AIBU to think the NHS is bloody brilliant sometimes?

[BarbaraVineFan]

I crushed my finger on Tuesday in a silly accident. Popped a plaster on and hoped for the best, but by yesterday evening it bore a strong resemblance to ET’s finger so I thought I’d better get it checked out. Quick trip to the pharmacy, they advised 111. Called 111 this morning, got through almost straight away, was sent to urgent care.

Went to urgent care this morning and waited about an hour. While I was waiting a chap came round with a trolley giving out free tea, coffee and biscuits. Brilliant! Then i was seen by a lovely specialist nurse who checked for tendon and nerve damage and said i needed an X ray to check for fractures. Waited about 5 mins for the X ray, the radiographer sent the images back to the nurse and I was seen again within 5-10 mins to be told I had a fractured bone in my finger. She put a splint and dressing on and sent me on my way with another splint, some gauze and tape for when I need to change the dressing. At all times, everyone was kind, patient and explained everything to me, I didn’t feel rushed in any way and came out about 2 hours after I went in.

And ALL FOR FREE (I know, I know, it’s not really free, but still!). It just made me think how lucky I am not to live in eg the USA, where a minor injury like this would probably cost me thousands of dollars. Thank you, NHS!

To be very honest, I saw five different neurologists, four of whom were on the NHS.

I self diagnosed my movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia, and four of the neurologists gaslighted me, telling me it was either nothing, or a functional neurological disorder (FND) (AKA the way they love to group together all of the vague, misdiagnosed neurological conditions and label them as malingering/psychogenic.😳)

Then, only after I'd seen a private neurologist, did I get my actual diagnosis confirmed. (Although, ironically, he did work both for the NHS and privately, as most probably do).

Funny how the NHS doctors didn't want to admit these things cause harm, yet the private consultant did. 🤔😞

I know there are many things wrong, but there's an awful lot right about the NHS

But there shouldn't be many things wrong. Why set the bar so low? And if one more person mentions the US ...

All this "it's so wonderful it's free".

I mean it is wonderful if it works to your advantage and obviously it would be awful to be in a workplace insurance based system like the US and have a condition that wasn't covered (people do like to forget about Medicare and Medicaid of course).

But it's NOT free. It's very expensive. Just not for you!

It would be a more equitable to have a system where more could be covered and where people who could afford it could contribute on a sliding scale, rather than our one where some conditions are covered 100% and other conditions are completely ignored (or the waiting lists are so long they might as well be).

My dad's life was saved by the NHS a few years ago (which is wonderful). Could he have afforded to pay for the treatment? Er yes...yes he could! My SIL was in a similar position but couldn't have afforded the treatment. Meanwhile I've had to pay for nearly all my family's issues because our conditions fall into the "chronic" bucket not "acute". It just all seems a bit crazy, random and unplanned.

We’ve used it more in the past 12 months than at any other time in our lives and it has been pretty faultless - ambulances, A&E, HDU, imaging, specialists in orthopaedics and neurology, nursing on the ward, pharmacies, surgery, physio - between DH and two DC we’ve pretty much covered it all. There have been occasional delays and a couple of times when we have had to advocate for ourselves but nothing particularly significant, and every individual we have dealt with has been kind and compassionate. I will always have a special place in my heart for the paediatrician who stayed well beyond the end of his shift to rule out a couple of scary diagnoses for my youngest when we had been brought in my ambulance.

Sorry for mentioning the US 😂.

I have some experience of the French, Canadian and Swiss systems, all of which appear to do some things well that the NHS does poorly if that helps. And I know Chinese people who go home for dental treatment and Indian medics who go back to India for advanced medical CPD. It's a big world out there with lots of ideas and alternative systems.

The NHS is absolutely amazing. Unfortunately it’s been let down through lack of funding and it is too top heavy with management and needs an overhaul in that respect. However, as an organisation and when dealing with all the staff on the frontline, it’s amazing.

The NHS staff are brilliant but ime the waiting times are awful.
Needed stitches last weekend and was in there 3 hours before I had an x-ray then another 2 before I got the stitches.

Yes we are lucky. So many moan about the nhs but they would moan more of paying 100/1000’s each visit

Yes. I had significant help fixing my eyes as a child, I get free hearing aids since I was ten and managed to have my first child with NHS funded IVF.

We get our medical checkups done in India. So much cheaper

I think it says a lot about the state of the system when a very basic level of care delivered promptly by people being kind is seen as amazing and worthy of huge amounts of praise.

It can be good. Recently my son in law needed to be seen re: a foot injury sustained at work, all sorted within an hour. Similarly, my daughter injured her leg, wound treated, all very quick, physio offered and delivered to a great timescale.

