NHS collapsing....

I am a retired nurse, trained in the 1960s. I agree with all on this thread who have also been health care workers.
Myself, my late DH and other family members and friends have all suffered under the present system.
What on earth has happed to it?
At the moment I have a close friend who is suffering badly from two conditions which require surgery. She just keeps getting fobbed off by various out patient appointments.At one time she would have been sorted quickly, a previously very independent person who now is struggling to get out and about and relying on friends and family members to help with shopping and housework etc.

I am a Retired Nurse and was also a Midwife.Nursed for 40years.I have always dreaded needing inpatient care,with all the horror stories I read.

6 weeks ago I had a GI bleed and was admitted to my local hospital as an Emergency.The care I received was nothing short of outstanding from A and E to the Emergency admissions Ward and finally a Gastro Intestinal Ward.

All the staff,doctors,nurses,porters,cleaners were so caring,nothing was to much trouble for them.Several ladies on my ward needed a lot of personal care,I watched the Nurses looking after them with so much love.This Hospital does have a good reputation,I have never heard a bad word about it.

Our NHS get a lot of abuse nowadays,I wouldn’t like to still be working in it.I have to return soon for more investigations,I am almost looking forward to it!

Luckygirl 13 i am well aware of how scary and worrying AF can be. It causes discomfort, fear and worry. In the end i saw a good cardiologist who sorted me out and then i would see him about once a year. I think the failure of GPs means that they do not have sufficient connection with appropriate hospital
Consultants. I dont have private health insurance because it was such a high price but it is worth spending for an appt with a good cardiologist. It should not be the case but needs must. As i am not in UK at present in order to get up to date
treatment i will have to take a short flight to Martinique, a French island nearby. Heart disease can be very debilitating and i wish you all the best.

The NHS has never been properly staffed as we have never trained enough doctors and nurses. Instead we have relied on importing trained staff from other, often poorer, countries to fill the gaps. This in my view is a national disgrace. But it isn't only the government that is reluctant to train more doctors, the GMC also wants a cap on training places to maintain the status, and pay, of existing doctors

For many years the government has not done effective workforce planning - and has trained too few doctors, to save on the cost of training them. And now the NHS is forced to call on agencies and pay far expensive doctors when they have gaps to fill.. The government also stopped nurses getting their fees paid while they trained - and lo and behold! We have too few nurses. Over the last 10 years or more, cuts have been made which have led to the dangerous state the NHS is in now. Governments need to take a long view if public services are to do the job they have been set up for.

Oreo - because if they can get a pay rise (& the current offer to nurses isn’t ‘big’ ) then just maybe it will stop them leaving the profession so we might get a fully staffed NHS. So many drs are going abroad eg Australia, after training with their £100k+ training debts with the chance of paying it off while they have a decent standard of living. It also gives the lucky Australians a better Health service by paying decent wages.

I’m sorry you had this horrible experience but I really Dont think this is the norm in spite of the difficulties the nhs is experiencing. This really is a problem that could be solved by our inadequate govt. more money for salaries and more money to recruit staff. As a retired nurse/midwife of more than 40 years in practice it breaks my heart.

The government gave the NHS an extra £8 billion post Covid.

My experience of the NHS in the last couple of years has been mixed. Having suffered two health scares and two stays in hospital one NHS, one private (NHS funded), I’d say the medical care by doctors is the same. However, it is almost impossible to see a doctor in a reasonable time in the NHS and the admin and some of the nursing care is not up to the same standard as the private healthcare side.

My, poor, dearest daughter had a baby a couple of months back and, despite being in a hospital with new wards and plenty of money thrown at it, she almost died her care was so abysmal at times.

I think the main problem is that the NHS is overwhelmed with the problems of a burgeoning population and with catching up after Covid. Neither of these difficulties is the direct responsibility of the government.

albertina

ps
I believe the Tories are determined to destroy the NHS. God help us all if they succeed.

I believe the NHS is destroying itself. It has too many administrators at the expense of efficiency and properly managed front line staff. We have seen examples here from people who know how things have changed and those things have nothing to do with the government. I wrote before about theft and waste as witnessed by my ex mother in law who worked for the NHS for decades and my post was pooh-poohed as being anecdotal. How many more times do we have to hear the same story from people in a position to know what actually happens? Dressings, drugs, loo rolls are all stolen. My experience of working in the public sector is that there is huge wastage because ‘it doesn’t belong to the boss/company’. The private sector is very different. I know of one firm that didn’t give you another biro unless you produced the old, expired one - a tiny thing but consider the size of the NHS …. And yes, I remember the stolen kidney machine all those years ago.

Why do people think the Government want to run down the NHS? What proof does anyone have of this? Also why shouldn't they pay for private healthcare if they can afford it? When Cherie Blair had her last baby she had it in her local NHS hospital where the entire floor had to be closed and filled with security. There is a huge shortage of staff and it this was alleviated it would help as many staff are finding the working conditions worse than the pay - but it takes time to train people. The biggest shortage is with carers to cut down on the bed blocking. At my local hospital the other morning there were 70 patients ready to be discharged but not able to leave because there was no package of care in place and by evening they had only managed to discharge one patient!

