Has care in the NHS and in social care improved over the last year? The Department of Health wants your views: £50 to be won NOW CLOSED

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

As some of you will know, following the public inquiry into the failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, the government responded last year with a set of commitments for improvements.

A year later, the Department of Health would like to know what you think about whether there has been a real improvement in the care provided by the NHS and social care providers as a result.

They say:

"When we receive care, whether that is in the NHS, social care or in our own homes, we expect, and have the right, to be treated with dignity, respect and compassion."

"Two independent public inquiries reported appalling failures in the standards in patient care at Mid Staffordshire hospital, and in the system of healthcare regulation. As a result of these inquiries, the Government said that improvements had to be made. These include a new inspector for hospitals and a tougher, independent inspection system; more nurses on hospital wards; and plans in place for turning around failing hospitals. (To see the Government's response in detail, have a look here.)"

"We are looking now at what progress has been made in improving patient care."

"Have you noticed an improvement in care you or your family have received in the past year? Do you have examples of how it's improved or changed? Do you feel more confident that any changes introduced will improve NHS care? What do you think are the biggest challenges for making care even better?"

"Material from this thread (and from another thread we're running on Gransnet, and other activities including discussions with people working in the NHS and care providers) will help inform our assessment of progress. It may also be included in an annual progress report, the first of which will be published later this year."

Over to you. Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £50 John Lewis voucher.

Thanks
MNHQ

I'm an NHS nurse in an acute trust and sadly I have to say the care has got worse, we cannot provide the care we aspire to there are cuts everywhere, we have elderly people on our emergency ward who have no where to go due to funding cuts so sit on our ward waiting, we are unable to help them with mobility etc as we are to busy with the A&E and ITU transfers who are at real risk of dying if we take the time to spend with the elderly patients, it's a real shame I sometimes look at my patients across the bay where I am nursing someone else wishing, I could go and hold their hand and talk to them, this can be dying patients or patients who are scared and in pain, it breaks my heart it's what I went into nursing for and just a few years ago I COULD do this but rather than give us more nurses on the frontline the conservatives saw fit to give us charts to sign to say we had seen and assessed a patients pain, bowels, fluid intake pressure areas hourly!!!

Sadly our fantastic NHS is buckling and under poor management as someone said up thread if, you go for urgent care it is amazing we all try our best but it's not good enough.

have had good and bad experiences. was not at all impressed in dealing with the care part of the NHS when dealing with an elderly person. far too many departments involved, many many admin errors made, the whole process was most unpleasant and unnecessary , a case of too many pen-pushers and not enough front line staff. the doctors and nurses were excellent, the red-tape was not.

I don't want to be negative but I really don't think things have improved at all. There's a long way to go before real improvements are seen

I have had a lot of experience of the NHS in the past year during my pregnancy, birth, and aftercare for me and my son. I can honestly say that my/my son's care has been first class in almost all respects (the only slight negatives being the attitudes of occasional health care workers, but in an organisation the size of the NHS you can't expect them all to be angels!).

Early on I was given extra scans purely to reassure me after previous losses (I rang up, didn't need to be referred). My midwives were always on hand if I had a query, were willing to listen and reassure when I needed, and (perhaps most importantly) I always felt I was treated with respect. When I needed a physio referral due to pelvic pain this came through within a few days, and when my waters broke earlier than expected over a weekend I was admitted immediately and my care was excellent. The surgical staff slotted me in as soon as possible (elective section), and the birth was actually very calm and pleasant.

When my son was a few days old he was readmitted for dehydration as I was having feeding problems, I could stay with him, and we were even given a private room so that we could get breastfeeding established in peace. HVs have always been supportive and helpful. I've always been able to get a GP appointment the same day in an emergency, or within a few days if not.

I hear a lot of negativity about the NHS (and I'm sure that services do vary a lot by region), but honestly they've been top notch for me.

No. Obviously. Not sure why this is even a question?!

I think my dog could come up with better solutions to the NHS' problems than those currently thrown around by the 'higher ups'. I could wax poetic for time but here's one problem:

Nursing staff are stretched far too much, and staff employed to do specific jobs are often found filling in in other fields with no or bare minimum training. Rover suggests bringing back old fashioned Matrons that rule with an iron fist as a first step to at least sorting out ward functionality.

No, the opposite is true.

Matrons are not the answer you just need more frontline staff. I would advise my DC not to become a nurse that's as a nurse myself. I have just been told the yearly fee I pay just to be a nurse had been increased yet again that's a 60% increase in two years. I pay to park at work, I pay to belong to a union to protect my rights, I pay 10% of my salary to my pension, I pay a subscription to a nursing journal to stay up to date as apart from the basics of resus, infection control and health and safety there is not much else on offer for progression, unless you pay yourself.

I'm not trying to make people feel sorry for me I truly understand a lot of us are in similar situations, I'm just trying to make people aware of how difficult it is to be a nurse, we physically and psychologically give ourselves to our patients and it's honestly a daily struggle, just a few years ago my job was not so demanding now it's balancing critical care patients with the 16 pieces of paper needed for each new admission. I can understand why other health professionals are striking and support them, at present members of the royal college of nursing are not as we don't like the idea of a strike that could affect patients.

I'm not sure how long I can stay in the NHS I have over 10 years critical experience and am nearly beaten by it.

You have to wait 3-4 weeks for an appointment at our doctors surgery, that's with 8 doctors in the practice. Not acceptable really !!!

