Let's turn the ( usual) NHS negativity around with your positive experiences

[Tiredallthetimeneedsleep]

Fed up with the latest negative NHS 'headline' so I thought I'd start a thread to share my positive experiences.

Had MRI booked within 2 weeks of seeing DR. Was seen on time and the staff were brilliant.

What are YOUR NHS positive stories?

I’m in England (south).

My child was born with a birth defect that required 5 years of treatment (weekly hospital visits for a few months, then every 3 months, with treatment at home). We’ve had excellent care throughout COVID and beyond with the child orthopaedic team. No disruption to treatment at all, despite telephone calls during lockdowns. Just brilliant. Child due to stop active treatment soon.

My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer last month after 2 week urgent investigation pathway. She is having her operation next week. Brilliant care, some clinically caused delay to booking op which has been well managed.

I’ve had investigations for long term condition… had to wait a few months for hospital investigations. All went smoothly and very efficient. Had to wait a few months but cancer was ruled out so was very happy to wait, as not life threatening.

Never had any issues booking a GP appointment when needed for myself and my family. I don’t know how the GPs are still standing- such a busy surgery (area with lots of older patients).

I know there are services that have extremely long waiting lists, but it is certainly not across the board and the quality and safety is good in many areas despite the HUGE challenges caused by Tory policy/ Brexit.

Also can we stop blaming NHS management please? I read they represent 2% of the workforce compared to 9% in private sector so it’s a red herring. They probably need more management to organise things better/ pump more into training and growing developing our own staff.

But would you like to have something better? Why are you focused on the system you see as bad? Why not look at those that are better?

I dislike on principle being told to be positive about something and it’s particularly galling to be told to be positive about something so manifestly flawed as the NHS. So as a starting point I find your premise a bit bullying.

The NHS is still fantastic at acute care. If you are on or suspected to be on a cancer pathway it is awesome. If you’re trying to get a GP’s appointment it is worse than third world quality.

A lot of people are very frustrated by the difference in these two stands of the NHS. Primary care not working properly is making acute care much much harder and more expensive and more people are dying as a result.

I still absolutely believe in and support the NHS but please don’t tell me I am not allowed to notice or comment on its failings. We can’t change it until we talk about it

People like you are the issue. You do realise that there’s other options than the dangerously failing NHS and going bankrupt to pay for your own treatment in the US? These are two absolute extremes.

Look at the healthcare model in European countries like Germany and France.

@Thepeopleversuswork well said

My c section after care was awful. I hear this a lot about postnatal experiences. It should be even better than normal because we have to care for babies aswell as ourselves
My hysterectomy care was amazing start to finish.

Sisters cancer treatment until death was good

My GP surgery are really great.
My repeat prescriptions are always done on time and sent to the chemist.
If I need to see a Dr I go online and complete the enquiry form and I get a phone call either later that day or the following morning (if I do the form in the evening). If they want you to see me they'll make me an appointment while I'm on the phone if not they sort the problem on the phone.
It works brilliantly.

I’m sorry, but this is only brilliant because we’ve been conditioned to expect little and to be grateful for everything that works.

What you describe is standard service, as it should be.

I agree with @ChardonnaysBeastlyCat this is not particularly great. It’s marginally better than average in the scope of an overall terrible national average.

I’m old enough to remember when you could phone your surgery in the morning, not sit through 45 minutes of recorded messages or fill in a Byzantine online form and get a same day appointment with a GP face to face.

We all understand that online triage and callbacks are a necessary evil and that the staff who are implementing it are doing the best they can with hideously limited resources but can we please stop gaslighting ourselves that this is “great”. It’s really pretty Orwellian that we have all come to accept this woefully suboptimal approach.

We actually pay for this as well. It’s not free and it’s not led by volunteers.

I have absolute sympathy for the people trying to operate in this landscape and absolutely no desire to get rid of the NHS. Nor do I claim to understand the economics behind why it’s so bad. But the quasi religious reverence with which it is treated and the pathetically low standards we now have for it should be a wake up call. Not a reason to cheer this threadbare excuse for a healthcare system.

GP system is a mess.

The actual care in hospitals is still high quality. Father at Moorefields, top notch treatment, me using CAMHS for a child.

However the access, the system and the gate keeping is hideous. I don't know what happened there.

The actual care in some hospitals is still high quality.

Maybe you need to adjust your expectations? Or lobby for higher taxes to invest more in the NHS to meet increased demand.

The health of the nation is far worse than it used to be… people are living longer. You can’t have the same service without massively increasing investment. The demand is far, far higher than it used to be.

I pay more than enough, thank you.

I agree the population health isn’t good but moreover we’re living longer, which is actually in part due to success of the NHS. All that elderly complex care is incredibly expensive

How much more do people want to pay?

The lack of primary care makes it more expensive.

A&E is where people end up when they cannot make an appointment with a GP or when they don't have a GP.

You can have anything, lower back pain, knee complaints, sore throat, high blood pressure, all conditions easily dealt with by a GP, and also cheaper than a visit to A&E.

Some things don't need more money wasted on them, just a better management.