However, in this same period of time my son spent 4 days in A&E (yes, 4 days!), didn't receive the correct treatment (he has subclinical seizures that needed an EEG to confirm), it ended up with the Chief Medical Officer of the trust becoming involved (I used to work in medical negligence and know how to escalate), etc., etc. As an aside, they actually swabbed him for flu on admission, it came back positive 72 hours later (despite vaccination), so those 4 days when he was stacked next to dozens of old people on a trolleys in a corridor, well, given that both me and my husband (also vaccinated) came down with terrible flu, I dread to think how many people were infected and what sort of impact that had.

I’ve experienced both US and UK healthcare and, perhaps for obvious reasons, prefer the NHS… I always felt there was a bit of weird dynamic going on when I saw my US GP. He was hesitant to recommend options that might cost a lot (you have an annual deductible and insurance won’t pay for treatment until you’ve met it) and I was worried about being left with a large bill. It meant I didn’t really receive some of the investigations needed because the GP presented them as ‘I suppose you could have this (gold standard treatment)but this could work okay (budget option). So I just went with the cheaper option. It’s a very weird dynamic. I’ve not experienced this at all in the Uk - GPs will refer you for what you need / what’s recommended, regardless of cost, and that is usually always the gold standard.

Well exactly.

I have been really impressed with my local Specsavers over the years. Kind, organised, efficient, well trained staff. Easy to book and cancel and rearrange appointments. Kind to elderly people. Kind to children. Some things (eye tests and basic glasses for children, hearing checks if you meet the criteria, etc) are paid for by the NHS. I'd like to see a lot more of that kind of mixed economy..

To add, I know they're a franchise so don't come at me saying your Specsavers are dreadful!

I mean… great. But it’s a lottery. What the NHS does reasonably well is follow protocols and pathways. If you turn up at the emergency department crying in pain, but it’s not immediately clear what it is, you can find yourself lying on the floor in the filthy waiting room for 4 hours because the health care assistant just took your initial obs and apparently you are fine and theres no urgency… There are no doctors in sight until they let you through the system of waiting areas.
( And no admission of fault after emergency surgery happens 2 days later).

It’s also not brilliant if you are old or vulnerable in any way and on a general ward. Care can range from mildly competent to downright negligent.
And we have all read the harrowing experiences of women on maternity wards, and the reports in the press of actually cruel and negligent behaviour by midwives and nurses that led to the deaths of babies.
On balance, I would take a sledgehammer to the whole holy mess and start again. If most of Europe can manage better health care for ALL then why can’t we?
It’s not a choice between the US system or our utterly dysfunctional one.

I think the NHS is completely brilliant at emergency care. Last year my dad had a life threatening emergency. Ambulance was at his door in 8 minutes, he was blue lighted to A&E where a team met him at the door. We raced up and were taken straight to a relatives room and once they’d got him stabilised, the care in Resus was utterly amazing.

He was in ICU for about a week with 1-2-1 nursing and I remember looking at all this amazing equipment and care and thinking how much all of that would have cost if I was footing the bill (beyond taxes). Thankfully he made a good recovery and I’ll always be thankful for the incredible care he got that night.

The problem is, it's not called the National Emergency Care Service, and to stay healthy, a population needs a lot of preventative and ongoing healthcare (which if done well, ought to reduce the emergency admissions anyway). I'd love to see a cost benefit assessment of self referral physio, for instance. That's another thing, along with eyes and teeth, that's been largely privatised.

Yes the NHS is fantastic at times

Far too often service provided is poor, disjointed with poor outcomes

We deserve and should expect much better overall, that why we need to move on from the NHS to an insurance based system like Germany/France healthcare system that has much better outcomes

Being free at the point of service is not something we should be grateful for when the serive isn't up to standard

Yes, 'sometimes' is the key word here.

I've just spent six months chasing my surgery for something they should have done in a week without requiring my involvement at all.

I love the NHS. My sister had a ruptured brain aneurysm last year and she’d be dead if it wasn’t for them. Ive always worked for them and they’re great to work for

I've had world class care from the NHS - but also I and family members have had care so bad it was life threatening and with Dad almost torture certianly extreme neglect and a lot of care that's in between those extremes.

How good they are depends on what is wrong with you, where you are - age (which I find worrying) and yes sex you are and when you have problems - FIL fell down stairs at peak time so had to wait an hour in and out of conciouness - another day they'd have been striaght there.

There are systems between NHS and US system and I do think we should look at best pratcise round the world and see how we can improve the NHS - and yes comend what they do well and try and replicate it wider.

The NHS has to ration out care. The USA is not perfect has so many issues but there are states who have good system. My American friends in Boston are happy with it.

The United States has roughly 4.5 times more proton beam therapy centers per capita than the United Kingdom.

Because it’s privately funded. It’s not bloody rocket science, is it? There is no rationing of care in the NHS.

Course there is. Limited budget, NICE rations healthcare from the level of funding it gets.

Funnily enough I read about the case of a woman in the USA who actually survived a glioblastoma thanks to the advanced trials they have there and used CAN-3110. Had she been treated on the NHS she would have died.