The nurses and doctors have always been great but the government keep cutting funding so something is going to give soon

My simple answer is that things are extremely variable.
I have had huge experience of the NHS due to DP's medical condition. Even in the same hospital standards can vary dramatically. We had a community critical care team (not every Trust has such a thing I understand) which involved a team of specialist nurses attending our house every day to provide care to DP (iv antibiotics etc) which I thought was fantastic and far better than him having to stay in hospital for longer than necessary. I think this should be standard throughout the UK. DP had two operations, and we had good experiences with both although I found it hard during the first one that nobody updated me on his progress. That was an agonising 6 hours.
My absolute bugbear though is orthotics. We've been literally all over the country trying to get half-decent service. I feel sorry for the professionals working in this field. One man was working out of a broom cupboard. It is the Cinderella of the NHS. It's years behind the rest of world in terms. Our experiences of orthotics has been the most depressing, soul sapping part of DP's disability.

My personal experience of the NHS has been nothing but good, however, it is clear to see that the staff are overstretched and resources are being removed or staff being made redundant around various parts of the country, something which has affected close friends of mine who have given years to their profession. With regards to mental health, I feel the problem is a lack of joined-up care, there is not enough communication with all the agencies involved in patient care/rehabilitation and unfortunately the first we hear of these shortfalls are when something tragic occurs.

I wouldn't have thought so, everyone I know who needs help has to fight tooth and nail for it!

Improved??? Not a chance! Everything I've seen to do with NHS and social care in the last 6 months has been bed news, mainly due to lack of funds and low morale.

I think like most public sectors they are stretched too far, there aren't enough staff expected to do more work so morale is low, plus pay is frozen whilst costs are growing :(

Cuts, cuts and more cuts. Compartmentalisation (which makes it harder to provide joined up care, and hits patients) being brought in, purely to make it easier for the private companies to hive off the cheap easy profit making areas...you know, the things that used to help supplement the unprofitable but essential things like A&E. And paediatric wards. Everything is about cuts. About the need to achieve "Cost Improvement Plans". The government claims to be preserving health funding, but every hospital in the land is meant to be spending millions (in most cases tens of millions) less each year, when admissions are climbing, demographics are changing, and cuts in social care are preventing discharges.

The NHS is a damn good system (with faults), but this government appears to be absolutely determined to finish off the job of breaking it. David Cameron, I honestly expected better of you.

The NHS reminds me very much of democracy:

The NHS is the worst form of healthcare, except for all those other forms that have been tried.

We're very lucky to have the NHS and often it's taken for granted but sadly so much treatment is refused now due to lack of funding and my personal experiences of fighting to get treatment for my son are becoming more and more frequent. We recently chose to pay privately for his grommets to be fitted and adenoids removed because no one was interested in admitting that there was a hearing problem despite until we talked about paying for his treatment. We couldn't even get his hearing tested on the NHS but private tests revealed he had no hearing at all in his right ear and only 20% in his left.

I feel that the NHS is failing due to poor management, when you hear about hundreds of pounds being paid for plastic gloves or a tap when the same products can be bought for a fraction of the price, and computer systems costing hundreds of thousands of pounds being scrapped before they are even rolled out to all the hospitals because they are totally unsuitable is ludicrous and makes me wonder who is getting the pay off!!!
They can throw all the money at the NHS that they want but until they sort out this mismanagement and corruption then it is on a slippery slope

Things are only going to get worse.Until professions give nurses and carers the respect and real pay they are due for their hard work and dedication and ridiculous long hours.

As the mother to an adopted child with special needs my experience has been dreadful. Social care dropped us like a tonne of bricks as soon as he was officially adopted and even blatantly lied to us. We waited ages just to get onto a waiting list on the NHS and have been told they would have treated him before but now as money is limited 'tough'.

Every HIV patient from overseas – whether here legally or illegally, whether a failed asylum seeker or student on a temporary visa – is entitled to free treatment on the NHS.
Once HIV treatment is started, patients will probably need to take the medication for the rest of their lives. In total, the cost to the NHS will be up to £1 million per patient if they survive into old age.

Until they return to a more nursing based focus where nurses are actually enouraged to spend time with patients rather than filling in endless paperwork and get them out as quick as you can attitude it is not going to improve

Absolute shambles, been trying to get a dentist for urgent treatment and it seems that prioritising is a thing of the past. I wanted to go NHS but my situation is urgent and when I asked about private, the que for private is actually longer than the NHS? This leads me to believe that because they are not case prioritising most people feel obliged to opt for private work which means private doesn't get you seen as a priority now, in fact, I was informed the private que is even longer than the NHS one!

I'm my experience No it hasn't the wards, doctors and nurses are even more stretched and patients are suffering because of it

No, unfortunately it hasn't. Waiting times in A & E are far too long, as are waiting lists too see a consultant and then the operation. My father went 3 times to have a procedure done, had the pre med each time and then they decided not to do it (twice) so had to make new appointments, they waste money by phoning with results and posting them! The amount of people I know who have contracted an infection whilst in a hospital is scary!

NO. Health care is worse. Underpaid nurses. Not enough nurses. Undertrained junior doctors. Overworked senior doctors. Under-resourced treatment options for common conditions. Not enough physiotherapy. Not enough permanent staff. Inequalities across London in Healthcare provision for children. Great Ormond Street sucks up resources from district hospitals in London.