Young women dies - dismissed as a 'time waster' by hospital staff

[Highmoon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c302e83vrv5o

These news stories seem more and more frequent. This time the young woman had her parents with her and she was still dismissed as a time waster. This makes me so mad. This could so easily be any of our daughters.

I noticed Mumsnet is featuring a petition on medical misogyny. I spotted this on the same day, proving how much a change is needed.

If individual doctors were forced to carry their own malpractice insurance they would all be singing a different tune.

That is terrible, quite heartbreaking.

I was sick for quite sometime and was in and out of hospital having test after test. It was found that I had blood clots in my heart, lungs, legs, spleen and brain. (Part of my spleen died) Was given medication for it and sent home.
When I asked if I needed to see my cardiologist I was questioned as to why I would need one and before I could answer that I have a congenital heart defect as well as the clots the nurse said "you're not in here for that" and walked out of the room and refused to listen to me.
When I was sent home the discharge notes from the neurologist basically said it was all in my head and I was told that I needed mental health support.
The blood clots I had were completely ignored.
I kept getting sicker and sicker and one day I woke up and knew that something was very very very wrong (always pay attention to your intuition!) I got to hospital and they did some tests and it was found that I had infective endocarditis and needed to have open heart surgery to save my life as well as vascular surgery on my left leg to save it.
My cardiologist came to see me and told me if I hadn't come to hospital when I did I wouldn't have lived for much longer. I'm now alive (obviously) but recovery has been long and slow and I know if I had been listened to earlier then maybe I wouldn't have needed open heart surgery and I wouldn't have come close to death.

Always trust your intuition it's there for a reason.

My lovely mum was dismissed as a time waster, an old lady with old lady problems and someone who just needed to lose weight for 18 months. At the point where she hadn’t been able to move her bowels for two weeks and had started vomiting anytime she ate she was finally sent for a scan, where we found out she had metastatic ovarian cancer which had spread to her bowels and basically glued them shut. She died in July 2018 aged 64.

I was sent home from A&E with a brain bleed and told to return the next day for "mirgaine management" in amblatory care because of how busy A&E was. Thank goodness the doctor there insisted on a CT scan with contrast or it would've been missed and I would've died. Less than 48 hours after my second visit I was having brain surgery to fix the rupture.

It was an eye opening experience. I was both angry for the miss but grateful for my outcome. One doctor dismissed me, the other jumped into action. I was lucky.

This is what we desperately need. Personal accountability would get rid of this blase 'be grateful I'm even talking to you' attitude.

Extend that to anyone who has the ability to deny medical care, so nurses too. And those jumped up gp receptionists who think they can triage just as well as a trained medical professional (bitter from one demanding I tell her the symptoms at the desk, then saying dd didn't need a gp appointment, it sounded like hayfever. Then she ended up in hospital with a severe allergic reaction).

Agree. Once you can sue a person individually and this actually has consequences for them they might be a bit more mindful of who they shit on.

I would take this further and suggest anyone who had more then one strike should face professional sanctions too - as the GMC often decline to take any action. That was certainly my experience when I sent them evidence of not only poor practice but also a doctor lying in an internal complaint investigation.

It absolutely won’t help. Surely people know that healthcare in the US has to be agreed by the insurance company and the people making the decisions aren’t medics? They refuse lifesaving treatment that the primary care doctors recommend. They sack long serving, experimental medical staff and their billing scheme is predatory. The hospital bills charge for mother and baby skin on skin contact. Your healthcare depends on continuing employment.

The duty of companies is to make money for shareholders. Why would this help? Has privatising water been such an astounding success that we want the same approach for our healthcare?

That is why we should not copy the American system. The French, Spanish and German systems are very good though.

This is shocking. This poor girl and her family

My husband (then boyfriend) became ill a few years back. Horrible hacking cough that persisted for months, frequent stabbing chest pains so strong he couldn't sleep, constant shortness of breath. He went to a&e when the chest pains started and, after a few hours of casually being told that it "could be heartburn", was sent home. Went back again when the pains started at work, and begged to have a xray. They thought it might be inflammation of the cartilage around his ribs, sent him home with ibuprofen. Symptoms persisted for months. He had to take a lot of time off work because he was spending a lot of his shift bent over hacking and passed out twice from shortness of breath. He had no sick pay and eventually lost his job due to the amount of time he took off (he was still on probation).

