NHS shouldn't have to treat gang members / criminals

[Sellias]

I live in a city with lots of crime (drugs, gangs, knife crime)

Groups of idiots 'beefing' with other groups of idiots over postcodes, selling drugs on eachothers patch and perceived disrespect over the silliest of things leading to murder.

I recently watched a documentary about knife crime and it got me thinking about what a terrible state our NHS is in and how people like cancer patients, people with heart problems etc are waiting far too long for treatment to the extent that they can and do die before their treatment even begins.

..these gang idiots though, if they stab or shoot one another an ambulance is called and they get rushed to hospital. It's all hands on deck to save them. Seriously ill people have their much needed surgery cancelled because this stab victim (who sells drugs and causes endless harm in their community) is deemed to need treatment more than they are.

AIBU to think if they chose to live that way then the NHS should have no obligation to treat them? Let them pay for their own treatment with their ill gotten gains.

Disclaimer, I'm not talking about children who of course we should do all we can to save.

I know these people make up only a small percentage of those requiring urgent treatment but it really pisses me off that they bring it on themselves by living the life they do and then expect the tax payer (having never paid tax in their lives)

Do you really think the drug honchos aren’t hurting each other?

They might not be stabbing each other on the High Street but I guarantee they are ordering harm to those who have stepped out of line/recruiting soldiers to protect patches.

Its not unusual for them to get shot every so often either.

or have I watched too many Guy Ritchie films?

This isn't the purge @Sellias

Really? How many people do you know who are from good background and aspire to be in gangs?

I’d love to know the answer. Because every single person I’ve come across who is involved in this lifestyle has usually come from poverty, a single parent household or witnessed some kind of domestic violence/abuse in the home.

You make it sound like gang members who get stabbed are being prioritised for treatment over other 'more worthy' people who should be getting treated first.
The whole point is it doesn't matter who you are, the sickest and most injured get treated first.
Ben who was stabbed in the abdomen will die without surgery that day, Bill who needs his hernia repaired will not die without surgery that day. So obviously Ben gets surgery first and survives, then Bill can get his surgery and survives.

Its not a queue up and get treated in order of arrival system it is a save the sickest person first. Its a public service- for all members of the public. Not just the nice ones who you like, who you believe are worth treating.
YABU to think that, its a health service not a moral judgement lottery, where you get priority treatment if enough people decide your worth saving.

What a silly post.

Because they need emergency treatment ffs. Are you dense?

And I work with this demographic. There's a 16 year old at the moment who is in my opinion and the opinion of many others, an energing psychopath and very likely to kill someone or be killed.

But in your pie in the sky idea, he'd be excluded from your opinion about who should get treatment because he's 16 and a child. But if he stabs an 18 or 19 year old who is also involved in the drug trade or just an associate of people who are, they should not receive treatment?

Give over.

I'm not convinced you're actually a HCP if you're coming up with this nonsense.

The ones at the top call the shots and hits, the ones at the bottom are often trapped in that life. Yes they deserve the help and support of the NHS, probably a chance of them to reform. It a wake up call. You can't deny someone life saving health care because there doing illegal stuff.

Retired NHS nurse here who worked AE everyone must be entitled to treatment .It is the foundation of the NHS and a very slippery path awaits once a section of society is excluded. And yes I've been assaulted by patients, fortunately nothing too serious .

Medical staff should treat everyone regardless of their issues/background.

BUT pragmatically speaking, my family member worked in A&E and there were too many occasions to mention where aggressive and drunk people interfered with other waiting patients, delayed triage and assaulted staff. Security is never adequate enough to prevent or manage this, leading to a waste of time and resources. This should be better managed and those individuals restrained by adequate security.

The underlying need of course is to fund education, health and social security better, preventing or at least reducing the social conditions that lead to high crime.

Have I fallen asleep and woken up in Columbia? They tend to leave their dead and dying rival gang members in the street.
I'd like to think the UK is a tad more civilised.

So where would you stop then? After 'criminals' whether found guilty of any offence or not, maybe people who smoke/drink/get fat/ don't take meds properly/don't have meaningful ,productive lives/ are thought to be a less advanced ethnicity in the manner of Hitler? It really is the slippery slope.

Yeah sure, casualty staff have loads of time and resource to run full character checks and DBS reviews on everyone who comes in.

I think it’s a slippery slope to deem who is and isn’t worthy of treatment based on morality. The NHS is for everyone. And doctors are meant to treat everyone, that includes criminals.

I've been heartened by those who state that it is not in the values of the NHS, and that staff can't, and won't, pick and choose who they care for, and how well they are cared for. Yet ample evidence exists to show that this is simply not the case. Patients are routinely treated less favourably, but it's sex based, not morality based. It's a good moral question though - we are all outraged by the thought of gang members being treated differently, and yet we all pretty much accept that as women, we will get a raw deal...

"The UK is thought to have the largest female health gap among G20 countries, and the 12th largest globally, with millions of women falling through it every year. At the end of 2021, the UK government not only recognised the gender health gap. A variety of studies have shown that in many areas of healthcare women experience poorer outcomes. For example, in 2016, researchers at University College London found that women with dementia receive worse medical treatment than men with the condition. They found that women make fewer visits to the GP, receive less health monitoring, and take more potentially harmful medication. Another study found that in US emergency departments, women who are in acute pain are less likely to be given opioid painkillers than men. Women also had to wait longer to receive painkillers when they were prescribed. In addition, University of Rhode Island researcher, Karen L Calderone has found that women are half as likely to receive painkillers after surgery."

