Hospital

[Igottastartthinkingbee]

Anyone watching? A stunning insight into the running of a busy London hospital. Cannot believe the amount of time highly skilled doctors are forced to waste waiting for beds to become available. And the poor man with oesophageal cancer who's operation was cancelled for the second time. Wow. NHS is at breaking point!

I really felt for all the poor staff. They all seemed on the verges of tears they were so stressed.

Goodness sidge the stress must awful, especially knowing that peoples (patients and their families/friends and NHS staff) lives are so affected by the decisions they make everyday.

I too was surprised to hear them discussing putting adults on a paediatric ward. Safeguarding was my first thought. I had no idea there was so much difference between adult and paediatric care.

Fabulous programme - just watched it.

In tears over poor oesophageal cancer man.

Sympathy sent to your DP Sidge.
My DH is a retired NHS Manager so I am not ignorant regarding the pressures on the other side.
Your DP's view about Rolls Royce on Ford Fiesta prices is spot on and has been the case for years.
Sadly it is the case that so much time, effort and ironically money is being spent on "efficiency savings". The reality is that the savings come as a result of reduced efficiency and quality and every year organisations and their employees are being squeezed more and more.
It's not rocket science why we are where we are.
Since 1964 the population in the country has grown by over 10 million(and over half of this growth has occured since 2001) while over the past 26 years the number of hospital beds has reduced considerably - it has halved in England so we are now in the position of having only 2.7 beds per 1,000 people.
Quarts and pint pots?
It has to be time for grown up difficult conversations about what we can and cannot afford and what we will and will not pay for.
I can't be the only one who doesn't understand how someone can earn more for running an NHS trust than someone else earns for running the whole country.

Absolutely, Blacksox.
And his poor wife must have thought "what if?" so many times.
Condolences to her.

Thank you winged. I totally agree about the difficult conversations. As unpopular as it is, especially on MN, we need to be tougher about what is and isn't achievable, realistic or necessary.

I would never advocate neglect but I do wonder why we are doing certain procedures on demented patients in their 80s with very little quality of life. Or offering life saving life extending procedures at all costs.

An example for you all - my DP recently had a senior member of staff leave for a new post elsewhere. Before he could advertise to replace her he had to draw up a plan detailing why and how her post needed to be filled, and at what level and how much it would cost and why savings could not be made by employing someone on a junior grade, or part time. This plan had to be compiled and then presented to the executive team before he could proceed with advertising the post. It took him an awful lot of time and effort to state the bleeding obvious.

Of course we need to be mindful of efficiency and cost savings, but with some common sense thrown in. The NHS seems to lack common sense at many levels.

I would never advocate neglect but I do wonder why we are doing certain procedures on demented patients in their 80s with very little quality of life. Or offering life saving life extending procedures at all costs.

^^
Yes yes yes.

I've just put a post urging everyone to watch this. The situation in this hospital isn't unique, it happens in every hospital!

I'm a midwife and like a precious poster have been asked to nurse gynaecology patients on maternity wards when I have no nurse training and it's outside my scope of practice.

I've also had to transfer a poorly baby over 80 miles away to a neonatal unit as it was the closest one that had a neonatal cot free. The mother who was recovering from a Caesarian section had to stay with us as the hospital the baby was transferred to had no maternity beds. It's truely heartbreaking.

One point nobody seemed to comment on was the fact that the aneurysm patient was having to travel for four hours in an ambulance despite having a condition which might blow up at any moment and kill her. That's pretty horrific in itself.

Good point.

My local hospital, fairly big city, has decided it's a&e will no longer see anureysms. Instead another hospital an hour away is the anureysm specialist centre. A paramedic once told me if they're in the city with a suspected anureysm patient they lie and tell the hospital they think it's a cardiac arrest as if they get them through the door of the city hospital they will treat them.

Megatherium. I wondered that. But wondered why she couldn't go to Addenbrooks which would have been nearer.

Possum, that's quite worrying that paramedics would not take patients to a specialist centre.

I guess they're worried they won't survive the journey.

Didn't that lady come from Norwich ? Surely there was a nearer hospital for her

I wish they'd do a mental health episode too. Our lack of funding is madness (pun intended).

DH now understands why I am putting in for early retirement. And why I come home and drink wine. And why I don't sleep at night.

I watched it and ended up so angry that I couldn't sleep. It really shouldn't be like this.

I was in tears most of the way through because these highly skilled, talented people on the program, and on this thread, really want to help us but they can't because our Government won't let them. And that's madness.

DS2 is a second year student nurse, I don't think there will be an NHS for much longer for him to work him.

i couldnt watch it all, too familiar, too depressing.
but i noted how very caring the staff were, the surgeon's must find it just So frustrating not to be able to help people

I'm a nurse but also deal with beds. This is what it's like and I'm glad it being shown. We are all under so much pressure. There is no slack. Recently there were no children's intensive care beds in the country.

I found it really sad but not at all surprising. The NHS really is stretched to breaking.

When we lived in the US both my mother and I worked as candy stripers (volunteer nurse's assistants) at a big cancer hospital - my mother, who speaks several languages, was a patient liaison, and attended rounds and patients' consultations to translate and advocate, and I was a ward visitor, going round every ward and waiting room in the hospital offering tea and coffee, refilling water jugs etc. We both had to have quite extensive background checks and training, but why don't we have anything like that here in the UK?

Right I've watched it whilst doing the ironing!

Great programme, really hammers home the constant juggling act of balancing beds, trauma throughput, ICU necessity, scheduling ops. So frustrating to see whole surgical teams sat around drinking coffee waiting for the go-ahead

toddlerteaplease I don't think they were talking about putting adults on the paeds ward alongside children in that meeting. I think they mentioned they had some 'space' in children's outpatients they could utilise in case of desperate need, putting beds and nurses in an empty room or two. Still not idea, don't get me wrong, but not adults alongside kids in the paediatric wards.

Looking forward to this week's episode.

Tonight BBC2 9pm

Anyone watching this?

I am.

Just so depressing that this is normal at so many hospitals.

Another fascinating episode. Wondering why they can't put the patient in theatre into theatre recovery while they wait for the ITU bed.

I imagine that physically recovery doesn't have enough space for someone on life support with all their equipment. Plus a recovery nurse is not an ITU nurse and quite possibly won't have the skills or equipment knowledge to be left on their own with that level of patient. So the anaesthetist will need to stay to care for the patient. So even if theatre was empty they can't use it because they won't have an anaesthetist.