About six months after this started, his parents begged him to come back to Italy so that he could see a doctor there. The doctor there examined him, did an xray, and said that he'd had pneumonia for 6 months. He was prescribed the relevant antibiotics and steroids and was genuinely a new man within a fortnight.

DH was sent to A&E with raised d-dimer, bi-lateral painful calves, he had an abnormal ecg and raised troponin but because he'd been on chemo he was dismissed as having neuropathy and sent home with gabapentin without having seen more than a very junior doctor. I am now his widow.

I am so, so sorry for your loss. That is absolutely unforgivable. What is wrong with these people?

I’m so sorry that happened and glad you’re recovering. Can you try a no win no fee company? You were treated terribly.

I agree with this. I really don’t see the point of GPs (and I used to work as a GP receptionist).

Told my bloods were normal time and time again. Crying in frustration about why I was always unwell. A kind female locum GP opened every blood test and found I was severely neutropenic and sent straight to hospital

endometriosis. I don’t want to talk about it except to say I nearly lost my job, was told for years my pain was normal, finally got listened to by a specialist endo surgeon (female again). She operated with bowel surgeon for over 8hrs. My BOWEL WAS FOLDED IN HALF

That is horrendous. I think the whole system around blood test results is risky. I don't understand how blood results can be dangerously abnormal yet patients are being told they are fine. Is this another example of untrained/ unqualified people being given inappropriate responsibility? Or is nobody looking at them? I have seen this so many times on here.

It is a bit tone-deaf posting this not that long after the heart-breaking post by @GreenSmallBird . The numbers she has given are not ‘rare’ and the report makes clear it was not rare. It was systematic, endemic and enduring. And nobody is denying it is repeated elsewhere. Your single good experience does not negate what else is happening.

Corridor care, lack of GP access, other awful things do not make headlines now for various reasons, including the fact that they are no longer rare. Inhumane corridor care is rife in many areas. It is not headlines every day as it is now so commonplace.

Absolutely, streets ahead of the NHS in just about every respect.

Nobody actually looked at the trend

I have a blood test print out from 4 years before diagnosis that says “left shift neutrophils” and I was neutropenic then
that was the evidence I was killing off my own neutrophils but it’s so rare in adults. After that they went up and down but never really at a decent level
2-8 is normal and I’ve consistently been below 1. At diagnosis I was 0.3

Absolutely not, not on its own. Personal responsibility for MINIMUM WAGE receptionists who are doing the job they’ve been told to do? In an economy with so few jobs going, especially for women? Find the person who’s ordained such a poor overstretched system that receptionists have to be drafted in to do a nurse’s - or what was at one time, a junior doctors job. Find the politicians who’ve decreed that despite the wealth in this country none of it should be in public hands and that footballers are worth more than health staff, and HGV staff are worth more than health staff, and bin men are worth more than receptionists. Find the politicians and media who are lying through their teeth about the extra investment and extra staff they are giving the NHS, where are all these extra staff when I’m running around trying to care for 12 patients who all think they should have 1:1 care and maybe 4 of them actually do? You want to talk about misogyny in the NHS? Start with the way the predominantly female workforce are treated.

Ive been saying to a few people lately, how come during Covid Italy’s hospitals were having to provide corridor care and people were dying everywhere. It was held up by our appalling media as a collapsing system in appalling conditions. We are no longer in Covid. We have no major health outbreaks - none that we’re being told about anyway. So why the FUCK do we have corridor care anyway?? What the hell is happening?

where are all these extra staff when I’m running around trying to care for 12 patients who all think they should have 1:1 care and maybe 4 of them actually do

maybe 4 of them actually SHOULD. Too late to correct via edit.

WaryCrow: A hospital or medical receptionist in the UK typically earns between £25,000 and £28,000 per year (averaging about £12.79 to £13.50 per hour). Pay rates vary depending on experience, location, and the specific NHS trust or private healthcare provider. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

And? That’s a few pence more than minimum wage?
Remind me how much footballers are on again? Male footballers, obviously.