To be really worried about the poor, disabled and elderly this winter?

[Namechangenhsworried]

I’ve just got in after spending nearly 14 hours in urgent care at my local hospital. During this time they didn’t even have the capacity to X-ray me. In the end I had to leave and fortunately what is a suspected broken hand and infection (the injury resulted in broken skin which has got infected) is manageable and I will be able to pay to have private treatment tomorrow after work.

I know much of the NHS isn’t in a good place but was shocked by just how bad it was. I have spent two days trying to get a response from a dr at 111 , my GP is off sick and it’s virtually impossible to see the locum. The queue for urgent care was out of the door and down the street (took an hour just to wait to get registered). The centre was standing room only with people saying they had been waiting for over 12 hours. Most of the staff looked exhausted , were running between patients and many irritable (one was angrily shouting at someone who was clearly unwell but it looked as though they had just snapped under the pressure). Staff complained of staff shortages, a lot of the equipment didn’t seem to work and on top of that they were having to try out a new records system which just seemed to be causing more problems.

I felt so sorry for everyone. I know things have been bad before but this just seemed so much worse than I’ve seen it before. It was like people had just given up /staff and patients were broken. And to make matters worse we are not even at peak flu/covid etc time. I should be able to get help from elsewhere but what about those who can’t? It’s so scary.

in the circumstances it doesn’t feel right that this lame government should be allowed to carry on whilst it is causing so much harm. But even if there is a change in leadership.- what then? Can this still be improved? We need change/to intervene before even more people suffer. It’s disgraceful that so many senior managers, private companies , the pharmaceutical industry, recruitment agencies and IT companies are making huge profits out of the NHS whilst so many of our most vulnerable can’t even get a basic service. It’s so sad and I just don’t know if it can be turned around.

Hi op

I'm disabled and unfortunately had a very nasty fall recently.

I waited four hours in agony unable to move waiting for an ambulance. I was then looked after by wonderful ambulance crew while we waited another couple of hours to even get into the emergency department. In fact from fall to being seen took 8 hours. Then the wait for scans and X-rays. The surgical ward I eventually ended up on was understaffed. I've been home a few weeks now and I'm having flash backs and nightmares about it all.

The nhs needs a massive staff injection. That was the opinion of ambulance staff who looked after me too. Their frustration at being stuck sat outside the hospital while they know there's urgent cases waiting to be seen, or worse, was frustrating for them. The wards are full of health care assistants but very few qualified nurses so patients were waiting hours for pain meds etc. they are doing their best but are so stretched and stressed. The health care assistants are paid so poorly for the work they do. Some of them were really awful and couldn't be bothered. I have no idea why they took on a job when they actually acted like they resented the role. Most were really helpful and caring.

I'm dreading this winter. I'm very scared of becoming unwell.

And just as I was typing this out I've been told my carer who helps me get up out of bed and ready for work (I am physically disabled but work full time as a civil servant) isn't available and will I be ok with a male carer. Great.

You are not being unreasonable and we should all be worried but you are wrong to think that this is a money problem. Even if the NHS has money thrown at it in its current form it would be defunct. That is a view expressed by both left and right. Money is not the issue. The institution has become bloated, corrupt, lazy and has lost its moral compass. money is being poured into it but it’s not getting to the right places. Standards have collapsed. Management is more worried about diversity quotas than looking after patients and the whole thing needs ripping out and starting again.

a national training programme would be a great place to start to develop a homegrown army of medics and nurses. And pay them properly but demand high standards from them. Get rid of the quangos, the agencies and think tanks. It’s a complete hot mess.

Trouble is there's no private healthcare equivalent to A and E. In two years myself and a child have had a surgery each on private healthcare, but the urgent presentation had to be dealt with by A and E.

I used to work for the NHS but am not interested in going back, because my private sector job is providing this healthcare insurance which I want for my children. I was copied in to the bills that were settled by the insurance company, honestly frightening amounts of money.

Or Minor Injuries. I recently needed to have a foot x-ray. I purposefully avoided going Monday, and went Tuesday morning. I was seen, x-rayed, seen again, and out in less than an hour. A couple of patients showed up whilst I was there who had been in on Monday and it had been too busy to get seen.

So where else do you go with a suspected fracture

I'm an NHS ward sister on an elderly ward. The last few months it's become the norm to have patients in corridors day and night. We try to staff it with a nurse but are often short staffed. This time last year it wasn't nearly as bad as it is now and like you said later in the winter with flu and covid etc becoming rife it's only going to get worse. We need more staff and people need to use other services such as GP before coming to A and E. But more importantly we need more support for the vulnerable in the community.

All this. DH is one of the previously mentioned, and oft derided, external consultants to the NHS. He has recently given up because in some trusts, run by some managers, there is literally nothing that can be done other than fire them all, and you can't, and if you did, they would just pop up somewhere else having been paid a nice big sum on dismissal, then reappear six months later to ruin another trust. There are many, many, career NHS leaders, and some of those ARE ex doctors and nurses, who are totally and utterly incompetent.

Quite.

Are you in Wales for any chance? Here the Welsh Government has basically trashed the NHS.
It is said "the line of Offa's Dyke is the line between life & death". Those of us from North Wales can get over the border to Chester but others aren't so fortunate.
A change of government won't make an iota of difference here.

