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.

The system is not perfec tit is such a VAST organisation but I would like to relate the details of my last shift to you.

I was on nights.

I work in an acute area with very dependent patients the vast majority who are undergoing intensive chemotherapy.

For an average ward we are in NHS terms fairly well staffed for nights (3 qualified,1 HCA) for a 24 bed.

This meant I had 8 patients.Of these 5 were on IV antibiotics, and had severe sepsis.(One person was on 6 different ones).1 was on a continuous infusion of medication that involved constant monitoring and freqeuent drug changes.3 were receiving transfusions,3 required nighttime chemotherapy as part of their regimes.5 were on intravenous fluid therapy and several were on opiate analgesia which requires double checking of any medications with 2 qualified staff,ditto the chemo and any intravenous drugs.We have to physically mix all the antibiotics,and the majority of patients have central lines which means everytime you access them you need to adhere to a strict aseptic regime.The blood needs constant monitoring and observcation as does the chemo.As well as the iv stuff we have to give out the patients nighttime meds,update fluid balance and status,deal with the bread and butter-pain relief,control of nausea/vomiting,clean up and bodily secretions and so on and this is before you factor in any "Untoward" incidents,like a patient deteriorating rapidly,sudden bleed,cardiac arrest and suchlike.It is non-stop.During the night as well as the constant monitoring we have to do the routine stuff like updating all the paperwork,checking equipment and drugs,restocking and so on,checking thropugh blood results,etc etc.I very rarely have a break as there is so much to do!

Our staffing is bad at the mo-some on ml,some on lts,2 senior vacancies,and the majority of my colleagues work their asses of and are constantly doing overtime.I sdtyed late this morning as the skill mix was atrocious and wanted to help my colleague who was the only one IV trained.

Med staff cover a joke 2,not their fault,just 1 junior doc for a 100 odd bed unit.

The trouble is now budgets are beingslashed and I just see it getting worse

It is sad that the staff have to spread themselves so thin

The NHS isn't perfect but I wouldn't swap it for anything else. It has saved my Mum's life, mine and DS's.

DS had cancer when he was little. At that time we had no money and lots of debts, I don't think we even had insurance on the house and contents as we were so skint so there is no way we could have afforded medical insurance if the NHS had not been there. His treatment would have bankrupted us and left us in more debt that we'd still be paying off now. A price we would have happily paid when compared with a child's life but why should anybody be put in that position? The growth hormone he was given for 2 years after his treatment was £10,000 a year before you even consider the 5 week hospital stay, the 6 hours of surgery, the MRI scans, the radiotherapy etc etc.

Even now when he's in long term follow up and completely healthy they are still sending him for tests both to make sure his treatment has had no long term effects and more importantly to improve the treatment being given to children with the same cancer now.

A friend of my colleague is American and recently had a nasty chest infection resulting in her being hospitalised for 4 days. The bill? $7,000. Only part of it was covered by her insurance so she now has to find $2,500.

I don't think we realise quite how good we've got it!

Larrygrylls... Naive? I don't thinks so,
Yes I am most certainly grateful for the NHS staff who do their job SO well, YES I am grateful for the NHS funding that paid for their training.
Is this absurd? Why? Of course i fully understand that they are paid to do a job & it is funded by the tax system.
But I think it would be very naive to assume that private somehow equates to a better level of care.
Yes no doubt private pays for a more Hotel style in patient service, evening clinic appnt & shorter waiting times for non urgent cases... but are they better qualified, more careing, i'm not convinced. They too ar ejust doing a job for ££

I know its not all rosy in the NHS, but for now i'll stick with ds2's wonderful, compassionate consultant paed at the end of her mobile with instructions to "call anytime"... hey & guess what, i don't need to check my insurancee cover before I lift up the phone.

There is no doubt that maternity services are grossly underfunded/staffed in most (all?) of the country.

However, sorry to be harsh but there wasn't actually anything wrong with you - you were in labour and in pain - a normal side effect of a perfectly natural event.

Having lost my DS last month I am (and will forever be) eternally grateful to all the wonderful staff at Guys and St Thomas's who treated me with the upmost care and respect during his delivery, which we knew he would not survive and made what was the most horrendous day of my life slightly more bearable.

One day I hope to give birth again and I will never bemoan a midwife taking time with another patient because the horrid reality is priority needs to be given to those with a greater need.

I agree with slug...very good point there...I was sent to A&E by our local minor injuries unit after my ds had his first seizure and was shocked by the drunks, alchol fight related incidents which bog down the A&E down department on a daily basis...we had to wait 4 hours for him to see a casualty doctor...my sympathy goes out to the staff there....there is alot of timewasters that drain the nhs system with there trivial complaints....
one ambulance driver told me once that they got a 999 call to a house because a condom snapped

Tinkerbellesmuse, I am so sorry for your loss. to you.

NHS may not be perfect, but its pretty good imo.

My own opinion is that when I read OPs like this one, I realise how horribly spoilt some people have become in our society.

