CuriosityKilled,
There are some wonderful front line staff in the NHS. However, there are also some awful ones. That is exactly the same as in any organisation.
It amazes me how naive people are in being absurdly grateful to the NHS in doing what it is very well paid (via YOUR taxes) to do. Doctors and nurses save lives, the good ones very well and the bad ones a lot less well. That is their job. They do this whether paid by "The State" (i.e YOU) or via insurance or personal savings. I have never heard of anyone writing wonderful thank you letters to their insurance company because they paid the private doctor/hospital to save their lives. And that is wherein the problem lies. The government and most of the media portray the NHS as this wonderful free service. It is not. And, as the practitioners and patients/clients buy this lie, it creates a culture that any care is a wonderful thing and we should not complain.
Now to move from theory to anecdote. My father died last year of a massive heart attack, aged 82. The staff at UCH intensive care battled for hours to save his life. On the other hand, they failed to contact me until 48 hours after he had passed away, despite me having the same surname, being in the phone directory and being a prominent number in my father's diary he carried with him at all times. The year before he had a first heart attack, what is termed a "silent" one where he had no chest pain but was breathless and his legs had severe oedema. Despite visting his GP twice, he missed it completely. Finally, a locum spotted it and sent him to the Royal Free. The care in the High Dependency Unit was, once again, superb. However, as soon as he moved to a general ward, the care became chaotic, not to say downright awful. They failed for a week to give him an appropriate course of diuretics to bring the oedema under control (and allow him to sleep in a bed, rather than in a chair awake all night so that he could breathe). During this time he saw a cardiac consultant once. Despite terrible insomnia (we are talking 48 hours with 0 sleep), they failed to give appropriate sedation. The nurses and ancillary staff insisted on calling him by his first name and talking down to him as if he were a child, despite the fact that he was a graduate with no mental deterioration whatsoever, to the extent of reading out the dinner menu to him rather than giving it to him to read.
So, CuriosityKilled, it will be no NHS for me in my dotage thanks. If I am able to afford it, it will be dignity and nice sheets. If not, it will be opiates and single malt scotch taken at the appropriate time.
Until a linkage is made between those who pay for healthcare and those who provide it, there will never really be a culture of respect for patients. Whether that means insurance, co-payments, or vouchers, I do not care. Of course, everyone should have the right to healthcare. However, there is more than one model of how to get to that point.