To think you don't quite realise how badly the NHS is suffering until you witness it first hand

[DaisyCat33]

My parents are sitting in A&E today. They've just hit 12 hours. My dad was sent there by his GP for severe neck pain this morning. He's had morphine and an MRI scan, but they're now endlessly waiting to see a Dr about results. He hasn't even got a bed to lay on, despite debilitating neck pain. Many people are standing or sitting on the floor.

The couple sitting next to them have been there since 3am, for difficultly breathing.

I'm shocked. Honestly I knew the NHS had it's issues, but this bad?! It's frightening. I also had an email the other day saying my NHS dentist is closing, and it's basically a "well sorry no dentist for you any more, bye bye"

I don't really know the point of this thread really, I just feel shocked and upset that this is how it is. And I think a lot of people don't even realise? My parents definitely didn't until today. They are losing the will to live sat in that hospital.

Does anyone else just feel utterly helpless and anxious about this?

I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope the fact that everything was done is at least some comfort.

My Uncle is 88 and has had physio on the NHS after falling. What were they supposed to do, leave him to it? Before he fell he was active, going out every day, driving (he's not doddery and his eyesight is fine before anyone says anything) and caring for his 93 year old partner.

VOTE THE TORIES OUT!!!

They do not support the NHS. It is a socialist public service that they want to see gone. Tory businessmen want to access the healthcare market to make huge profits, as in America, and the NHS is in the way. They use private hospitals. So they are destroying it slowly so it loses public support and can then be abolished.

This is not bad management, this is deliberate running down. And if you can't afford private healthcare now, you or your family might be the ones to suffer and die.

Please vote for a progressive party - Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru - anything but Tory/Conservative in this year's general election.

"I can see my GP easily, but my GP practice is independent and not run by a US conglomerate."

I don't think we have those large US conglomerates owning GP surgeries in Wales, but we still have massive waits for GPs in some areas. It's to do with doctor to patient ratio not who owns the surgery. If you have a growing population in an area and not enough GPs you will have problems.

PFI was a public private partnership so in that sense we paid a huge amount via contracts and still are

Not sure how they’ll do it next time though, maybe they are t either but hope people won’t ask

"I work with a man whose 95 year old mother had a fall. She is having physio on the NHS. No wonder it’s up shit creek."

What a disgusting attitude.

@PastIsAnotherCountry this is another report from the Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org.uk/-/media/documents/about-us/hiu_report_nov2021_aw2.pdf?la=en&hash=16A7EF0183AF82614147C3CB1117396C8C18CBC5

Really everything they say is just common sense - if people have problems, be they issues with loneliness, addiction, mental health, etc then they'll keep turning up because we all have an instinct to survive, even if we're in a bad way. Patching those people up and sending them back out into the world is a very bad idea- they will just return, over and over and over. The big danger with this group is that a life-threatening issue is missed because it's assumed they're just drunk/having another crisis. Being drunk is a legitimate problem. Yes it's self-inflicted but the question to ask is why that person is getting falling-down drunk to the point of needing treatment. The system should help them, not just turn them away to get drunk again and potentially seriously injure themselves or someone else.

Don’t worry a lot of us know - gps are amazing. You work so hard. ❤️

Maybe I got good care as in my area we have integrated acute health care, community health care and adult social services?

We also have self referral for some things e.g. If I hadn't contacted doctor re pain relief I could have self referred to physio which I have done once before.

Yep it’s terrible, far too many people for the services. 12 hour waits in ED are standard, escalation policy puts beds in corridors and a 5th bed in the middle of a 4 bed bay, elective surgeries for life threatening conditions are routinely cancelled as there’s no beds.

No money and many years of no investment and an ever growing and ageing population has led to this. Mental health services are non existent leading this patient group to come to ED, where staff are limited to what they can do and it’s not the right environment but people are so desperate for help they come which adds to the pressure. Staff are run raggered, gaslighted by management and go home broken that this is the norm now.

It’s really really shit but I still see staff going above and beyond and glimpses of care going right for some patients so I suppose that’s what keeps us going

"in my area the independent GP practices are all easy to see a GP"

But if this is true, then surely everyone goes to those GPs and the problem would happen with those ones?
Although I've just remembered, there are strict catchment areas so your choice of GP is limited.
I was so upset a few years ago when I moved down the hill and had to be chucked out of my GP surgery just when I'd managed to feel comfortable with one of the GPs.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of treatment I've had recently if I'm honest.

