Fed up with the NHS

[AliGrylls]

I am wondering if I am the only one who feels that the NHS is bleeding this country dry and is absolutely useless at the job it is supposed to do.

I had, what I thought was, a bad experience on the NHS when I was in hospital being induced in that I had to wait 2 hours for a saline drip during which time I threw up almost constantly and then had to wait a further 2 hours for an epidural when the pain following an amniotomy was excruciating. Eventually I had a c-section that went smoothly.

This however, appears to be nothing in comparison to what some people experience.

Friends have told me much worse. In particular I have heard that in St Georges (local teaching hospital which is the size of heathrow) in Tooting you can expect to wait up to 4 hours for an epidural. Also, one of my friends told me of a girl from her antenatal class who was in labour for 14 hours, who apparently had to give birth in the labour ward because there were no delivery suites available. She was not offered any pain relief - not even gas and air because in the labour ward they don't have the equipment available.

AIBU for thinking the healthcare system in this country is shocking (I guess I am thinking in relation to childbirth but generally as well). If not, please tell me your positive story to help me from going crazy on this subject.

When I hear my American ILs talk of £600pcm medical insurance (for normal, basic insurance for healthy people) I think we get VERY good value from the NHS.

DS has had hundreds of thousands of poundsworth of treatment, delivered with high expertise and professionalism. I see parents on American websites catering for the same orthopaedic conditions distaught because thier insuracne has reached it's limit, and they have to choose bwteen important support services that they cannot afford.

I have also spent hours in wards, and in clinics, watching peple get better, be fixed up, and either respect the NHS, make constructive criticism, but also too often waste and abuse it's resources. Fail to turn up for appointments, turn accidents into self-inflicted crises by not following simple instructions. All sorts.

I am sorry, OP, that you had a really tough time in labour, and to hear of other bad experiences, but before you moan us into somehting far far worse, writ a letter to the hospital saying how you care could have been improved, send it to your MP, join a patienst group, or become a member of your NHS Trust, and go to meetings to lobby for better management or more resources, or whatever.

Do you know how much it costs to give birth in hospital? And how many ££££s worth of appts you will use taking your baby to the GP over the next few years?

YABU

Please don't generalise the whole system with the experience in your area. I bet for every one of your experiences I could quote 10 good experiences people have had.

As I think someone has already mentioned, you probably had to wait for an epidural because there was someone who was in greater need than you.

I have had to see various specialists for my medical conditions and do you know what? Every time I'm sat there waiting for something to happen or my appointment overruns I thank god that I'm not ill enough to be seen quicker - but then I guess thats because of the people I've seen and how ill they are because of where I need to go for my conditions.

Did you have to wait 2 hours for a drip because they were busy or did you have to wait 2 hours for a syntocinon drip after having your waters broken 'cos that's the hospital's protocol?

I think the NHS is wonderful on the whole. It obviously has failings, but every system does. I think that actually we get tremendous value out of it, as long as too many people do not monopolise services with trivial things (ie going to GP when they have a common cold). I think that pple expect too much of sometimes.

Mind you, many of the London hospitals seem to be struggling disproportionately with delivering a quality service- is your experience largely London-based?

No the nhs isn't ideal, but it's doing a good job.

Perhaps the op would like to use a 3rd world hospital, where there is little or no pain relief available?!

My BIL is a carpenter on construction sites (so could have a eally serious accident, quite easily). He cannot afford his own insurance, so can only accept jobs where the employer will pay insurance. Which cuts down his chances of work tremendously.

It is a complete poverty trap.

I work in a london hospital. Many of us are writing business cases in order to try and keep our jobs. It is very time consuming. The problem is that ALL that matters ATM is cost cutting. Nothing else. Patients represent a source of cash from the PCTs, which has to be spread as thinly as possible. By cutting staff to the bare minimum, the Trust can make enough to make a dent in its bills.

I have worked in the NHS for donkey's years and I believe in it whole heartedly, but poor systems and incompetent management are destroying it.

Private insurance based system like USA would be a million times worse though.

Duchesse, yes my experience is London based mostly. You are right when I lived in Edinburgh my experience of the NHS was really good and they do seem to have it sorted there.

I also don't buy the argument of someone being in more need than another once you are in hospital. If you are in hospital you are either in labour / very sick and there should enough staff on shift to cover most eventualities.

I know the staff in the NHS work incredibly hard so if I were Gordie I would cut middle management and increase the number of clinical staff on the wards.

I also think 4 hours is COMPLETELY unacceptable to wait. Having gone through the pain of labour I can't imagine how I would have felt afterwards if I had had to wait for 4 hours. In the NHS by the time you ask for an epidural you need it.