The NHS is a massive institution, and massive institutions are notoriously hard to run super-efficiently. However, it is mostly staffed by people doing their best. Yes, there are waiting times, but it is (virtually) free, for heaven's sake. You may well, in your lifetime, require treatment that whose total cost may totally eclipse anything you ever paid in tax, and you will be given it, no questions asked.

tinkerbelle's mum- you poor thing. I am so sorry for your dreadful loss I am sure the staff at Guys and Thomies would be v touched to feel that they might your dreadful day a tiny weeny bit more bearable.

AnonAndLikeIt,

Perhaps you are not personally naive but many people are. Look at Independiente's post wherein she claims the NHS is "virtually free" and people get far more back from it than they pay in taxes. How?! After all, the staff do not work there for nothing. Ultimately, on average, what one gets from the NHS is one's taxes minus wastage. And that wastage is huge. A recent managers's conference on safety featured the pilot that landed the engineless plane at Heathrow. Sounds like fun for the managers but I am not pleased to have contributed towards it.

And, if going private merely gave one better quality Egyptian cotton sheets and more convenience, why are so many politicians who are idealistically against private health provision frequently caught using it for their own families (Simon Hughes in this morning's Sunday Times for one)? Unless one has a diagnosed life threatening illness (in which case the NHS is pretty good) the private sector DOES get better outcomes. How could seeing the best person in the field virtually immediately not give a better outcome than waiting a long time to see a random person selected for you?

Finally, the comfort, and, more importantly the better nutrition supplied by the private sector makes a psychological and, ultimately, physiological difference to outcomes. Of course we all have our private sector horror stories, but how many on here, if they were concerned about one of their children, given the choice, would not take them to see a private paediatrician as soon as possible?

I am not saying that we should go for an all private system or allow some people no healthcare. It is important, though, to have the debate on honest terms and not kid ourselves that we are getting a gold standard service for bronze standard prices on the NHS.

Independiente, throughout this thread I have actually said that my problem is not with the staff itself. In fact I think they do the best with what they have. It seems to be a generally accepted fact that clinical staff are overworked and that there are clearly just not enough of them.

Reading the posts on here I have seen that most people who are in favour are saying that the NHS saved their life / helped them to deal with a really critical situation. It seems to work really well for people who are critically ill however, there are lots of people who are not critically ill who need treatment as well.

I also disagree that it is "virtually free" as you like to put it - we pay for it through years of taxes. Just under 20% of all tax will go towards this system. That is actually quite a lot of money in a lifetime.

On this basis, am I really being unreasonable in suggesting that anybody who uses the NHS should expect to receive a half decent service whether they are critically ill / have a chronic condition?

Like other posters, I find in interesting that a lot of you who had serious/critical health situations to deal with are happy with the service the NHS provided for them; people with less severe problems seems to be less enamoured and more upset that they did not get the service they paid for with their taxes.
Surely the whole idea of a (relatively) well off society haveing some kind of "all for one, one for all" solidarity when it comes to looking after those most vulnerable is what this is all about? When you are ill, old, poor, in pain, scared or any combination of the above, is when you really need a health service that will step in, no questions asked, no clearance with insurance company required.
Private health care in this country is not at all better; faster, more convenient, yes, but not better. This is a rather widespread misconception that is really quite dangerous. If I had to have cardiac surgery I would most certainly NOT want to be in a private hospital with one resident on-call dr covering the whole place. As far as the examply with the emergency paediatrician went: so, so wrong, when your child is ill, you'd be wise to embrace the full sprectrum of services the NHS can offer, not a private dr who will dictate his/her office hours.

And yes, anybody using the NHS should be able to expect a decent service, and if they do not get it should complain. Equally expectations must be realistic and it does help immensely when people are reasonable in their attitudes/language/behaviour, whether they are seeing their GP in a routine matter or attending A+E in a crisis.

Back to costs, all of you trying to have some kind of positive balance on how much tax they have paid so far and how much they have got out of the NHS: how do you know that a big car crash is not round the corner for you, your child will develop a lifethreatening illness, your parent develops renal failure???
Equally, if you are well off, then take advantage of private health insurance and enjoy the privileges that go with that and spare the NHS expections it cannot, and IMO should not meet.

Havn't read whole thread but YABVVU

'a friend of a friend told me' oh well it must be true then

remember when you are in pain 15 minutes can seem like a long time

you could always volunteer to pay 25% of your income to the NHS to improve the services if you are not happy, (or take yourself privately)

grylls - are you 2 related?
My ds2 & my dh, have ongoing non-urgent NHS treatment that is first class, minimal wait times.
DH's orthopedic consultant & some of ds's profs do private work to bump up their NHS wages, same people, same skills just different buildings & wallpaper.
Actually sometimes they even use the same clinic rooms, i guess they just rent them from the NHS?
Yes the private sector waiting times for non urgent treatment are shorter but the % of people using the private sector is much smaller, could they maintain this level of service if dealing with the same volume of patients?? I don't know?
Especially given that they are using the same limited pool of skilled clinicians.
How much more in real ££ terms is private insurance in comparison to how much we pay in taxes that goes toward the NHS?