From: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/womens-health-outcomes-is-there-a-gender-gap/

I work in criminal law. I think these sorts of thoughts go through a lot of people's heads but they know in practical terms it is impossible and on moral terms it is very wrong. Do you propose that we have a trial before treating an individual because everybody is innocent until proved guilty? There are always going to be too many grey areas. What if a person is stabbed for not paying a previous drug debt but is in the process of turning their life around? What if someone with a criminal record is attacked without any provocation? Also, where do you draw the line with that kind of thinking? Alcoholics, drug addicts, overweight, self-harm, suicide, drunk people, recreational drugs etc etc.

It's hard to swallow sometimes but absolutely everyone should be treated the same when it comes to medical care. From auntie Susan who volunteers at the homeless shelter 4 nights a week and donated her kidney to a stranger's child, to knife wielding drug dealing gang members who drown kittens for a hobby.

And yes it does suck, and it is hard sometimes to switch off from what they do or have done or might do if you save them and focus entirely and completely on "this is a human life that we must try to save", especially knowing it's entirely possible they've taken a life at some point, or will do so eventually. It's hard.

But precious few humans have the right to make the decision on whether another human lives or dies, and that's as it should be.

Only problem is how do you police who is a gang member etc.
Not only that it opens up to things snowballing before you know it, anyone overweight, anyone who's smoked, eaten processed food, not paid enough NI.

not possible… read up on Hippocrates Oath

People who fall into crime has mostly grown up in poverty with none of the parental support that you hear described on here.

What you suggest is inhumane and very similar to the argument that suggests clinically obese patients with related health issues shouldn't be helped, alcoholics, the list goes on.

I would hope the gang member's life could be saved and they have a shot at a second chance life.

I hate to be brutal but at lot of the patients who you consider more deserving 'bring it on themselves' too.

Where do you draw the line, how do you choose who is worthy or not?

-You sell drugs and got yourself stabbed-No treatment.

-You had 2 glasses of wine a night, massively increased your risk of cancer- No treatment, you brought it on yourself.

-You smoked 20 years ago and now have lung cancer-No treatment, you brought it on yourself.

You we're told to make life style changes, you didn't and now have diabetes- No treatment, you didn't comply with advice.

Health care cannot discriminate. The 'worthy' should not be deemed valuable enough to save. You have no idea what cased people to the make the decisions that left them in these situations.

Some people are better for society than others but that doesn't mean all people are not valuable.

YABU

There's nothing intrinsic about the day of one's 18 birthday that makes a person who has been totally abandonned and let down by society worthy of help and support the day before, and trash that deserves to die the day after. The compassion that made you realise that you had to make an exception for kids actually means you have to make an exception for everyone, because no one has the god-like powers to see into a person's soul when they are lying there bleeding, and work out whether they are there because the turbulent accidents of fate forced them into this position or whether they made an active, conscious, fully informed choice to be evil when there was a perfectly accessible path to comfort, freedom and prosperity through entirely moral and legal means.

The NHS is for everyone. There aren't "bad people" who are so bad they don't deserve heathcare. Healthcare is a human right. Rather than trying to define who is too bad to be alloweed human rights, lets focus on fixing the ills of society so that young people feel they have a bright future and have no need to get involved with the gangs and drugs.

"If a gang member is stabbed as part of some daft fued they will one thousand percent get the treatment they need, same day, no waiting list"

Ambulance treatment is a completely separate thing to people on waiting lists for treatment like cancer treatments - there is no connection at all between the 2 things so I think you might be confused there.

Also yabu from an ethical pov.

Shall we add smokers and drinkers to your list?

Do you mean not treat for injuries sustained from gang violence or should criminals in jail who get cancer not be allowed treatment? (We currently bring them in to hospital with some guards)

How would the nhs know who is a gang member and who is someone in wrong place at wrong time and caught up in the cross fire of a fight?

What about someone who gets stabbed or attacked because they're trying to leave that life behind and previous "friends" turn against them?

I don't agree with blocking access to help based on moral judgement because it becomes a slippery slope, but even if I did, I don't understand how you'd implement a system where a scenario like someone found stabbed and bleeding in the street and passer-by phones 999, a call handler can make the moral judgement and tell the passer-by "leave them there to die, they're a gang member" Would you like to be responsible for making that choice and having the consequences on your own conscious when you get it wrong?

The only way I could think is checking for convictions before giving medical help, if the nhs is so strapped I can't imagine them having the resources to implement a system where they investigate a stabbing to determine if it's gang related before saving lives.

Where would you choose to leave people to die? The street? A special ward for gang members to be shoved on to die? Would it not cause more delays if call handlers and doctors and nurses have to find out the gang status of someone? And if someone had no convictions and is innocent they've died in the meantime?

Why only gang members? Why not other criminals or people who break the law and cause harm in other ways, speeding for example, would you support a similar concept for people with speeding fines who end up in a car crash?

How would it work?