to be really pissed off with the NHS.

[RnR]

Feeling quite upset at the moment. Due for investigative op for fibroids on 1st June, rung up to find out more. Very cold, rude, unhelpful person on other side informs me of NOTHING, makes me feel like I am weird for asking questions like, what time will my op be, how long, will I be able to talk to someone afterwards etc... The only thing I find out is that the person who I thought was doing the procedure is not. I feel really really PISSED off that I was not informed of this. I asked for the number of the registrar's secretary and tried but got through to an answer machine.

Who can I complain to? Is this what it is really like? I feel so upset. Am I expecting too much from the NHS?

It also does not always provide treatment, or does not provide treatment in time so people die, or live but in terrible pain.

and millions of people in the states have NO healthcare at all - and die, and live in pain.
I know where I'd rather be.

you are not being unreasonable to want some info, but YABU to blame all of the NHS as you did in your thread title.

Message withdrawn

I agree oliverboiverbutt, I have lived in South Africa, so very much aware of how lucky we are here. My annoyance is over the way I was spoken to and made to feel even more uninformed.

MillieR, it is irrelevant, but worth saying that in the US if you can't afford the insurance you don't get the medical care. The whole point about the NHS is that it's for all of us, not just the rich.

Ok, I did not mean to BLAME THE WHOLE of the NHS.

FFSakes!

In every occupation there will be incompetence and rudeness. But the reason why it is the whole NHS that gets criticised for it is because it seems to be an institutional problem in that it does not respond effectively to complaints or attempt to change the culture. The NHS does seem to have the attitude that we should all be grateful for whatever it deems to dole out. If it listened to what patients are upset about rather than attempting to defend the indefensible. then some of the problems within the NHS could be resolved, and sometimes at very little cost.

What makes this all the more apparent is that the problem occurs far less often with NHS staff who have some distance from the NHS culture due to working in the community - community midwives, nurses, health visitors and GPs.

good, just wanted to remind you.

RnR you are not being unreasonable to want to know more but you are being unreasonable to say you are "really pissed off at the NHS" when one person has been unhelpful on the phone.

I've had a lot of treatment lately and made many calls but only one person was dismissive and rudely told me I had all the information I needed in my letter. I worked out later that some crucial inserts had not been included in the letter. I only discovered this as my mum was staying just before the op and said I needed to know x,y and z. So then I rang the consultant's secretary and got the right and helpful answer.

It's hard not to be put off when people are unhelpful but I do think it's a bit much to complain to Pals after one unsatisfactory phone call.

YANBU - complain to the PCT about the rudeness and the way you have been treated.

Didn't read your point before posting bloss. Fair point - lots of places have better healthcare than us - Scandanavian countries top us easily. I do get hacked off with people complaining though, as we are lucky in lots of ways. Doesn't excuse the crap, but you have to put it into perspective and personally I think a lot of the time we do get excellent care from the NHS, and I'm saying that waiting for a major op and a surgeon's secretary who hasn't phoned me back after my calling three times...

It's not unreasonable to be asking those questions, or to expect someone to be polite and point you in the direction of someone who may be able to help if they can't.

The ansaphone is one of those things though. She might be off sick or on leave this morning and no temp cover is arranged. She might be in the loo or collecting the post. She might be running a set of casenotes to theatre or out patients urgently. All sorts of reasons really. I hope you left a message! One of my pet hates is people who ring and don't leave a message, then complain that they hadn't been able to get hold of me.

My SIL pays a fair bit for her insurance in OZ, pays to take her dcs to doc too I'm sure.
You pay in NZ to go to the GP too.

Ddoes everyone need that ambulance insurance in OZ I keep hearing about (or is it just an urban myth?)

So Kormachameleon, are you saying that you are quite happy to be ignorant? Would you not want to find out any information related to your op? When in the day, how long? who to speak to, WHO is doing it?

I have just had a call from a very helpful person from ACT who has reassured me that the head of the gynae unit is going to ring me to have a brief chat to answer my questions. If this had happened during my first phone call all of this 'time wasting' could have been avoided.

