great, some awful but you are constantly the scapegoat. I know what I’d prefer.

……. understanding of pain on the fuss someone visibly kicks up about it, invariably it tends to be men that do that more.

Not my experience at all and I’ve worked in A&E, Major Trauma , HDU and ICU. At home and abroad.

@Whatsthepoint1234 great chat - I’ve been to see a lot of nurses and Drs in the last 24 mths due to my awful long covid - I have also ended up in a&e three times and countless (pointless) interactions with GP. Every single interaction - bear the two private ones - has been absolutely shockingly dreadful - no empathy at all (I have a fucking chronic illness which was treated like shit), no NHS support services that I could talk to about MH issues, no continuity i was a very serious case at one point life / death kind of thing and the GP doesn’t know my name and has NEVER called me for an update. They literally tried to make me feel so small,
unimportant and worthless. when your ill and vulnerable and drained you literally cannot battle through this system or raise complaints.

I’m genuinely probably tramautised by the experience but when the whole systems is basically against you where do u turn. So my lived experience is certain individuals are amazing but the NHS are not full of heroes. Sorry to offend anyone but that’s my lived honest experience.

If I could move back to a sane and respectful country like Aus I would definitely

Sorry just to add - we must talk about the mental health trauma for patients that (through personal experience) no longer can trust their health provider. This is an absolutely horrid feeling - if I get hurt or then I’m not confident I’ll survive this cos of NHS

Oh please

can we not turn this into a covid denial thread

Those of us who worked on Hopi tap during covid can feel very sure there was a deadly virus thank you. Whether the response to it was proportionate or matched the changing knowledge is up for debate but pretending it didn’t exist? Did we all imagine the wards where every single patient died week after week?

They lost all credibility with the dancing Tik Tok shite

I've had to endure:

A 2 year wait for dietician support. Then got discharged with a food group chart and advice to take multi vitamins "because this could go on for years". No ongoing support and no help and advice to improve my sons extremely limited diet.

An 18 month wait for SALT.

Confirmation that the toileting issues we are facing is too complex and unusual and there is no such service available in my local area.

Still on a 1 year + wait list for CAHMS.

A forced admission to a hospital ward for obs and tests due to mental health concerns because they didn't believe the symptoms were psychological.

All for a 7 year old autistic child who is struggling massively, and I am out of my depth with complex issues.

Aswell as my relative dying face down on a toilet floor during the pandemic. Although they were known to be very unsteady and disoriented they were encouraged to make their own way to the toilet so as to avoid 'unnecessary close contact' between them and the staff. I read this in the hospital notes that I requested.

So no, I don't buy into the whole NHS heroes thing. They are doing a job that they get paid to do.
Admittedly it is a tough and unforgiving job. But I have very low expectations and high levels of disappointment and piss poor service.

As an ex medic - I agree, most doctors don't need anymore hero worshipping! Ime many don't go into the profession because of a desire to care - motivations evolve around 2 things - power and money.

I recently had my daughter. I self discharged owing to piss poor care.

Oh, me too! Partly because it means we can't have sensible conversations about whether the NHS model is still feasible, and partly because my experience of the NHS over the last 3 years (thankfully limited to one A and E visit and several failed attempts to get my GP to do their job) is so utterly dire.

We need to have a serious conversation about healthcare in this country, how much money we're prepared to put into the boomer generation and several other things, and none of it will happen whilst we're going on about angels and banging bloody saucepans.

I never did the seal claps or dont view the nhs workers as heroes, there are some workers who i think have gone extra mile for me i have thanked the derpatment with card and chocolates but otherwise as a foreignerer i have experienced also xenophobic comments and bullying by the nhs staff

So your appointment was running 30 mins late?
I now work as part of a small team let me tell you about our last clinic. I work with one of the kindest most caring doctors I’ve ever met in my 40 years in the NHS. Our patients get 30 mis for each appointment. Our first patient appeared straight forward although an elderly frail man but when my colleague in polite conversation asked him if he lived alone he tells us he has no children his wife died 3 months ago and then starts to cry he reaches for his wallet and shows us a photo of his wife for 10 mins we listened to how he met her their lives together and the sadness of her developing dementia at the end of her life and his loneliness now. This added 10 mins onto his 1/2 an hour. The second patient also elderly with a elderly wife was told they had cancer we spent a long time explaining treatment and options he was shocked by the diagnosis and struggled to understand what we were saying he also had no family to help and support him. Another 15 mins added onto his 1/2 an hour. The third patient was young but exceedingly anxious she might have cancer she needed lists a reassurance queried everything we said repeatedly that added another 5 mins onto her 1/2 consultation. So the fourth patients appointment was 1/2 an hour late, they too were elderly and anxious worried and struggling to understand what was being told to them but still we sat with talked over the same info repeatedly until they understood again 10 mins longer than the allocated 1/2 an hour. We were meant to finish at 5 and by the end we were still there at 6. Every patient gets the time and treatment they require regardless of how late we running.
So next time you moan about an appointment running 1/2 an hour late it’s not because we’re sitting drinking tea it’s because we’re with patients trying to offer them the best service we can.

The vast majority of NHS staff I've interacted with have been brilliant and lovely, though of course as it's hunan nature you remember the terrible ones better! But at the end of the day they're doing a paid job. They're mostly ime doing it well and I'm glad of that but I do find it weird the way people talk about them. (I did buy a big box of chocolates for the antenatal department after DD2 was born though - she was measuring very small and I was in there a lot.)