We are living in a whole different world to when the NHS was founded.
Not just increase in population, increase in life expectancy and surviving previously untreatable illness/conditions.
People living longer and living alone means they would need greater support but also that they're reliant in themselves to assess if/when something is not right, or to seek medical help. A person falling and not being able to get up, and being discovered 12 hours later might have a different medical outcome to someone who had more immediate help.

A pp mentioned education of lifestyle choices but that is a whole other thread and really not as straightforward as "healthy eating/exercise/not smoking"
The availability, cost, convenience and addictiveness of UPF will likely contribute to some health conditions. Those weren't available in our grandparents generation. Lots of people know about healthy eating but (and I know lots would deny this or put down to laziness) some will be limited by access/availability to fresh food or cost in terms of time and money. Vapes are sometimes used to wean people off smoking but those have negative effects on health as well. The necessity for many households to have 2 parents working ft means increasing reliance on cars, less time for exercise. Out of town supermarkets replacing individual shops that were once within walking distance. Etc etc
The whole way we live life has changed and some lifestyle choices ....don't always contain a massive amount of choice!

There's no such thing as a "broken hand" for a kick off. The hand isn't one big bone !
There are 27 bones in the hand.

It's rare to break a bone in the hand unless there has been significant trauma, in which case OP would have had other injuries.

I don't understand this - "they didn't have the capacity to x-ray me" - if OP was triaged and an x-ray was needed, they would have got one.

If there is an infection then that tells me this isn't a new injury, so OP should have sought help as soon as it was done.

I don't think we are getting the full story here.

Ges di dy eni yn Cymru?

Cefais fy ngeni ym Mae Colwyn

FGS a broken hand is shorthand for a broken bone in the hand. Ditto broken leg/arm/foot etc. And I know at least 2 people who have had broken bones in the hand in the last couple of years - one after a cycle accident and one in a horse handling incident.

Ah man hyna di wneud fi yn llai siomedig i fod yn honest enwedig faint o agos rhydach chi i Conwy a Dinowrig a Mr Bebb

FGS a broken hand is shorthand for a broken bone in the hand.

Incorrect.

The suspected area of the fracture would be put on the triage notes. Different areas need to be splinted differently (if splinting is required)

And I know at least 2 people who have had broken bones in the hand in the last couple of years - one after a cycle accident and one in a horse handling incident.

That's exactly what I said - broken bones in the hand are usually the result of a single major trauma with other associated injuries.

The thought of needing A&E terrifies me.

Because we have a critically vulnerable person in the household, and there are nowadays no precautions against the transmission of infectious diseases. This is probably a bit shit for the elderly and other vulnerable people.

It's quite an indictment when attending hospital is the riskiest thing to your health.

All compounded by the length of waits and the crowdedness.

Do you mean Mr Bebbington at Swansea?

Guto Bebb was the Conservative MP for Conwy

I doubt the OP is quoting directly from the triage notes. The proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus is going to say a broken hand. Ditto a limb a medic would say femur/humerus or whatever but Jane on mumsnet is likely to say leg or arm.

Exactly this. Of course we need to get this government out, but it’s not as if they’re the only ones to have got us in this mess.

And it’s not like it will be easy to turn around, even with a fantastic new government (which I can’t see in the opposition - what exactly are their policies??)

I can’t see an answer. There simply isn’t the leadership in any party to do it.

I think the broken system we have is down to two things mainly.

1. Deliberately underfunding/staffing by the Tories.
2. Our top heavy society, large numbers of very elderly people with extremely low quality of life being kept alive at huge expense.

I think you cannot MAINLY blame those 2 things

Why would any political party DELIBERATELY underfund the health service. Money is thrown at it.

Do you really believe that there are large numbers of elderly people being kept alive at huge expense.
They are very low down on the list of priorities
Did you know they do not get automatic health check-ups after the age of 74. There are no cancer check-ups automatically after the age of 74.
What happened to the them during the pandemic - booted out of hospitals into care homes

Just because you know 80+ year olds with low quality of life being kept alive at great expense does not mean that that is the 'norm'.

I would add a couple more items to your list

Mass immigration with no increase in health care capacity
Life-style issues
NICE guidelines that insist 'choice' is available when the capacity is not really there. e.g. elective c-sections, weight-loss surgery
The reluctance of people to care for themselves and use common sense first aid instead of rushing to the GP or A & E

1, Incorrect.
The NHS has had millions pumped into it by both parties. There is (and always has been) too many 'Chiefs' and not enough 'Indians'.

2.Correct in part.
Giving a 95 y.o. with Parkinson's, 4 stents and diabetes a hip replacement isn't always good idea - especially when the wound won't heal.

We need better Care in the Community so we can discharge patients sooner and free up beds.

We need bursaries brought back for nurses and other AHPs to encourage training.

Nurses don't need degrees. Now we have overqualified people who can write a thesis (that no-one has read apart from the tutor) but think it's beneath them to empty a bedpan.

We need more clerical backup for 'coal-face' NHS workers to free up their time, instead of spending it collecting statistics for central government.

We need more Health Education to encourage people to have healthier life-styles and take responsibility for their own health. That starts at school by teaching kids how to cook (male & female).

We need to stop this abdication of personal responsibility and 'nanny state' mentality.

The best day of my life was when I left the NHS and went into the private sector 🙄

I thought he was Independent after he had the whip removed?

He left the Commons in 2019 I believe

I thought you were referring to Mr Bebbington orthopaedic hand specialist surgeon in Swansea.

Crossed wires it seems.