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!

use a private gp and online pharmacy.

TBF I am having similar issues with BT, a corporation who should be able to deal with complicated matters! And communicate with their customers more efficiently so it’s not just the NHS. (Have also had a similar issue with the NHS re a prescription!) deep joy 😡🥺😩

That’s what happens when you give anything for free. People abuse it. Too many in this country only ever take form the system and, even worse, waste it. Not enough people contribute.

I find this hard to understand, as NHS Scotland use Portal and can access the systems for other regions so it is all stored on the same system. There are electronic patient records, so I'm not sure what you mean. Lots of departments still use paper notes, but after discharge they're scanned onto the EPR.

You still do dictations!!!!!!! Fucking hell. This, this is the problem. Speech to text software is available, consultants can (and do) this. Stop with the pointless letters, and post. Most people can receive emails and texts. Yes, yes, old people, but I used to get my mother's to me, and anyone under 80 is now pretty tech savvy.

Speech to text software is not one hundred percent accurate.Sometime is when you want it absolutely accurate with medical terminology correctly.Spelled.

Sometimes it is far better and quicker to send it to a human where you can correctly spell the medical words on the tape, and they can listen to it. And transcribe, it, it takes so long to correct a poorly transcribed speech to text.And know it's not a hundred percent accurate. Consultants and other professionals don't have time for this.

My speech to text at work, always needs multiple corrections made to it, and it's not quicker.It would have been quicker to type manually.Believe me on how poor it is i've typed this post using speech to text.

Bit of a mess, isn't it full stops in the wrong places and sentences cut off into the wrong fragments.

Why does it always fall back on the Gp? If a consultant has initiated new medication it needs to come from them, they need to send a letter to the Gp so they can prescribe it, stating the medication, dose, when to take and why they are taking it. The Gp can’t just go on someone’s record and write “onthebusses says X medication was to start by X consultant, she said this is the dose” and then prescribe it! They need proof, this is how mistakes would happen.

There are many different systems and patients do not have access to online records here. I was quite clear that the service I work in does not use any electronic patient record system. So I’m not sure why you find it hard to understand.

Patients don't have access, but that doesn't mean there aren't electronic patient records. I was talking about your personal experience saying that communication between departments doesn't happen. That's unlikely to be a failure of the patient record systems, if there's no communication that's likely to be human error.

Nope, the consultant can make a recommendation based on their expertise, but the original prescriber of a medicine is responsible for ongoing supply, monitoring etc. A gynaecologist will not (and cannot) have you back for weight and BP checks every 6-12 months, this is exactly what the GP is for. If the GP then has reason not to prescribe (some clinical concern that it's inappropriate) then they should query it with the consultant. The GP (or other prescriber) needs to be satisfied that the medicine is clinically appropriate, regardless of what a letter from the consultant says.

Ok? And? My point is you can’t just walk into your doctors and say so & so at the hospital said I need to be on this medication and this dose. Without any correspondence from that consultant that they were seen and the reason why the patient needs to be on this medication. Only then will they prescribe if clinically fit. Regardless of 6-12 months review or whatever point you were trying to make

exectly. Its madness that the NHS is still using such ancient technology and processes based on a senior person dictating a letter and a junior person typing it up. Hugely inefficient and time consuming. The elapsed time it takes to do that must be ridiculous and the impact is largely on patients. The NHS requires all these legions of admin staff because they lack the right tools and processes .

”Admin” roles have largely disappeared in other sectors and have not existed for years.

You don’t even have to see a GP, let alone a consultant, to have access to this pill.

Op’s ‘problem’ was a non issue

You can go to a family planning clinic for free and ask for it.

She wasted 3 weeks chasing a prescription for something that is widely available.

It absolutely isn't - I'm sure a proportion is due to what you say but in my experience of sitting in clinics and turning up on doorsteps for appointments that have been personally arranged with the patient and then they don't turn up/have gone out, it's mostly about people who don't give a shit about anyone's time.

Yes things crop up but then tell me! 9 times out of 10 they have my work mobile and could even just drop a text.

A refundable deposit for an appointment would focus a hell of a lot of people and stop so much wasted time

Did you see my post about this?Ancient technology.

Speech to text doesn't work accurately enough for technical letters, including medical terminology. The consultant would have to sit there and manually correct every.Letter and it would take forever

Speech to text doesn't work for my line of work.Either it's not accurate enough.

I've used my speech to text program for this post. Look how inaccurate it is.
It's randomly cut off sentences in the wrong places and put full stops weather shouldn't b.e

Don't have time to correct everyone of these. Using a human isn't's not ancient technology, it still has a place

And that is, without using any technical words

I say for the third time: there are not electronic patient records in the health board I work in.

And yes, there are many different patient record systems which are not accessed by every department/hospital, therefore communication gets lost. It is a systems error, not human error.

I’ve always thought dictation is a waste of time and have insisted on writing my own letters, even when not the norm. There are much better things admin can be getting on with.

And the health board is near Glasgow? There are EPRs in GGC, Lanarkshire, A&A, Forth Valley, D&G, Highland, Grampian, Orkney and Shetland, so I have no idea what board you're in.

Yup. Complete non-issue

I wasn’t thinking of a specific tool or technology being the solution. Just that there must be better ways than the dictation approach which creates a long E2E process requiring admin staff to listen to the dictation and type it up. It’s an expensive way of creating a letter. Are there no other possible options?

That’s great, I am telling you my experience not seeking you to corroborate them.

Please also read my posts correctly before quoting me. I was very clear in stating that I am talking about mental health services, and there are NO electronic patient records systems in several of the places you just listed.

You asked why it falls back on the GP and I'm explaining why. For most women of child-bearing age and potential a request for contraception would be routine for a GP, so yes ideally there should be correspondence from the consultant but actually it's unlikely to even be necessary in the OP's specific case (unless some special circumstances). And actually even for less routine medicines, if I walk into my GP and say a consultant said I need to be on something, they should clarify that with the hospital and try to help, not just send the patient away empty-handed.

It's fucking ridiculous. I'm 48 and I can't even remember secretaries at work taking dictation. It's something from 1970s sitcoms. It should all be being done remotely, couple of clicks of a mouse by the doctor or nurse and everything is done. The NHS is just full of luddites who don't care about wasting money because it isn't their money to waste, they still get paid regardless. There is no-one to hold the staff to account.

I’m quite old and have a memory of doing dictation and then the cassettes going to a typing pool in the late 80’s. But it all disappeared very quickly with email, online diaries, customer letters produced in other ways etc. only people at CEO type level were allowed PA’s. Secretarial roles disappeared. We are talking 40 years ago. I bet dictaphones are quite expensive now as virtually no-one uses them any more. I think there was some edict that the nhs had to stop using fax machines but that wasn’t that long ago.

The NHS must have IT and business process people who could/should streamline some of this stuff with fit for purpose technology and processes