There seems to be the idea that "free at the point of service" is the same as "free". The NHS is cheap for those who earn little and enjoy relatively poor health and very expensive for a high earner in good health. When people talk about how much this or that procedure would have cost privately, they seem to have forgotten how much of their taxes have gone towards it. For a lot of them, the tax savings would have far outweighed the cost of the procedures were the NHS to have ceased to exist.

Obviously universal healthcare has some advantages but there is one fundamental disadvantage. As long as both the patient and the provider believe it to be "free", there will never be a proper customer/service provider relationship, as there is in the private sector. What incentive is there for the practitioner to make the customer happy?

America is not as bad as people think, either. No-one in extremis is actually refused medical care. They are turned away from private hospitals and sent to public hospitals. It is not that different as if one turned up at a BUPA hospital demanding NHS treatment. Public hospitals in the States are not that great, but no worse than the worst of the NHS.

France actually has an interesting intermediate system where the state covers the majority of the cost but where everyone makes a means tested contribution.

The other problem with the health service is huge inefficiencies when the state purchases services (such as management consultancy) from its favoured tame providers. How much money does the NHS waste on IT alone?!

one of the major problems with the nhs is short sighted government policies and constant political interference.

swc has a good point.in that if we all perceive that the nhs is taking up to much of the countries finances we should be entering a debate on how to fund it so that it is still universal and free at the point of contact.

perhaps we also need to debate what it is that should be free on the nhs as in the oregan experiment.

For those that think the US system is cost effective it is worth remembering that while we spend 8% of GDP on healthcare they spend 16%. and are looking to ways to cut that amount as it is not cost effective.

if that was the case, would have to have have at our trust, 10 anaesthatists on at all times, how much do you reckon that would cost ??

and no-one wants to pay more tax..

AliGrylls did you complain? I had a pretty awful experience with ds and wrote a 9 page letter. I included some points to make the place better and got a visit from the department head, they have implemented some of my suggestions.

Try it, the worse that can happen is everything stays the same - of course if nobody says anything everything stays the same.

ThinksTooManyPeopleComplainToTheWrongPeopleTiggaxx

I work for the nhs in mental health services, CAMHS currently. Sometimes the NHS can be excellent but there are inherent flaws in the system.

The way they treat their staff for one, there's a culture of bullying within the nhs towards their staff that everyone seems afraid to talk about, fuelled by media speculation and a culture of litigation.

Nurse training these days is crap alot of the time, the entry requirements are too low and then the expectation of these people who're shoved on a ward in charge after 3 years of rubbish preparation is too high. I know my views are controversial but after having worked in nurse education for 2 years and also as a mentor for many years I've come to this conclusion.

Also in my service, CAMHS, we are expected to mop up a lot of societies ills by expending huge amounts of time and energy on families with children with behaviour difficulties that are social rather than biological/disorder specific in origin. This consumes huge amounts of time and energy. Children/families with disordser specific difficulties such as depression, asd, adhd, psychosis, eating disorder etc. often receive inadequate care as a result.

To expect better care in privare healthcare is naive however, you get better food, private rooms and a thicker carpet pile. Having done qulaity audits at 2 private psychiatric hospitals and also nhs wards the nhs came out better re quality of care and adherence to national standards. This was on young peoples in-patient psychiatric units. The main outcome was that re nursing care the private hospitals were far less discerning about the skills and experience of their nursing staff, used a lot of agency/bank staff and were largely unaware of NICE guidelines.

Food for thought.

YABU - The things you describe are because of underfunding, poor management, the growth of the private sector, specialisation of services, job cuts and contracting out of services.

The NHS does a good job of doing the things it was set up to do - provide health care to the general population which is free at the point of use with a view to improving the public health of the nation. It does this - the public health of the nation is vastly improved and all people in the UK have access to free treatment and services.

The NHS has it's problems - mostly as a result of Thatcher trying to make a piece of socialist policy into an organisation with capitalist values. Lots of these reforms have undermined the effectiveness of the NHS, I think quite deliberately, as Thatcher would probably have preferred the American model. I fully admit i am willing to blame Thatcher for everything though

We shouldn't get drawn into bashing the NHS, for all it's flaws it is an amazing organisation.

YANBU to expect better treatment than what you recieved however. I would also take other people's stories with a pinch of salt.

larrygrylls - I don't believe the NHS is expensive for those who pay a lot of tax. Medical treatments are expensive. Even if you are healthy during your working life it is likely you will make use of the NHS during your early and later years.