JANH

I qualified as a nurse in the early 1970’s when the pay was abysmal and when Ward Sisters and Matrons was the normal. I now have various medical conditions that require hospital admission and generally I refuse to be admitted because the standard of care that I see, is not what I would expect on the wards. When I have been admitted, when the condition is too serious, I rarely see a nurse following the morning schedule, ie washing and bed making. When I am able to get to the bathroom, I see nurses standing around talking, avoiding call buttons. During my last incarceration I witnessed an elderly lady, who was due for discharge to a Nursing Home, left in her chair with no attention, the ambulance personnel refusing to move her as she had wet herself. There was no lack of staff, just pure avoidance. Another time a lady left on a bedpan, who was in pain - I had to help her off the bedpan, again the call button was ignored.
A lot of the money going to hospitals is spent on administrative staff and this is where changes must be made to allow more to be spend on actual nursing staff.
When I can’t refuse hospital treatment, I always point out things to the staff where improvements can and should be made.

It’s scary isn’t it? Have seen similar when visiting a sick old lady neighbour in hospital.
The nursing staff are not all angels!

I know everybody thinks healthcare in the United States is awful, but my husband and I and, indeed, most of the people I know have had very good outcomes most of the time.

I'm sorry if my previous text was too long and not put in paragraphs. I was given some very helpful advice about using paragraphs which I forgot!!

Anyway, back to the remark about how awful it would be if you went to the American model, I just want to say that I hear far more desperate complaints on GN about your system than I ever do about the system here.

I'm 76, and my husband is 78. You can't trust him to sort anything with the doctor because he really never complains, so I usually go along if it's anything really important. I'm pretty good at sussing out who's treating me and what they're doing. It does take a lifetime of practice in taking care of other people and then yourself to figure out what's what.

Very good luck to you all. However, I will say I would much rather have our system than yours.

Too many managers, not enough hands on!

ps
I believe the Tories are determined to destroy the NHS. God help us all if they succeed.

This really moved me.

I have just seen something similar happen to my best friend who has had an operation for colon cancer. She had to fight for a scan as she had certain worrying symptoms. Fight is the right word. The trouble is, as we get older we find it harder to fight, especially if we live alone.

All the very best.

What an awful experience for the OP! Perhaps rather than continuing to blame the current government as we tend to do for everything today, we should look at the managed decline of this country by successive ones and not just Tory either! I remember the Blair government and PFI (Private Financial Initiative) implementation. I worked for the NHS in an accounts role when this was happening. This seemed like a great idea at the time, but has had long term consequences which we are seeing now in the fragmentation of treatment standards around the country. This is no criticism of the medical staff but of the management of the organisation. Perhaps rather than accusing a government of wanting ‘privatisation’ (whatever that may mean!) it is time we considered a funding model for the NHS as per other European countries who have better outcomes as regard treatment, waiting lists and life expectancy. Our antiquated system, designed for a different world in 1948, which very soon will consume more than 44% of ALL public spending, should be looked at again. I don’t hold out much hope of that happening; it is too much of a political hot potato. Until then we apparently must pour money into a black hole that resists reform and modernisation and whose top brass appear largely unaccountable, to the detriment of other much needed public services.

My local hospital didn’t have enough votes to strike. That may be because so many of the staff are agency workers. Plus the fact that quite a few are not exactly fluent in English. (They might as well be on strike because the care there is slapdash.)

Dear LuckyGirl13,
I went right to the answer section, so hope I'm not repeating other advice. Have you tried self-conversion? I am not a nurse or a doctor. I have episodes of racing heart and was taught this by a physician. If I feel this coming on, I try to slowly and slightly shift my body position and breathe slowly and purposefully. If it does not start easing pretty quickly, I get into a sitting position and bear down with my midsection, as if I were very constipated and trying hard to go. Hold it for a second and let up quickly. Continue to try to breathe slowly and purposefully. I have had quite a bit of success with this method. Occasionally, it does not do the trick and has to be repeated a second or third time. This is a horrible experience and so uncomfortable and frightening. I feel very badly for you. I will pray for you. Very good luck!

Message for Lucky girl 13 - I too suffer from AF - the cardiologist prescribed rivaroxiban and Flecainide - the latter stops AF almost immediately- I take 2 Flecainide each day which keeps it under control. He also told me to keep ‘a pill in the pocket’ just in case the AF should occur. Then I take one and it stops it. Works brilliantly.

I have been lucky with my health as I was never in hospital until I was 73. So awful I discharged my self. Then the next year I had a heart attack and all was brilliant except for one nurse. It is true, every ward has its nightmare nurse. Then at 77 I had a heart failure. This time it was a different ward and there I saw a patient being slapped by a nurse.

I tried to complain to the nurse in charge but the nasty nurse had told her that the patient had slapped her. The patient had some sort of dementia as well as heart problems.

When I got home I phoned "Hourglass" and got a lot of instructions as to what I must do about this. And there was me thinking that that was what they were for.

I used to do voluntary work to do with literacy and I have helped many people write complaints letters mostly to local housing offices. I know that most letters of complaint are ignored.

