The nhs is falling on its knees :(

[BrowHair95]

And I’m sick of chasing everything up!! This is more of a rant really.

I had a gynaecology appointment on 29th July. I was prescribed birth control which is really important for me to have following a sad but necessary abortion.

The gynaecologist told me to hand my prescription into the on-site pharmacy. They advised me this would be around an hour wait, which was a little frustrating but I made it work - I waited in the cafe.

After an hour I approached the pharmacy. Once they did, I was told “we don’t do that tablet here”.

To make matters even worse, I was told I could collect it from my GP “in about a week”. No set time or urgency, just very casual about it.

And lo and behold, here I am over THREE WEEKS later, with absolutely no prescription to collect at my GP.

I have sent two complaint emails with no responses.

I just called the hospital. I spoke to a rude lady who said that it’s not their fault, that it’s been lost and they don’t have the prescription anywhere. It’s not been communicated somehow and that they can’t prescribe pills, I need to do it through my GP. The hospital said they sent a letter to them.

I’ve just contacted the GP and they have absolutely no record of a letter!!

So I now have to spend my time AGAIN trying to contact the same lady to tell her this doesn’t exist.

How is this even happening?? Honestly I’m sick to death of it. I work 9-5 and having to spend time chasing things up that other people should be doing!

My Ds Cardiologist wrote to his GP to instruct him to continue the standard cardiac meds Ds was already on. GP left a 'block' on Ds prescription and went on holiday. Tool 2 weeks of no meds & I'll Ds to sort out. We've now been waiting 14 weeks for Ds GP notes (for a complaint) Told 'GPs don't have to follow GDPR when we are busy'. I was recently admitted with BP of 207/124, chest pain, sob, Hyperlipidemia, family history CAD. I was supposed to be given soluble aspirin (amongst other things).I finally got it 13 hours later. My telemetry alarm went off often overnight (nothing). I cannot empty my bowel fully. Query CE, then after a 3m wait letter arrived today: specialist physio appt on 28 Nov. By telephone. It's broken where I am.

Yes, your experience. And I'm sorry this has happened to the OP. I've had excellent care from the NHS in the past year. Your experience is not grounds for saying "it's always been shit".
And who do you think you are telling someone their language is inappropriate? If you think someone has breached the guidelines you can report and let MNHQ deal with it.

Who's abusing you? Just get over the fact that someone disagrees with you.

Totally agree.

In my experience, treatment has been fine. But anything involving different departments or functions of the NHS communicating with each other has been awful.

What are these tablets that ae so difficult to get? Can you not just go to your GP for contraception?

This. No system run by humans for humans will be perfect but the American medics I know are in awe of what the NHS achieves - and its accountability.

The GP told my DM that she was too old, she's in her 70s, for further investigation regarding her swollen legs. They had previously given her tablets for water retention, but as these were not working, she was simply told to stop.

Yeah they’re shit with birth control. I just buy mine from Superdrug now

I work in the NHS in an admin role. Am not fat, lazy or incompetent. I am however snowed under with work. My dictations are at least 4 weeks behind because of the sheer volume of work. This year I have gone from a manageable amount of work if I worked really hard to at least double the amount. It is totally unmanageable and I think that this is largely to blame for the delay in clinical letters with instructions for prescription changes etc. The consultants do tend to indicate when a dictation is urgent and that is done within 24 hours. Sometimes a patient will call and if I can identify the dictation from the hundreds of dictations in my queue I will type it. If not it has to wait until it is next (if we can get it typed that saves another call about the same thing in a few days). No-one is deliberately delaying these.

Typing letters is a very small part of our total job. We deal with adding referrals to the electronic system (our referral letters don’t go anywhere physically so don’t get lost), printing, changes to clinics, all phone calls from patients, any requests from consultants plus loads more. We are not supposed to make appointments but sometimes it is just easier to do this rather than ask the correct department to do it and then keep checking it’s been done.

If you haven’t done this job you cannot imagine how much pressure we are under. We have such a high level of sickness (quite a lot due to stress) that we always have extra work added too. Today I had 2 other secretaries phones to cover, very little typing got done and so the dictation queue got longer and more patients are waiting for letters to go to their GPs and the phone calls keep coming. It’s a vicious circle.

I agree that updating the IT system would help but it all costs money - there’s always money for another manager. Not so much, but some for new consultants and definitely none for admin staff whose work load always increases with the new managers and consultants starting.

Op do you have the NHS app? The consultants letter may show up on there?

Why on earth are dictations even necessary in 2025? The NHS is still running like it's the 1970s. Referral letters?

Why is it like this?

I wonder where you are @Plastictreees ?
I am in Edinburgh and was at the western General and it was so efficient. I mean, im probably also in the glow of being told my lump isn't a scary lump so maybe im being super positive! I've also broken a bone, had a huge facial laceration and pneumonia and pleurisy since ive lived here and I can honestly say the treatment has been amazing. However, my treatment in the south of Scotland was terrible! Today they asked "are you okay to use stairs" when showing us out of the breast clinic. But when I had bursitis of the knee they marched me around the hospital at epic speed as if lifts hadn't been invented!

I wont lie, i cried a little on the way to the car!

My DSiS is undergoing cancer treatment and it's a full time job chasing up appointments including missed appointments by the oncologist, I kid you not! Scans taking 6 weeks to be read and then another wait to discuss the results. They're fucking hopeless and I'm raging for my poor sister. Luckily she has the means for private treatment which is what she's doing next.