As an individual my son has already got far more back from the NHS, its unlikely he will ever be a tax payer... but i suppose thats how it works... hopeful that far more of us tax payers never need its services.. so prevention rather than cure makes financial sense too.

Don't forget, the private sector CAN divert much more of its income direct to patient care because it doesn't have to pay for research & training... the NHS picks up the tab for that.
Yes it has its faults, high levels of management wastage does scream out as one of them & yes the NHS should always strive for improvement & we as taxpayers should demand it. But really is it bleading this country dry? I don't think so.

"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."

and that would cost less money and make it bette???

read a bit more now

I wouldn't hotfoot it down to a private paediatrician if one of my dcs was ill

will read the rest now

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OP i dont think you are being entirley unreasonable.

I have had very bad experiences with the NHS, I have suffered infertility and 4 mc, all they did for 5 yrs was mess me about. My first miscarriage i was nearly given a Hystorectomy rather than a D and C, after my 3rd miscarriage they discharged me from the hospital even though my blood tests hadnt come back i had my 4th miscarriage even though my blood results had come back showing i had a condiition causing my miscarriages, they did not act on it and i lost again. I am now pg again and i am having my injections however i will only have 2 scans before the 12 week mark when i am supposed to be monitored closely on a weekly basis and after i hit 12 weeks i dont know what will happen. I dont have much faith in them at all.

if i could choose i would take the tax i pay for the NHS and put that towards insurance for private care but i dont have a choice if i want private health care i have to pay for both and i think it is awful i cant afford both the tax we pay cripples us as it is.

I understand that others have had very good experiences but i think when you pay for something like this the good experiences should be universal, everyone should get the best care but they dont.

The NHS as a concept is wonderful - free care for all at the point of delivery. It does that really well. A lot of my family work in the NHS and I was brought up to believe that the NHS was this wonderful thing which I should be grateful for. It is only over the past couple of years I have grown to dislike it. This is due to personal experience, anecdotal stories and also reading various things about it in the press.

You seem to think I am spoilt (maybe I am a little) but in my original post I was not just referring to my own experience (TBH I realise it was not that bad in the scheme of things), I was also referring to experiences of other people.

I accept that there are really good things about the NHS and that the staff are very good but it is actually the job they are there to do.

Something I have learnt from this thread is that one's experience does seem to vary a lot between hospitals and also in relation to which area of medicine we are talking about.

I am not as anti as I was when I started this thread - however, I do still think that it is a flawed system and I will always think that.

Thank you for your support LarryGrylls. I love you.

larrygrylys- I hope you will forgive me but I think you are a little naive about private health care. The same consultants work in the private sector and the NHS. They are not a completely separate bunch of individuals. They have all trained in the same way in the NHS and some do purely NHS work, some will do mainly NHS and a some private and a v, v small percentage will do just private work. (I am absolutely not against consultants choosing to do some private work providing that they look after their NHS patients properly).
If you attend a purely private hospital for an operation and have a complication requiring ITU/ HDU, you may well be transferred to an NHS hospital because this is where the best facilities are. (I have seen patients in this position). I would certainly not want any member of my family having, for example cardiac bypass surgery in a private hospital. I would also not take my child to see a private paediatrician. If the problem was serious, they would be seen v urgently on the NHS. If I was given the choice of giving birth in an NHS hospital or the private one, I would chose to give birth in the NHS one and then transfer to the private one for after care and a nice room!
There are certainly some instances where is is worth having private insurance for medical reasons eg certain chemo' drugs that are not always available on the NHS. The other advantages are the v short waiting times, being able to see a specific consultant and 'the frills'. Of course, a lot of people like all these things, politicians included. I don't think there is anything wrong with using private healthcare at all if you can afford it but I do think it is ill advised to assume that it is much better just because you are paying for it.

Alig-G- the NHS is certainly not perfect. You are right that there are some major flaws in it. I am not sure that it is going to be sustainable in the long term, even though it is a wonderful concept. I am also not sure that any alternative would be better for the majority of the population.

"We're lucky - imagine having a child who was sick and being worried about whether or not we could afford to call the doctor."

Thats life for many of us. My DS had a minor accident this week, and in my panic over what to do (wait and see, go to local GP, go to A&E etc)I'm ashamed to say that one of my thoughts was whether I had the ?100 that it would cost me to bring him to A&E, and whether it was serious enough to warrant it. I brought him to the GP instead as that was nearer and quicker, but up until last year that would have cost me ?55 (I very luckily got a GP visit medical card for my family last year through DH's work which means the Gp is now free for most visits)

Can you imagine holding your sick or injured child and thinking about money? For all of the NHS's flaws thats something you never have to worry about, and for that alone you should be eternally grateful.

The NHS isn't perefect, and is underfunded but its saved my life twice in 3 years and my son's life when he was born ALL FOR FREE so I very grateful we do have it