Was the appointment booked verbally or have they written to you? If it's in writing I'm surprised there wasn't more information sent to you with the appointment. I thought that was pretty standard.

I book admissions and with every letter that gets sent the patient gets a leaflet about the unit, a map giving bus and train routes and information about their treatment agreement and stuff like that.

RnR, I think people have taken your need to rant understandably over a bad phone call as a moan against the NHS in general. And you are on the AIBU thread, so bound to get some heady replies.. Glad you're getting some proper answers now, though it's wrong you had to ask for them. Hope things go smoothly from now on for you.

Sometimes people want these direct concrete answers. NHS hospitals have very little in the way of staff that can take the time to answer questions. Doubtful that the secretary would know the answers or would have a nurse or doc nearby to answer them.

The best time to ask questions would be at pre-assessment. They should have the answers.

Staff do not always want to give concrete answers because things can change in a heartbeat with no warning, and they have no control over that. Then people complain.

I think that many complaints come from people because they have unrealistic expectations from the service.

Once (as a staff nurse) I was sent to staff an 18 bed day surgery ward all by myself and I have no experience of surgery. I work in medicine. They had taken so many recent medical admissions that they had no beds for the minor surgery patients that were booked to come in. So they opened a closed unit, put 18 beds in there, and sent me to staff it. I had 18 people come in at the same time. There is a lot to do to get them ready for theatre and seconds count. The wife of one of the men called to ask a million questions about the operation. Remember I was alone down there and I had minutes to get people who were first on the list ready.

Staying on the phone with her for as long as she wanted would have meant that I didn't get many of the patients organised and ready in time and they may have missed their ops. I was as nice as I could be on the phone considering the rush and the stress I was in the middle of at that time. But I had to be quick with her.

Then she put in a formal complaint because "She rang the ward to find out information and the nurse would only spend 5 minutes on the phone". That 5 minutes that I was generous enough to give nearly caused another patient to miss his window. This is how rushed and fast we are moving. The complaints department let it go because they knew that she had unrealistic expectations of me at that time and they know that THEY are not going to staff these units decently anytime soon.

Considering that there was a bed crisis at the time and that they nearly had to cancel all the minor surgical cases to get the acute medical patients in, it was a miracle that everyone got in a bed and got their day operations that day. It took a lot of hard work and many 12 hour shifts without breaks on the part of the staff to make that happen. Her husband got his op and was safe. It was a miracle that he even got in considering what was going on for that day. But all the unreasonable bitch could think about was the fact that I, as a nurse overwhelmed trying to single handedly run a ward (where every second counts and there are no second chances, could not give her more than 5 minutes. And I really couldn't.

If I had been fucking around on the phone answering relatives questions it would have been enough to totally screw up the surgical list and cause people to miss their ops, no doubt.

RnR - in the end, you seem to be getting VP treatment - head of gynae, indeed .

Usually, you get a pre-assessment visit, when you can ask all these q's, maybe meet the anaesthetist, etc. - this would have helped, and given you a time when you would have known you had a spot to ask all your qs.

I am in awe of the fact that my DS has had hundreds of thousands of poundsworth of top quality treatment and that we have been lucy, mostly, in meeting helpful, kind and patient employees...but I guess there will always be glitches and bad days.

I hope your op goes well.

and you know, later on when she came in I gave her all the info she wanted about after care etc and took time away from a recent post op patient to do so. But it was good enough because that morning, when she called, I didn't give her the time that she thought she should get when she wanted it.

You asked if you were being unreasonable and IMO yes you are.

You surgery is not an emergency, you will be contacted in good time and be able to ask all you want at your pre-op.

To get pissy about getting an answer phone is rideculous - the NHS have normal office hours and some of those in the administrations case happen to be part time.

ARe you telling me you have never been in a hospital or realised that you have pre-ops or that Drs and surgeons do ward rounds - they don;t just sew you up and give you a bus ticket you know!