Largely a good experience with the NHS here and I deal with them constantly due to my son's disability, constant appointments etc following a 10 month hospital stay until the start of this year.

Never had any issues with appointments, app works well etc and I always get notified of appointments in plenty of time plus receive several reminders as well.

When my son was an inpatient and under many specialities due to his complex needs, communication was definitely lacking at times and that would be my biggest complaint. There was also a delay to the surgery he needed which may have caused his disability but we'll never fully know for certain if it would've happened anyway due to how complex and unusual the situation was.

Ultimately, they saved his life when he had a small chance of surviving so I owe them absolutely everything especially as my son will officially be 1 year cancer free as of next month.

Ah, I’m near Glasgow - but I’ve lived in England and the care is just very variable all over. It’s more the communication between departments than clinical care though that tends to be an issue in my experience. I’m glad you got some good news!

They are most definitely needed. I'm not sure all the management roles where I am are needed, but of course we need managers and admin to keep the boat afloat. I couldn't do my job properly without them! Communication between hospital and GP isn't great that's for sure. In my area there are often disputes about who is doing what with the poor patient stuck in the middle. Someone mentioned Advice&Guidance which is a way for GPs to contact the hospital consultant for advice, and it's definitely worth mentioning that to the GP.

Not necessarily. When the NHS MSK team wanted to see a letter from a consultant I'd seen via health insurance I had to take my paper copy to my GP surgery, who obligingly scanned it and put it on my records. The private consultant had never sent it to them so it wasn't on my NHS app.

We’re all responsible for the state it’s in.
For example, the number of wasted appointments where people cba to turn up/phone to cancel or change the appointment, not only in hospitals but in surgeries etc too.
The volume of wasted medications- as a District Nurse I was horrified at the stock piling and sheer waste of medication and money. One patient had over £8k worth of unused tablets, he’d just kept ticking the repeat box despite having no intention of taking them. This was far from unusual, ask any pharmacy how many tablets they are sent for destruction- one I know of has the equivalent of a small skip every week.
The numbers of people turning up in A&E with minor ailments that a pharmacist could advise on or treat is enormous and a huge waste of time, money and resources. The days of treating minor ailments yourself seem to have gone.
People sometimes seem incapable of taking responsibility for their own health and expect someone else to sort them out, look at the rise in obesity, type 2 diabetes etc.

I agree. I don’t think any reasonable people blame the admin staff for being behind on dictations etc, but why is that the system?

Some consultants in our department are trialling a voice recognition system - this should help a bit if it ever rolls out completely.

I've had some amazing life saving experiences on the NHS and some absolute shit shows. They've saved my life twice,(Meningitis as a baby, subarachnoid hemorrhage as an adult, requiring brain surgery and a weeks stay in hospital - could not fault any member of staff, the care I received was amazing). My prenatal and postnatal care and labour care was horrific. (Which ended in a NHS debrief, investigation and change in policy). The follow up care to discovering my DS had pneumonia and sepsis (at age 1) was traumatic which started off with in him being sent home from hospital twice and from our GP practice after being misdiagnosed with a "viral illness" by 3 health care professionals and me being called a "hysterical mother". This led to him needing surgery as the infection was so severe, (because I was not believed that MY baby was as bad as I was making out) he ended up not initially responding to antibiotics and needed his lung surgically drained and cut into under GA.

My father received appalling care when he had cancer in 2004. He walked into hospital for tests as fit as always, they discovered cancer and basically left him to rot until he died there five weeks later. They lied to him and us, and when he had been sedated he wasn’t watched properly and he fell over and broke his arm. He received no treatment apart from large amounts of diamorphine at the end, he just gave up mentally.

I am pleased that your experience was positive, but that’s not the same for everyone and frankly the fact your Mother had good treatment doesn’t excuse the fact my Dad had dreadful treatment. What a ridiculous and insensitive post you made.

But then again, I remember the nurses who were supposed to be tucking into their lunches, (looking exhausted) who packed them away agin to take my DS for his emergency xray knowing it couldn't wait. I remember the trauma consultant stroking my sons hair after drilling into his shin to get a line of antibiotics in because all his veins had collapsed and was so gentle with him.
I even remember a specialist ambulance crew transporting him to another hospital in a specialist bed and the nurses holding his hand and trying to make him laugh despite it all being as serious as it was. None of them had to do the extra bits they did. It's easy to slag off all the shit but I couldn't do what they do.

I'm sorry for everyone who's experienced really awful and stressful things 💐

I find it absolutely useless. I have endometriosis which took 18 years to get diagnosed. Thankfully I was able to get my surgery done privately as the waiting list is a couple of years on the NHS. I think I would’ve harmed myself from dealing with chronic pain for that long. Im about to spend tens of thousands on IVF because the nhs provision is dire in my area. I know someone who attempted suicide and was let out of hospital a few hours later with minimal follow up. A friend’s elderly parent had a fall in hospital due to being left and had a bleed on the brain. Another friend lost their father to heart disease and they found a catalogue of errors with medication not being followed up between doctors. A relative broke their leg recently and they’ve been good with that, but I don’t have faith in the system at all.

I'm left wing and believe in the principle of the nhs, but I do wonder if it’s viable anymore in a world with increasingly complex treatments and an aging population