NHS collapsing....

Iam64

‘We are beginning to lose confidence in the nhs’
I’ve got a solution, let’s be like the USA, private health care for the advantaged, poor service for the disadvantaged.

Poor, or NONE!

No let’s not😟

‘We are beginning to lose confidence in the nhs’
I’ve got a solution, let’s be like the USA, private health care for the advantaged, poor service for the disadvantaged.

Someone on Question Time said that in the short term the NHS needs a huge cash injection. After that, it needs a plan for the future. My DH has recently had an emergency operation. Once he received the diagnosis, the treatment was wonderful but the lead-up to it was appalling - ambulance failed to arrive so we used a taxi, hanging around waiting for nursing staff to appear, the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. We are beginning to lose confidence in the NHS.

Oh and I’m not a pensioner either, a few years to go yet.🧓🏻

Oreo I agree about paying more NI and yes we do need to grow up about funding. Also the electorate should inform themselves about how the system works (or doesn’t)
Living or just existing now costs BIG from the moment we open our eyes of a morning, even before we flick the kettle on to boil a mug full of water for a drink.
Even if we live alone and are not in debt. Even before we get on the expensive bus(es) to work…if they haven’t cut your service
Even if we only eat one meal a day. Before that there is council tax to pay, there is rent to pay. Both are about to rise next month because the councils have no choice.
Then there is the BBC and the requirement to have a license and their constant threats of visits to your home before you’ve even moved in.
Then there is the need to have an internet connection now.
Even to contact DWP, and in many cases to just do your job
How and why some parents (still mainly mothers) bother to go to work I don’t know ..when some earn just enough to pay the childcare so they go to work , often in dead end jobs with little scope for moving up the ladder, and earn just enough …to pay someone else to do what you probably want to do yourself.
When junior doctors (they need to find a new title for them because it is a misnomer for some) are actually worse off now in real terms than back in 2008 then what hope for the modest ambitions of others who haven’t gone to university.
YOUR life could literally be in their hands.

My fear is that, as so many people experience inadequate treatment, some who really should go to A&E decide it would be better to 'wait and see if things settle down' and sometimes they do. I must admit to having been a case in point when I tripped and fell headfirst, incurring some rather bloody grazes and a very sore head. DiL suggested A&E but I thought a (minimum) five-hour wait in a crowded waiting room would make me feel worse. As it happens, I recovered, albeit with two spectacular black eyes which have since subsided and the scabs from the grazes have fallen off, leaving no evidence. Was I wise? Probably not.

I’m not a pensioner.
Many grans aren’t!

Hope your condition improves Luckygirl after your recent experience. I have just recently been looked after by staff at our Walk-in centre. I was very impressed they were on the ball and looked after me very well.
It's next door to our surgery but we are not allowed to physically see a doctor since lockdown began. Every time I rang up the surgery I was told I would wait a fortnight for a phone consultation. The three doctors at the practice have been there all the time but everyone is being advised to go the Walk-in.

Pensioners don't pay any NI. Are you suggesting that those over pension age should pay some kind of health tax?

Nurses were never well paid in the past, they weren’t in it for the money.Actually they are quite well paid now tho.
Same goes for junior doctors, they had prestige and knew how well paid they would be soon.
We all need to pay more NI there’s no way round that if we want better services all round.Other European countries pay more in taxes than we do, this government won’t put up taxes and prob Labour won’t either.It’s unpopular but needs doing.
I needed a small op about 16 years ago and had to fund that myself too or face a very long wait.

I am guessing different parts of the country are having very different experiences. Here in the deep South our local A&E is overwhelmed a lot of the time and staff are leaving in droves. We have vast amounts of building and one Drs surgery that is regularly closed leaving people with nowhere to go. I hear from my DD1 in Scotland that their local A&E was more or less empty on two occasions last month, unheard of here.
I am sorry you had such a rough time Lucky it is upsetting and frightening.

Oreo

How anyone thinks that paying more to doctors and nurses would help us as patients is beyond me.We’d all like big pay rises come to that but it won’t help the NHS.
It’s true that standards vary wildly between hospitals and that’s always been the case.The reasons are complex.
I ned a procedure done that will mean a wait of around a year on the NHS so am using my meagre savings to get it done privately, it shouldn’t be this way but it just is.
To the OP, what an awful experience for you.

Eh? I don't understand why it needs explaining to you.

Oreo- we are short of doctors and nurses. Maybe that's why you have such a wait for your procedure? Can you suggest a way of recruiting, and keeping, good medics if not to pay them more?

How anyone thinks that paying more to doctors and nurses would help us as patients is beyond me.We’d all like big pay rises come to that but it won’t help the NHS.
It’s true that standards vary wildly between hospitals and that’s always been the case.The reasons are complex.
I ned a procedure done that will mean a wait of around a year on the NHS so am using my meagre savings to get it done privately, it shouldn’t be this way but it just is.
To the OP, what an awful experience for you.

Not investing in the NHS has consequences.