Don't forget the NHS is a socialist organisation and so therefore those earning the most are deliberately responsible for a higher proportion of the cost even though those earning the least will probably use the services more. The poor will however die younger and use the services for less time. This is how it is meant to work. Care is meant to be distributed where it is needed and paid for by those who are most able.

Lulu, you make a very valid point. I think I get carried away by myself sometimes.

Minx, I also agree with you. If I was run over by a bus I would want to be in an NHS hospital - I know that the quality of the staff is generally excellent and the facilities are much better than in the private sector.

My problem is with non-emergency procedures / appointments. If they are going to make things available they then have to make it so that people have access within a reasonable time. I do believe that emergencies can be created by inefficiency.

If it comes down to it I do prefer to pay for private care for things which the NHS does not perceive to be an emergency.

Are management consultants essential for the NHS?

I'm out of patience with the government, any government, on the NHS because of NPfIT. At least £5bn spent, badly so far, on an overambitious underspecified, underperforming IT project, which is (a) failing where implemented (b)going to be boycotted by increasing numbers of gp's and (c) the govt are currently having assessed to kill it. Drives me nuts a lot.

Here's my personal juxtaposition-rant:

I have rheumatoid arthritis, and my forum colleagues for that report such dire treatment across the country it makes you weep. I am lucky with a generous pct and a research-funded consultant. Effective treatment for this utterly debilitating immune disorder is rationed by NICE, requiring failure of less effective treatment then named-patient assessment for access to care. You can fail on the very tight assessment guidlines, only to have the PCT say, nah no money, anyway.

Despite the fact it is cost effective to society to keep up treated well and in work. But social bills don't get considered along with the health costs to individuals. I've spent a year unable to return to work due to ineffective treatment and jumping through the assessment hoops. Finally had first effective treatment. And I am super-lucky to have jumped these hoops so quickly.

oh, and all that time, accumulating joint damage which will require surgery eventually. go figure.

YANBU to be fed up with the bad service you received..

YABU to be fed up with and criticising the NHS as a whole..

I work in frontline NHS services and on a daily basis see staff going above and beyond the call of duty in order to deliver excellent patient care it makes me very proud to be a part of this.

HOWEVER, we are subject to regular abuse from 'unsatisfied' customers who have totally unrealistic expectations and a preconceived negative image of the NHS and its staff! for this reason, i detest 'NHS bashing'!

If a person has a bad experience in a shop on one occasion, they do not bleet about how the retail industry is the spawn of the devil sent to destroy the world.. however, if they have to wait a long time in A&E to have their cut finger looked at then it is a different story

YABVU.

NHS provides a very good service for the whole population of this country. It does not pander to individual needs/desires. That is what private medicine is for - pay as you go, you pay enough, you can get almost anything you want, whether it is good for you or not (Michael Jackson being given anaestetic drug to treat insomnia, anyone??).

Both as a patient in the NHS and as a HCP I can see it's flaws, believe you me, but it is a heck of a lot better than the alternative.

IOnteresting minxofmancunia- my eprsonal feeling with that (as my eldest has both asd and eating disorders) is that all children should be helped regardless of the cause of their difficulties as even if it caused by famillies etc- they are still the children. Besides on a pragmatic level, we need to get as many able to pay taxes as possible .

With the anaesthetist thing- I didn't get an eepidural fro my induced (eclampsia) delivery with ds1 for the same reasons- two anesthetists on ward, three women neeidng them, first come first served. I later learned that ds1's heart was worrying them at this stage, and I was throwing up as had hyperemesis gravidarum, and I found it helpful to make a complaint- bt I don't blame the anaesthetists- unless there are two allocated as spares plau one per bed there'sd still be times it could happen.

I;'ve only had one brish with priovate healthcare apart from vaccinations.and that was a patient I was providing home care for whose wife liked him in the private wing as she could come and go as she wished and the food was better- he died after a gastric tube was inserted wrong and not picked up. Not exactly empirical research, chastening nonetheless.

charis, German systom is not bad (I am German) but still insurance based, so if you are not in work an absolut minimum of care will only be provided under social services.
Private insurance is much more widespread in Germany and it you are privately insured you opt out of the state system, which of course means you do not contribute anymore. There is no real separation of private and state hospital which means all doctors (juniors and consultants) divide their time between private and state patients. Guess who gets more attention??
There is no GP necessarily where all care converges, so often the left hand does not know what the right is doing.
I see a lot of overinvestigating, overtreating and scaremongering in my (now elderly and aging) relatives with v little in the way of community care. Unless you can affort to pay for it, of course...