NHS experience today

[Maverick99]

My son had to have an operation today because he injured his finger yesterday (very traumatic injury, tip of finger degloved). Amazing that we were seen so quickly but my god it was not a fun experience. I can deal with all the waiting just fine, but once he had had the op, there was very little care.

He had essentially a plaster and bit of gauze stuck on his finger that was inadequate (falling off by the time we got hole). Had to have it re dressed and splinted by someone else once we got home who was shocked they hadn't dressed it properly. I hadn't realised his finger was actually broken until I read the discharge paperwork, and was about to leave, at which point I asked for more info. I haven't been given any info about wound care, how the surgery went, whether his nail is likely to grow back, whether the stitches are dissolvable or not, how long recovery might take etc.

He literally left the operating theatre, was put back on the ward for a few hours, obs were done and we were discharged. Literally no information about the surgery or aftercare given.

Is this a normal experience? It's just awful and I guess whilst I have been reading about the state of the NHS, I hadn't experienced it in a long time.

I worked with a homeless charity around 8 years ago. The hospital discharged a gentleman with no aftercare and no fixed abode following a leg amputation. The NHS has been awful for a long time. It's terrible and I fear for the future especially for my young children.

What people need to do is vote the Conservatives out.
The NHS was like this last time the Conservatives had been in for years.

@Cornishpasty342 - it wasn’t Raigmore.

The thing about the funding of the NHS, is I suspect one problem is they spend the money badly. They don’t seem to look after and value permanent staff - so they leave and continuity of care goes. Then they spend an absolute fortune on locums.
My Consultant friends can be working alongside Locum Consultants who are earning easily double what a regular Consultant earns. Plus the locum isn’t on the on call rota.

I have has fantastic cancer care recently- but that’s partly because now I’m on an algorithm of care. One step after an other.

Having said that - actually getting to see a GP - and getting diagnosed was not easy and I would have been missed but f I hadn’t been persistent.

Our ICU patients get great care because it’s 1:1 or 1:2. That’s the point. If you’ve got 1 or 2 nurses looking after 8, 10 or whatever ill patients that’s when issues begin and care becomes more stretched. Patients are also a lot sicker nowadays, have more complex health conditions and have greater expectations. The documentation is ridiculous even though it’s now computerised. It can take several hours a day away from the patient to plough through risk assessments etc.
My son had appendicitis a few years ago. As a HCP I knew the kind of questions to ask but otherwise I was only given very basic instructions. Rightly or wrongly people need to be proactive. Look up the surgery or condition, aftercare treatment etc whilst you are there and then ask staff if the advice is appropriate.

Unpopular opinion: the NHS isn't just underfunded. In my experience, some nurses treat patients like a total inconvenience, don't even disguise their contempt, and have no expectation of doing anything beyond the absolute bare minimum (and sometimes not even that). To not know all the answers to your fairly specific questions is totally understandable, but to not have any interest in even trying to find out?!

(Of course I'm sure this is only a minority of staff, but going only by my own direct experience, it feels like a significant minority. To be more specific, my recent experiences in A&E and MIU have been fantastic (long wait times aside), but my experiences on wards, particularly maternity, have been dire.)

The NHS is dangerously inadequate. The only people to blame are those who voted conservative in the last 2 elections.

This is true, but being over worked within a system where poor care is inevitable leads people to being comfortable with this level of service. Anyone who isn't will burnout and leave (as many have done).

CQC rated it as required improvement

Agreed! Where is there professionalism? It seems to me more and more that there is a malaise and general can’t be bothered attitude from some staff, which don’t get me wrong, I’m sure is down to the working conditions and environment (as is the case in a lot of jobs), but it’s not the General Publics fault that the Government has so severely underfunded and it now is seeming like an excuse to give poor service at times.

My dd had a similar injury 18 years ago, as a 3 year old. She was operated on and bandaged up appropriately and we were sent on our way.
We were told to go back to the a&e bandage clinic in a few days. We went there twice a week for a month for them to change her dressing and assess her wound.
At one point they sent us away with a bandaging pack for when we went for a prearranged week away, so we could do it ourselves.

How times seem to have changed 🤔

It might be different in your ds's case but my dd's nail grew back, despite the nail bed being damaged. The nail doesn't look entirely normal, her thumb is scarred and she lacks feeling in it.

Hope your ds heals well.
Bandage changes were quite distressing 😢, the nurse experimented with different dressings to find the best one for it, she eventually went with a burn dressing that was like mesh.

Tip of the iceberg.
We have patients squeezed in general practice for dressings, chronic leg wounds etc. My colleague agreed to stay half an hour late yesterday for one chap when she should have been off duty. There are no appointments for weeks, DN's have no capacity, wound care clinic full. We now have to refer to an urgent care/walk in centre where they have to sit and wait for hours for a dressing change amongst very poorly people.

Yes I agree with this, but think an underlying cause of the pockets of callous indifference is the under-funding resulting in lack of effective management and leadership. I’ve observed the patient’s experience in a number of settings over the past few years and have seen both exemplary multi-disciplinary care (Wythenshawe) and woefully sub standard nursing care (Pinderfields). It’s a lottery.

Similar experience last week, DD had a minor surgery but no one on the recovery ward could tell us what had actually been done in surgery. We had to try and interpret the notes ourselves, we think she had the thing removed but not entirely sure. No advice on aftercare, we got that from a Facebook group!