Attended A&E a couple of weeks ago for a suspected DVT. Arrived at 8am and was fully assessed including ultrasound and home by 3pm.

Had multiple GP appts recently, both for me and my 7 year old, where I complete a form online and they then get back to you. In all cases except one I've then had either a telephone or f2f appointment the same day.

Currently pregnant and all my antenatal appointments have run broadly to schedule and I've always been able to be assessed in the antenatal unit when I've needed it.

I've obviously been lucky! I'm in the south west.

This is absolutely right.

"The 10 minute appointment is what ruined GP in my opinion. "

It's terrible. It also makes a mockery of the gatekeeper system. If you claim that people must see GPs first and cannot go directly to specialists, then the GP should have the time to find out what is wrong with the person. If the argument is that the GP treats the whole person holistically then there cannot be any of this nonsense of insisting on 'one problem per consultation' as I've heard that some GPs do. The problems may be linked!

I'll read the reports, thank you.

It reminds me of Gladwell's Million Dollar Murray.

O’Bryan and Johns called someone they knew at an ambulance service and then contacted the local hospitals. “We came up with three names that were some of our chronic inebriates in the downtown area, that got arrested the most often,” O’Bryan said. “We tracked those three individuals through just one of our two hospitals. One of the guys had been in jail previously, so he’d only been on the streets for six months. In those six months, he had accumulated a bill of a hundred thousand dollars— and that’s at the smaller of the two hospitals near downtown Reno. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that the other hospital had an even larger bill. Another individual came from Portland and had been in Reno for three months. In those three months, he had accumulated a bill for sixty-five thousand dollars. The third individual actually had some periods of being sober, and had accumulated a bill of fifty thousand.” The first of those people was Murray Barr, and Johns and O’Bryan realized that if you totted up all his hospital bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets— as well as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors’ fees, and other expenses— Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada. “It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray,” O’Bryan said.

Summary here: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/million-dollar-murray

Full article: https://www.ncceh.org/media/files/article/MillionDollarMurray.pdf

Apart from IVF, what non-essential treatment does the NHS provide?
Everything to do with our health is essential, if only for prevention and to avoid more serious issues.

The fundamental issue is that since 1947 the public have been endowed with vicarious gratitude for the NHS which was billed as "free". It has never been free but for decades the NHS got away with providing sub optimal services on that basis. The public behaved like lambs and never murmured dissent.

When there is no payment at the point of delivery (and for the vulnerable there shouldn't be but they should have to sign they have or provide evidence of benefits, etc) the user/patient/customer/client loses their status as negotiator in relation to quality services.

It leads to too many NHS staff treating us as inconsequential, entitled ingrate who are unworthy of excellence - because it's free and we should be grateful.

To all those who seem to think life is an episode of Logan's Run (look it up if you don't know it) then being 80 isn't an optional extra- you are just 'still here' and many 80 and even 'some' 90 year olds are still having an ok life and why shouldn't they get physio- not every older person is nodding away in a Parker knoll chair. My FIL is 84 and just had a cracking time with us in Stockholm. You yourselves might feel differently once you are in your 60s.

Personally (and it's now not so easy) I can see why better off pensioners buggered off to Spain and Portugal etc-

These are the people that social prescribers are meant to help. The problem is that in true NHS England style, they couldn’t accept that local charities had people who’d been doing “social prescribing” type work for years, linking people up with social activities & groups, visiting them, encouraging them to contact other services that could help.

so instead of funding those people, they instead spent millions reinventing the wheel, employing social prescribers directly by the NHS and setting up a social prescribing academy costing millions more than if they had just worked with the charities already doing the work

plus of course, all the social groups & activities & services provided by community didbt receive any of the funding for social prescribing

however it never occurred to them that they actually needed to find the activities & groups they were “socially prescribing”. They just assumed the charities would continue to provide them for next to nothing “oh but isn’t all done by volunteers?”

@RosesAndHellebores I'm not a Tory but I don't disagree- I think some radical changes are needed- I don't like US style systems as I think it just leads to medical services charging ludicrous sums and pushing up the charges constantly and also influencing in politics- I do think though we should be looking at Germany, France, Netherlands etc and how they operate.

@Crikeyalmighty I agree, but as a 60 year old professional I was told by an F2 that she'd assume I was retired as I'm over 60! I'm still working 3.5 years later. The NHS and EDI

My mother is 87, admittedly awaiting heart surgery, but apart from that is robust and has a fantastic life. Were she chronically ill and suffering, the heart surgery might not be an imperative however.