Is the NHS going to be able to catch up?

[Coughpatrol]

At the start of all this, my niece had an operation cancelled. She’s was contacted last week and offered a (virtual) appointment for 2 weeks time to discuss but told Actual procedure is unlikely to be soon by her dr.

Just wondered if anyone else has had ops/services cancelled during this and where you’re at now, if you’ve had a date for new op? Are waiting times going to be even more crazy now than they once were? Are the nhs planning to utilise private hospitals/nightingale buildings etc to ‘catch up’?

It was very long waits before this but surely it’s going to be extremely busy now with all the catching up needed?

I have left Nursing in the past 18 months and was added back onto the emergency register and would be willing to do cancer Nursing or palliative care ( 30 years experience of this type of Nursing). I was never even contacted as promised, the work of contacting people was outsourced to capita but I was never contacted.

I got a referral for a hip scan for my baby from my GP two weeks ago & we’ve had the scan this week. I was really surprised at how quickly it came through!

Also what I'm seeing at my hospital is ALOT of people are on prolonged sick leave. The last few months have been really hard and people are starting to crash. The recovery phase now is basically everyone fighting and arguing over rooms, arguing about bringing redeployed staff back from areas where other short staffed teams have got used to them, threats of your service not being important enough to restart and people thinking they will have to start taking unpaid leave due to lack of school places in 5 weeks. It's a very grim place. Actually worse than when we were in the midst of the pandemic in my hospital.

Yes I’m seeing that too. Off sick, unpaid leave, parental leave. Having the children at home fir six months has a huge Knock on effect to the NHS that I dont think was considered.

My own personal experience - I need an NHS dental appt for a check up due mild pain and also to check the fit of and collect a mouth guard that was ordered pre-lockdown, my toddler also needs a routine dental check up. Our dentist is now open (NHS and private mix) but only for emergencies for people who have had severe problems throughout lockdown with no access to dental care. They can't give me a date as to when more routine appointments will become available. My dermotology treatment was paused, I was on isotretinoin and my appt for March was moved to August, so I will have had a 5 month gap in treatment. I have significant facial scarring and the NHS won't find any treatment of scarring so this is really worrying for me, the idea that my acne could come back before then and result in even more scarring. I have also been referred to the breast clinic under the 2 week wait mechanism after a phone consultation with my GP. The hospital did a telephone consultation within a week of the referral and advised they will make an appt for me to attend in July sometime. I wasn't concerned about cancer when I contacted the GP as it would be so unlikely, but it still makes a tiny part of me feel uneasy that I'm not even going to be examined for up to 10 weeks after I contacted by GP when in normal times my hospital appt would be under the 2 week wait for queried cancer.

Depends if we get a second wave.

We are bringing 'vunerable' staff back after their 12 weeks off,those back so far are adjusting well but we are mindful about their placement which is putting more stress(shitty shift patterns) on those who have been here all along.
I work in theatres and we have stopped being deployed to ITU.We still have to treat all emergencies as Covid+be so this slows everything down as it is staff intensive, recovery must happen in the theatre and the cleaning after each case is insane.
We do some elective urgent cases too and that is better because we can use recovery but there are so many.Most of us are already doing overtime but management is being difficult over paying us .
I was due an operation in April,this has been cancelled,no communication so I keep munching the pain killers and keep my fingers crossed
We were aware of the massive backlog that would build as soon as Covid preperation started.
We are not going to cut corners though to protect all of us so be patient and do use A&E if you need it.At the moment it is working as A&Es should as the drunks and walking well stay away.