The NHS. We need to fight to keep it.

[Differentforgirls]

My Mil is 87. Last year (around September) she was bleeding from her vagina and went to her GP.

The GP referred her to hospital for tests, which she got quickly.

It was cancerous polyps in her womb so she got further tests to ensure they hadn’t spread and was referred for surgery.

Tonight she has been discharged from hospital after numerous tests over the intervening months and a surgery yesterday (keyhole).

She’ll get follow up treatment too.

All NHS, where she has been treated with dignity, respect and kindness.

It might not be what it was due to cuts but it’s still something we should be proud of.

She’ll celebrate her 88th birthday next month, as an OAP in social housing with nothing but her pension, because of the NHS.

AIBU for thinking the NHS is something to be proud of and fight to keep?

Hmm it’s a difficult one. Healthcare is expensive, and costs only rise in wealthy countries where there is a health dividend in the form of longer living populations. Whether it’s free at the point of delivery, as here, funded through social insurance or private payers, the costs are getting up to around 8-10 per cent of GDP. Rather than spend a lot of time and effort and money reorganising the funding model, it would be better to focus on increasing productivity in healthcare, investing in capital infrastructure and capacity (so staff aren’t slowed down by crappy IT for example), reducing regional inequalities…there’s a lot to do before you get to the answer being ‘change the funding model’.

I am a nurse and I weep for the state of the NHS. Whilst I would love to sing its praises, I cannot deny that the gradual erosion of services has now tipped over into unsafe and undignified.

It doesn’t matter how late I leave or how many extra patients I take on because we’re short on the floor or how many times I use my own money to buy newspapers for the ward patients who are elderly and confused and severely lacking stimulation. It doesn’t matter what I do, as all I can see around me is worsening outcomes, poorer care and services not just on the brink but having completely tipped over.

It’s broken and so are those of us who work within it. And I wish this wasn’t the way.

That’s not my experience of the NHS. Three years on a waiting list for a hysterectomy that I needed in order to be able to leave the house. If I hadn’t forked out for private surgery I’d have had to give up my career. I don’t want to pay another penny towards something that I can’t use,

I am glad the NHS works for some bit for others it is a completely different story.
DH had cancer, his whole experience with the NHS was awful and as a result of the 'care' he received I am now facing the fourth anniversary of his death.

My FIL was admitted after a fall. He’d broken his back but was left for 3 days on just paracetamol. He normally took very strong meds for arthritis and they wouldn’t give them despite SIL taking them in. For those 3 days they’d been shifting and shoving him around while he screamed in pain.
After a scan they found he’d broken his back.
Whilst in hospital they brought him food when he was asleep. When he woke up they’d say sorry meal time is over. He waited hours for cups of tea and couldn’t reach his water. They sent him home after 3 weeks after discovering he had (terminal) kidney cancer but didn’t tell him or the family.
Dropped him home alone, in a wheelchair,
knowing he couldn’t walk without telling family. He couldn’t reach the phone on the kitchen surface and couldn’t move the wheelchair.
I turned up by chance after going round to fetch his post. He’d been left in his dressing gown in the middle of the kitchen all confused. His discharge letter just said “fall”. No mention of broken back or cancer. After a few days a nurse turned up and said he should never been sent home as he was terminally ill. We were all shocked as no one had been told. He died 2 weeks later.
My experience of the NHS over the past 26 years since DS1 was born is bad, bad, bad. My experiences are across 3 counties.

100% agree! It’s an awful service with some archaic processes and people running cottage industries to keep their jobs.

We need to review other EU countries not keep throwing money at this monster.

I believe in the NHS as a concept. But hate the way it is abused. For example example my clinic today - 2 professionals plus an interpreter, costing the NHS at least £100 per hour. 75% of appts were not attended. Patients were notified around a month in advance, and text reminders sent a week before. Because these Patients are children, and therefore not responsible for missing the appts, we have to offer at least 3 until we can discharge. Others - we provide expensive specialist equipment, to find it has been broken or lost through carelessness, and then we just have to provide another and another, because it's the NHS and everything has to be free. Except it's not free is it, someone has to pay.
Way to much wastage, both by Patients and by systems.

I think you have the answer OP. The NHS is broken. It’s needs a massive review with a co pay system.

Its also being abused by many.

And workers get squeezed even more. I think Farage is so aligned to the US that we will end up with the American model. Trump wanted our NHS and Farage will hand it to him.

OP - I have had good experiences of the NHS but our Trust was always good. I know that hasn’t been the case everywhere.

Someone mentioned ambulances - well I was doing my first aid course at work trained by paramedics and there were issues with the ambulance service back then (10 years ago). He kept telling us how difficult it was to get an ambulance and what to say. Tory government haven’t helped with their austerity level cuts to public spending.

That is terrible, yet believable.
Three years, I mean WTAF!
Women’s health ( in my view) is very overlooked and underfunded (?)