It's crap processes and culture. Do the surgeons not trust the nurses go deliver this info? Do the nurses not have a protocol checklist to go through with each patient post surgery? Clearly not.

One of my kids had something similar. We had a follow up in the fracture clinic a few days later (we hadn’t been told there was a break either, and turned out there wasn’t). And then weekly dressing changes for about two or three weeks I think?

Have you got any follow up appointments booked or told to expect an appointment?

I don't know why I never thought to check the CQC ratings of my local hospitals online. Turns out they're both "requires improvement" overall, and both "requires improvement" on safety. I guess that explains why I've had such particularly bad experiences?!

I absolutely understand the point about burnout - when you're being asked to do an impossible job you either protect yourself by doing a poor job of it, or you make yourself ill trying to do a good job.

My son had surgery this week and I cant praise the care he recieved highly enough. The surgeon and anesthetist were very thorough in explaining the procedure beforehand and came to check on him and give us feedback afterwards. The nurses were very kind and patient with him, he is Autistic and was very anxious, and gave us lots of post up care instructions.

Ive also had very negative experiences at the same hospital as a patient myself so I think it comes down to the individual staff.

Make a complaint to PALS in my experience they are very helpful.

Awful, horrendous. I've been working in the NHS for 43 years full time in various roles, senior nurse now outlying clinic podiatrist and I'm wondering if proper care exists anymore. I often have to ring wards and get unintelligible non answers. I send my patients into hospital for urgent treatment a lot for sepsis and they come out weeks later with my original dressing still on their foot (because I put it on properly) with gangrene underneath because nobody has even looked at it and a brand new pair of huge heel pressure ulcers which they didn't go in with from acknowledgement of care which take me months to heal. This isn't the odd person. It's routine.
Yet you'll find the paperwork is always perfect because thsts the only thing hospital managers care about.

At best, it’s sloppy (DF had a huge NO SALT sign over his bed and he was still given salt sachets with his meals) and at worst it’s negligent to the point of I think manslaughter. Poor DF was discharged from hospital and thrown into a hostel bed when he had no use of his legs, no bowel control, confused. All his medication was just thrown in a bag including loose pill packs with no instructions. If we had not been able to intervene he would have starves to death in his own shit alone on that bed.

DD3 has a persistent stye and the GP receptionist said they advised we take her to a and e as they have no appointments.

for a fucking STYE.

Telling me that I (and the medical professionals I have personally spoken to) 'haven't got a clue what we ae talking about' is actually very disrespectful and not really making your point any more valid in my opinion. You do realise, that the reason the NHS wasn't there for you when you turned to it was because it's underfunded.

This! It IS shit, and we should be able to say that it's shit!

That wasn't the reason at all actually. The main 'reason' was because the medical 'professionals' I encountered couldn't have been less interested. I didn't once feel remotely 'cared' for... until I was admitted to the private hospital. I actually hold the NHS staff I encountered accountable for making my condition so bad that I needed to be admitted to the private hospital. They couldn't help because they didn't know how to - more to do with being under qualified than underfunded!
I have no desire to ever set foot in an NHS doctor's surgery or hospital ever again... yet I can still keep paying towards them.

On the rare occasions me or mine have required the NHS, I announce within minutes of arriving at one of their warehouses that I am a retired nurse and therefore not prepared for any fuckery.
The Band 5 nurses who graduate these days have barely seen a ward before they promote them to Band 6 (ward sisters). It's a complete joke. They have been taught the business end of the job, rather than the nursing/caring side. They basically care about their salary, and how many perks they can get (hugely discounted leased EVs for a start).

Thank you for posting this. You've summed up brilliantly my experience as a patient.

Essentially no one wants to be a nurse nowadays and if you do and are reasonably intelligent you quickly become an advanced nurse practitioner. The job is often soul destroying, the pay is crap, management care more about box ticking and providing defensive documentation. Much of the hands on ‘basic’ nursing care is done by HCAs so if you are very busy you are entirely dependent on their ability.
The whole system is creaking. Some nurses wouldn’t have got a look in years ago and don’t deserve the title of nurse. Some international nurses and student nurses have poor English and need considerable support once in post which only puts more pressure on the other staff. Yes some nurses can be unprofessional and lazy. Equally so can Doctors, Physios etc. My management by an NHS cardiologist for example was pitiful.

I have noticed that younger nurses in some cases are less resilient. Many on my unit apparently ‘can’t’ do nights because of PTSD from covid times or they can’t sleep. So many can’t do them that oldies like us are doing more and more, far more than our fair share. Back in the day rightly or wrongly you’d crack on and think of your colleagues.
I don’t exactly know what my point is but I don’t think people realise how stretched wards are. The staffing is ridiculous so even basic things are getting missed. Other departments are the same which has a huge knock on effect. Students are struggling to get decent hands on experience in good learning environments. Mentors don’t have the time often to properly work with their students and really grill them. The tutors are invisible and don’t really have much input actually in the clinical area. My friend’s daughter didn’t seen her personal tutor one to one for over a year despite trying to make an appointment repeatedly.
I don’t know what the answer is tbh. Lack of staff, underfunding who knows ? I’m just glad I’ve flexi retired and don’t work on a ward!