Who’d have thought?

The upshot of all the difficulties we are experiencing and that illustrated by the op is that …….

Life expectancy is growing at a slower rate in the U.K. than any other G7 country.

This government should be held to account for what is happening right now. They are shilly-shallying over the obvious.
The obvious being they simply have to pay the nurses and doctors more and now. The crisis is now.
It has been created by government and they know the causes.
This government also knows they haven’t long to go now before they are ousted by the electorate.
When they are, it is in all right thinking peoples’ interest to ensure they hold any successive government to account for direction the NHS goes next.

I think that you'll find Freya, that most " left leaning" people are supporters of the NHS and take pride in Nye Bevan who started it. I can't comment on A &E, but my daughter's care during her high risk pregnancy has been exemplary. There is evidence of neglect in certain areas, certainly- the loos in the antenatal department are filthy.

Well - after 12 years in government, with the nhs is meltdown, it’s medical staff striking for better and safer working conditions, how can the government not be held to account?

Fleurpepper

Wow Bodach and Freya! How very unfair to comment like this on Lucky's very honest portrayal and reporting.

Lucky I am so sorry you are having such a tough time of it all- and thank you for telling us of your experience.

My DD2's MIL has had an awful experience last few days after a fall and major injuries. The report she gave us last night of how long it took for ambulance, and the huge wait in A&E, which was indeed bedlam- is truly scary. Nothing to do with left, right or centre!

Dear Fleurpepper
My comment on Lucky’s very honest portrayal and reporting was as follows: “ Luckygirl's original post set out a sorry tale of individual ineptitude and administrative chaos on the part of NHS staff at a particular hospital - and you are quite right that she did not lay the blame on the Government.” How is that very unfair?

The picture is, I think, very mixed!

In our family we have had both brilliant and awful attention. 111, paramedics, A&E and junior doctors saved my life but the after care has been very mixed. Different depts are run either superbly or chaotically.

I agree gsm. Managers need to be managing better.

Wow Bodach and Freya! How very unfair to comment like this on Lucky's very honest portrayal and reporting.

Lucky I am so sorry you are having such a tough time of it all- and thank you for telling us of your experience.

My DD2's MIL has had an awful experience last few days after a fall and major injuries. The report she gave us last night of how long it took for ambulance, and the huge wait in A&E, which was indeed bedlam- is truly scary. Nothing to do with left, right or centre!

HousePlantQueen

Freya5

Nothing at all like the experience in my local hospital. Brand new A&E dept, unfortunately had to be used by a dear friend over the weekend, care second to non she said. Newly installed MRI scanner, overseen by my lovely next door neighbour. Polish ENT consultant, German Gynae Consultant, some Spanish and Romanian, Portuguese , African, staff,although majority are local born and bred.
Sorry but I think many on here love denigrating the NHS, due to their left leanings and obvious bias against anything, or anyone, Conservative.

The original thread started by Luckygirl recounting her frightening and unsatisfactory experience at her local A&E. Your comments about "lefties" denigrating the NHS are silly, and that's me being polite.

On the one hand, I agree with you. Luckygirl's original post set out a sorry tale of individual ineptitude and administrative chaos on the part of NHS staff at a particular hospital - and you are quite right that she did not lay the blame on the Government. On the other hand, I agree with Freya that most threads on GN involving the NHS are soon overflowing with rants about "years of Tory under-funding" and "Tory plots to sell our sainted NHS off to bloated US plutocrats" etc etc. I think Freya5's use of the term "denigrating" is wrong, as it implies that the lefties are criticising the NHS. Far from it: they seize on anyone else's criticism of any aspect of the performance of the NHS and/or its staff as a heaven-sent opportunity once again to proclaim the NHS as "the envy of the world" and trot out the usual anti-Tory tropes..

Sorry to hear about your experience Lucky. It all sounds chaotic and far from patient centred. I understand the anxiety AF can cause. I’ve had permanent AF for 8 years now. A cardio version worked for a month but reverted. I take blood thinners and I’m waiting for further reviews of breathlessness, so I sympathise and hope follow up is effective.

Freya5, your post struck me as minimising Lucky’s stressful experience. Your suggestion that anyone raising concern about the dire straight our NHS is in does so due to ‘left leanings and obvious bias against anything, or anyone, Conservative’ is frankly nonsense. It shows your own bias clearly.

Freya5

Nothing at all like the experience in my local hospital. Brand new A&E dept, unfortunately had to be used by a dear friend over the weekend, care second to non she said. Newly installed MRI scanner, overseen by my lovely next door neighbour. Polish ENT consultant, German Gynae Consultant, some Spanish and Romanian, Portuguese , African, staff,although majority are local born and bred.
Sorry but I think many on here love denigrating the NHS, due to their left leanings and obvious bias against anything, or anyone, Conservative.

The original thread started by Luckygirl recounting her frightening and unsatisfactory experience at her local A&E. Your comments about "lefties" denigrating the NHS are silly, and that's me being polite.