I went to my GP with post menopausal bleeding and cramps. Got sent away with buscopan! Turns out I had a rare and aggressive cancer, hiding in my womb!

That was just from the point I got put on the waiting list. Not including four years of jumping through hoops to get on it and being gaslighted by a succession of GPs.

I was pretty down on the NHS after an awful 3-day stay in Majors waiting area as there were no beds on the ward for me to move into but in the past few months I've been under an incredible team and consultant who have got so much moving for me. I'm really impressed. There does seem to be a strong element of pot luck in terms of the treatment you receive, but I wouldn't be without it.

Yes, some GP’s are professional gatekeepers and gaslighters! Does my head in. What a joke!

I don't think we should be proud of the NHS, no. Sanctifying it prevents us from looking at it with a clear head. Our cancer survival rates are poor compared to the rest of Europe, that's nothing to be proud of. Ambulance waits are shameful as are A & E waits. I say that as someone who worked in the NHS for years.

Many European health systems are far superior and we need to move to a system based on the best of those.

I’m glad that’s the experience your family has had, I had a drastically different experience, I had cancer and was repeatedly dismissed and like other pp gaslit about this. I am eternally grateful that my workplace had a private heath insurance scheme I was able to use, to get diagnosed and treated. I think some kind of reform of the system is needed.

That's just not good enough though. I wish people weren't so accepting of sub-standard care. If I described my recent experience of healthcare in mainland Europe, it would be unrecognisable compared to NHS care

It’s £400 a year for my teens for top private health policy. And £1000 a year for me. A bargain imo

We need a co-pay system as in much of Europe. We have a home in France. The healthcare in France is significantly better than in the UK, unless one is paying privately which on the whole we do because our local NHS services are disgraceful.

It isn't new either. Our DC are 31 and 27. They both needed grommets as infants. The NHS GP wouldn't even refer them to ENT - 14 and 11 ear infections respectively prior to 16 months. My father's acute myeloid leukaemia symptoms were ignored by his GP for four months in 2001.

It's not perfect and it needs more investment but we are so lucky to have it. In America people can't afford to ring for an ambulance, Insulin is £900 a month, you get cancer and not the right insurance and you are in debt for the rest of your life, people loose their homes because of medical fees and the list goes on. Even if we were privatised over here we would still have the same amount of drs and waiting lists would still be long. I understand people are fed up but free medical care is something we really don't want to get rid off.

I’ve just had a private referral for heavy periods. I had a consultation and ultrasound within two weeks. They’re pretty sure it’s fibroids and endo but have referred me for an MRI to be sure. I went in for the MRI, the fibroid looked like it could be a pregnancy, and not wanting to take any risks they did an ultrasound, blood test and urine test the same day (the same hour) and then rang me the next day to book my MRI back in. All in, cost me £100 excess as employer pays my insurance.

In America, DH needed urgent care for an insect bite that seemed infected/looked like cellulitis. Went to a pharmacy, was directed to an urgent care, walked in, paid $100, was seen immediately and given a prescription that cost $14 for one oral and one topical medication.

Both times, kindness, care and compassion was given in buckets.

Other health care systems work (although I’m not advocating for a replica of the US system) - the NHS isn’t the only option.

I agree and people seem to lose their minds when it comes to this topic, the NHS is a failing flawed system which is far from the envy of the world. We play a shit ton for it for most to see little to no benefit while the abusers of the system claim free bloody paracetamol. No politician can have this debate without accusations that we will end up with a US style system which is utter rubbish - there are many more sustainable models worldwide we could adopt but people feel entitled to the “free” system.

Why do people always pivot to the American system?

Just about every country in Western Europe offers a better healthcare service. The UK isn't 'lucky', our system isn't fit for purpose. We only need to look over the channel for functioning healthcare.

We certainly aren’t lucky to have it. We should be shouting from the rooftops for change.

I’m not proud of it.

sorry, but I’m not.

one of my friends died on the operating table because he’d been sent away from a and e as not ill enough and when finally admitted it was too late.

i personally am significantly more disabled than I otherwise would be as a complication wasn’t spotted in time and now I live in permanent pain. Only the fact my ExH had medical insurance meant I was able to get treatment.

it’s not ok at the moment. My mum is very elderly and I have a standing protocol that no-one in my family goes into hospital alone. They just are not safe places any more.

I went for a review with my consultant recently. This isn’t offered on the nhs - I can’t even get in to see my gp. The private hospital he practices at was absolutely chocka with patients.

people are scared of the level of treatment they will get at nhs hospital and don’t want to die or be permanently disabled.

we are already sliding significantly towards an American system.

Do we though? It’s an ineffective money pit, ran by more managers than clinicians, using a system that’s so ingrained in mismanagement that it can’t be fixed without burning it down and starting again.