So I wrote to Hourglass and also to PALS at St Georges and Healthwatch Wandsworth and, finally, Safe Guarding Nursing Directorate of NHS England. After some weeks I finally got a reply from Hourglass which, quite rudely, told me that I had already been told what to do and reiterated what I had been told by phone i.e. take the matter to the Ombudsperson.

I could not see then and I do not see now why it is my responsibility to take this matter to the Ombudsperson. Apparently I am a third party so it is none of my business anyway.

I was so disgusted that I wrote to each of these organisations and asked them what exactly they did other than go on TV as a talking head and wait for an invite to tea at Buck House and an award to get a few letters after their names. They are all well overpaid ex-nurses in all probability.

After a few more weeks I wrote to my MP, Fleur Anderson, and told her all but that letter was only poted a few days ago so I have not heard back yet.

The NHS was made on the cheap with imported nurses on very low wages and consultants who thought that they had been given hospitals. I remember as a child my left wing family arguing about this and some of my parents cousins were doctors some of them left and some of them right.

There is and always has been so much theft from the health service from the theft of roles of toilet paper to the consultant who stole a kidney machine from Charing Cross hospital around 1986. For anyone who wants to research that it was reported in The Times when it went to court the following year.

I dont think the left or the right wings should be blamed for the mess the NHS is in now. It is the individuals who are working for the NHS who are to blame. Whether they are the lowest paid nurses or the highest paid consultants it is they who are abusing the NHS and if they are not doing so personally they know who is and the say nothing and so are complicit and so are equally guilty. The NHS needs to be pared down to just essentials like maternity, children and cancer and then when all NHS staff are no longer in a safe job for life maybe things can improve.

I think the main problem is a shortage of suitably trained staff.
The staff are basically over worked and under payed. They are human so make mistakes as we all do, they do the best they can with the limited resources they are given.

I qualified as a nurse in the early 1970’s when the pay was abysmal and when Ward Sisters and Matrons was the normal. I now have various medical conditions that require hospital admission and generally I refuse to be admitted because the standard of care that I see, is not what I would expect on the wards. When I have been admitted, when the condition is too serious, I rarely see a nurse following the morning schedule, ie washing and bed making. When I am able to get to the bathroom, I see nurses standing around talking, avoiding call buttons. During my last incarceration I witnessed an elderly lady, who was due for discharge to a Nursing Home, left in her chair with no attention, the ambulance personnel refusing to move her as she had wet herself. There was no lack of staff, just pure avoidance. Another time a lady left on a bedpan, who was in pain - I had to help her off the bedpan, again the call button was ignored.
A lot of the money going to hospitals is spent on administrative staff and this is where changes must be made to allow more to be spend on actual nursing staff.
When I can’t refuse hospital treatment, I always point out things to the staff where improvements can and should be made.

I also experienced chaos this month. Due to an ambulance bar at my local A&E, I was taken to a hospital too far for f&f to visit. Although part of same Trust, they could not access my records and had no time to ask me. Wrong assumptions = wrong medication and judgements about me. I was told off for looking at notes about me left open on a desk in the corridor and containing a significant error about my allergies.

Although they resolved my problem (lung infection) they kept finding other reasons not to discharge me but ignored my concerns about a lump that appeared on my breast.

I have Aspergers. As I got more and more stressed, they were making plans to section me and assigned a care assistant to follow me up the corridor to the loo (quite often due to my incontinence!)

Between 9 &10pm on day 4, the entire unit was clearly in crisis wi h one doctor on duty for the entire hospital. Yet 3 staff (including my minder) spent 30 mins trying to restrain a distress elderly lady who only wanted to walk down the corridor leaning on her tray table (having been refused a walker). I managed to escape, call a taxi on the freephone which came within 5 minutes
The hospital called the Police after 1 am - who called my son and then got a local medic to check me = no health cause for concern + 100% cognisance. Over the next few days my GP discounted the hospital findings but referred me to the Breast Clinic. I have cancer = an appointment with surgery next week,

I will give the unit feedback but do not plan to complain. The staff are also victims of the NHS crisis + nobody in the entire hospital has had training in Autism.

I work in a very large teaching hospital as a volunteer and I have nightmares about the future of the NHS. The care on the wards where I help out is exemplary, but totally unsustainable. I dont work in geriatrics, however, two thirds of the patients on my wards are over 80, mostly with multiple fairly serious conditions requiring complex management. About half of those are bed blocking through no fault of their own. What will happen when the baby boomers (myself included) get into their 80s and 90s? More people in general in that category, and probably more surviving into their 80s and 90s. By the way I dont have any answers!

I was taken into AnE this week due to breathing difficulties post a very bad dose of Covid. The place was empty no junior drs as all on strike. I was seen by a senior consultant who was standing in he was absolutely excellent as was the X-ray woman. I noticed no long queues of ambulances outside which made me think n the fact the place was empty. I just wonder if people go to AnE when unable to get a drs appointment. I have to wait almost a month now for blood tests n rarely see a Gp. I was so grateful to the nhs doesn’t bear thinking bout if we didn’t have them. Vastly overworked but not getting any better.