So grateful we are not in the UK for this

[soglad]

We moved from UK to Italy a year and a half ago. On Monday this week my husband felt unwell and his smart watch told him to go see the doctor immediately. He suspected he had atrial fibrillation (AF), as he had it 5 years ago.

He booked to see his GP at 5pm on Tuesday. She diagnosed him with AF and immediately referred him to a specialist hospital.

He was triaged into the hospital the same day at 8pm. At 9pm they started a procedure to correct the heartbeat chemically. It did not work.

At 9am this morning they performed a cardioversion, which restored his normal heart rhythm. They are discharging him today.

So total time from the very first appointment to successful treatment -- 16 hours. Free state healthcare.

This is in a country which a lot of people in the UK describe as poor, corrupt, slow and backwards.

All his doctors spoke good English and even nurses did their best to google translate everything for him.

By contrast, my last experience of helping mum get NHS treatment after a road traffic accident which required urgent operation left me in tears -- weeks and weeks of delays / cancellations meant she almost missed the window of opportunity for surgery as bones started to heal incorrectly. I'm so glad I didn't go through this again.

Clearly great state healthcare is possible, even in a country with a much lower GDP per capita than the UK. Why aren't we doing something?

YABU for every person who has a bad experience with healthcare there are plenty who don't.

We are in the UK. My very fit, healthy DH had a heart attack at home on 23rd December. It was terrifyingly fast, less than a minute between drinking his coffee and needing an ambulance.

Ambulance arrived in under 5 mins, he was being triaged in A&E in less than 30 minutes. He was on a ward and being monitored & treated in a couple of hours. Had it not been for the fact that it was Christmas, he would have been operated on the next day. As it was he was back at home on the 28th, having been stented, monitored and taken very good care of.

There's no denying there are problems with the nhs but let's not forget the thousands of lives they save each day.

That sounds like standard treatment for acute onset AF even in the UK. And there would often be an Italian speaking staff member available to translate for someone who doesn’t speak English too.

YABU, how is this a helpful post? Sounds like you're just being very smug. Lots of people have perfectly good NHS care. And lots of people can't just move to another country.

My FIL has had this, and always been seen very promptly in the hospital.

I agree healthcare is better in many other countries, but that's not a like for like comparison.

I really want to know which Smart Watch your husband has!

That's great, glad your husband got treatment he needed. Hope he feels better soon.

I've had flawless NHS care whenever I've needed it. It's been amazing and fast even when it's not been a life threatening situation.

In contrast, when in Italy with my friend (half Italian and fluent) she had a bump in the car (because Italian driving) and they insisted she go to hospital. She went and waited around for hours and then had an injection in her bum with a huge needle. To this day she's still unsure what it was for, but we laughed a lot at the time. The poor car (an ancient and unroadworthy Fiat) didn't recover so readily.

So there we go.

@nokidshere

Totally agree with this post

Oh, really? I should definitely uproot my family and move to another country in which my grasp of the language is so poor the nurses have to use Google translate to tell me how my health is and then I should find a website from my home country and crow about how things are so much better for me. <Twirls>

I'm glad your husband got seen and sorted quickly, OP, but it really not as simple.as you make out, I don't think. Italy is a beautiful but complicated country with a dramatic recent rise in right-wing nationalism. Outside of the bigger, more cosmopolitan areas there are often some very old-fashioned attitudes to gender stereotypes and foreigners. The bureaucracy can be absolutely insane and standards/transparency in public life is only really just starting to improve after decades of ingrained corruption - not everywhere, admittedly, but certainly pretty pervasive.

Obviously I'm generalising wildly but so are you, tbh, if you think this experience is representative of public services for all residents of Italy.

You are not comparing like for like.

Emergency cardiac problems are prioritised in the UK too. If he had those symptoms he would likely have received a similar response from the NHS.

You could equally look at that scenario and use it as an example of how men receive better treatment than women - particularly elderly women.

There is much evidence that women having heart attacks receive worse treatment than men. In general, men are more likely to be taken seriously and get adequate pain relief than women.

This is not an AIBU post.

I'm glad some people also had good experience with cardiac emergencies in the NHS.

Last time my husband needed this procedure 5 years ago in the UK, we had a (very stressful) 3 week wait and multiple appointments before the procedure itself.

I personally never had a good experience with the NHS (at one point they caused me harm) even in emergencies so I was surprised to find good healthcare here.

Recently also had 2 A&E visits with the children for not particularly life threatening things -- in and out in 30 minutes.

The point of my post is that if a poorer country can make it work, why can't we.

Probably an Apple Watch.

And my BIL had almost exactly the same experience, right down to being discharged less that 24 hours after the initial appointment, in the Uk.

Healthcare in Italy is universal but it isn’t quite that simple - unlike the UK specialist treatment and some diagnostics are chargeable, but subsidised (I don’t disagree with this way of funding healthcare).

My Italian dad had a massive heart attack in a bakery in Italy and it took an ambulance two hours to arrive. He was dead for 2 hours before they arrived. Be thankful, don’t gloat.

by contrast my Italian friend lost a baby at 30 weeks, in Italy, still born. The baby was whisked away and she was not allowed to see it. they were not allowed to bury it and there was a lot of very nasty talk around the dead baby.

4 years later she was living in UK and lost a baby at 25 weeks. She wa sin the John Radcliffe in Oxford and they were completely wonderful, grieving that baby allowed her in some way to grieve her first baby too. They had a funeral.
She could not stop saying how wonderful they were and what the difference was with the hospital in Italy.

Yes you are right

So sorry to hear about your dad

Called an ambulance last week and they arrived in 5 mins. Although admittedly they were diverted, patient was receiving treatment in less than 10 mins. Arrived at A and E, bloods, x-ray and MRI in 2 hours. Really can't complain, although it was super busy.

A couple of years ago I felt ill over the weekend, called my GP on monday morning, was told to come right in. Doctor saw me and called the surgical ward on the hospital, again I was told to come right in where I was assessed and admitted with acute cholecystitis and suspected sepsis. I was operated on that evening and sent home the following day.

I had an excellent experience and instant, life saving treatment on the NHS. I understand though that just because I had a great experience it doesn't mean that in other circumstances things go wrong and some people wait. The same will happen in Italy.

With a change of government this year, we may see the NHS restored to its former glory.

😂😂

@soglad
The point of my post is that if a poorer country can make it work, why can't we.

Because we don't invest in anything in this country. You can debate the various failings of the NHS to death but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the NHS is desperately short of trained doctors and nurses. We have the abilty to train more but it takes time and is expensive. We as a country keep on electing governments which promise tax reductions rather than investing in the future.

What? The glory days under a Labour government? Give over!