I had surgery last year and was in hospital for 6 days. The care was amazing throughout. The surgery wasn't as simple as expected and they ended taking more tissues than expected. I had 3 consultants in the room at one point. My recovery from the surgery has been really good. The scar is long, obviously, but is straight and thin and the muscle is healing well.
I'm getting quarterly CT scans to check everything is going ok and a nurse from the team calls me monthly to check how things are and update me on any discussions in the MDT. I really can't criticise the care that I've received.

@Theellielonely I pay loads of taxes already: I'm in the highest tax-paying bracket, and would very happily pay more if I thought it was actually going to improve the way the NHS is run. I do think there should be more investment in the NHS but I also don't believe endlessly demanding more and more money is the solution: whatever you think of the quality of the people who work in the NHS (and generally I think they do a heroically good job) it's very clear that something is very fundamentally broken.

It's also true that part of the problem is elderly care and the appalling lack of joined-up government with respect to social care but I'm not sure it's true that overall population health is worse now: people are certainly living longer, and diseases of old age are paradoxically in part arising because the NHS is keeping people alive longer but I don't think general health is worse now than it was in the 70s, for example.

I just find it frustrating that this debate is so polarised between on the one hand people who want the NHS totally privatised and on the other the flag-carrying "support the NHS" types who treat it like a national treasure which is beyond reproach and beyond the scope of critical thinking.

It's very possible both to support the NHS and want it protected but also to admit that something is really not working and not to want all critical discussion about it shut down with accusations of being a Tory or equivalent. We should have a grown up conversation about whether we can afford to pour money into something which is so palpably not delivering on its objectives.

@Thepeopleversuswork

Yes we spend more on the NHS than ever before, but…..

The UK's population is ageing fast - people are surviving cancer - it’s no longer a death sentence for many (which is great!) and other diseases… so we have a huge increase in the population living with co-morbidities from age 75. These are the most expensive patients to treat.

We’re also the fattest country in Europe. Estimated cost of treating diabetes related health conditions are around 10% of NHS budget and growing… then there’s obesity with higher rates of cancer, heart disease.

As a consequence, demand for A&E , primary care, diagnostics and management of long term conditions all rising rapidly. Lots of services cannot cope.

The UK spends a lower proportion on health than other EU countries. Contrary to what you suggest, we need to pump much more into the NHS to keep up with demand. Fewer older people than ever (%. wise) get help with their social care needs from family, so they become more unwell needing more care.

We also have a lot of people not working due to poor health who could be paying taxes if we invested in preventative care/ public health initiatives. We are a very sick nation compared to other countries in Europe.

Then we have a workforce crisis due to Brexit, but also rather ironically the poor health and wellbeing of our healthcare workforce due to the relentless pressures. We have record numbers of vacant positions in the NHS - this leads to relying on agencies for temporary staff which is expensive.

Young people are our hope for the future- but birth rates have declined, migration is limited, people are not choosing healthcare at same level as before. Nursing trainees is at worryingly low numbers this year, so we’re not building the future pipeline. Lots of medic students are turning their backs on the NHS too.

It’s really quite complex and the system has been in terminal decline over last 10 years.

I’m not into Tory bashing, but we started falling behind our European countries in terms of investment , bed numbers and waiting times/ outcomes post 2010. We were doing really well with targets under Labour before then.

However, if Labour won in 2010, they could have taken the same trajectory as Tories…. if the public didn’t support higher taxes/investment we will get the healthcare system we deserve. So I don’t hold much hope Labour can turn it around when they (inevitably) get into power.

Anyway I think it’s lovely to see a thread celebrating the excellent care that is still being provided across the NHS, despite the incredibly difficult circumstances many of the staff are facing. It’s right that we celebrate and are grateful to these wonderful people.

I think it’s possible to both praise excellent care while criticising the system as a whole and having a constructive conversation about how our current situation is not working and needs a radical overhaul.

Isn't this the bare minimum you expect from a GP?

I was a severely sick child with CRMO and arthritis and a weakened immune system so I spent most my childhood living at GOSH and my local hospital. Cannot fault either for the care I received and being something that can be quite traumatic, the nhs and the staff made it so much easier and enjoyable for me. I’m so very grateful that I’m here today because the nhs have saved my life on multiple occasions!

Go Rishi, go Rishi, go Rishi

From 1997 to 2010, NHS real-terms spending per head grew by an average of 5.7%, far in excess of the 2.1% the NHS had received in the preceding 17 years. The NHS was the envy of the world at this point. We smashed all targets and quality was excellent.

Over the next decade since 2010, this fell to 0.4%. All while demand for NHS services grew with an increasingly unwell and ageing population.

Fits pretty neatly with who was in power during these periods. Make your own conclusions from these facts.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that voting Labour will make much difference… they won’t be able to get us back on track given the state of the economy. Not all of the economic decline is due to Tory policy to be fair, as many countries across Europe are also struggling … but Tory policy has definitely weakened structural issues and made them worse.

I suppose I should have clarified that it was about the front facing NHS ( paramedics, nurses etc). People at the frontline who worked through the pandemic, are getting poorly paid, yet still go into work everyday and help care for the sick. Sigh. It's so easy to berate and be negative, I just wanted a positive thread. To some of the posters -You could have slagged off your own experience of the NHS on your own thread
I. GIVE. UP