Humanitarian Crisis in UK

Really good posts from you thatbags
The Red Cross have decided to come out with this 'humanitarian crisis' stuff for two reasons, either politicking or keeping their name in front of us all to be noticed.
They could have said 'overstretched at some times and in some hospitals with long waits for beds and A&E' but that wouldn't have got them any attention.
IMHO ( and not just me) anyone who pays tax will have to pay more tax pretty soon just to keep things on an even keel within the NHS.

annie I have said this on the other thread, but it's worth repeating. Last night on Newsnight there was aTory MP and practising doctor -a chap- who said that the last time the NHS was properly funded was during the Blair/Brown era. That during this time the NHS made huge strides, but since the Tories have taken office , despite their rhetoric the NHS is being gradually run into the ground. And this from a Tory!!!!

Bags there are some shortages in the French system such as a lack of GPs in remote rural areas (recent news reports every day for a week and strategies in place). From personal experience over ten years, we have waited a few weeks for non-urgent dermatology, otherwise always seen in a couple of weeks and no wait for x-ray, physio etc.
There are nowhere near the waiting times and from everything I have read measured outcomes are high. There are also rehabilitation centres and convalescent homes everywhere to avoid bed blocking. Several of my neighbours have had heart surgery followed by three weeks in convalescent home.

The labour government giving GP's a new contract cutting right back on their hours has caused much of the need for people going to A & E . If an unwell child who would choose to wait a week to see their GP or get to A & E same night

bags I won't repeat myself but if you can be assed look at the other NHS thread - I've outlined what a Tory MP and doctor said last night on Newsnight.

PS The criticism I'm talking about is of health care funding, management, and the political will behind it, not of doctors and nurses.

@Anya

That's the problem Addenbrooke's in Cambridge has too. It's three times as big as St Mary's, is the trauma centre for the East of England and a specialist centre for all sorts of illnesses. It was placed in special measures 18 months ago. It does amazing specialist work for a huge geographical area, but seems to bump locals off the lists. The huge area it covers also means that it has more bed blocking than average, because care in the community can't be found in isolated communities.

Once again, bed flow is a problem and leads to wasted resources. There need to be more community facilities to prevent people coming into hospital in the first place and provide facilities when people are discharged. The same message has been coming loud and clear from all sources for ages. While money might not solve the problems, making short term cuts has caused long term problems.

I'm glad you had good treatment in a French hospital when you needed it, ww. I've had good treatment in calm atmospheres in UK hospitals when I needed it too, as have other members of my family.

A few personal examples isn't really sufficient data. If we only used your good experience and mine, we'd be concluding that there simply wasn't a problem anywhere.

I suppose I'm really appealing to GN-ers with daily access to various European news media. What are different countries' own assessments of their health services? Are they as critical as we are?

Please note, I'm not saying there isn't plenty to criticise. I'm just looking for a real comaprison.

I know bags I was being facetious - slap my wrist.

I've actually experience A&E in France -crushed vertebrae after a fall, and it was a sea of calm peace and quiet. With piped music!!! Quite different to the experience in A&E here. It was a provincial hospital. I was charged 17euros and given a form for me to take to the town hall to reclaim, so in effect I was charged nothing -shock horror- all these people from the EU using our medical facilities I heard the French cry. I didn't bother to reclaim my 17 euros.

Don't be silly, ww. Heart attacks are emergencies. Read what I've written more carefully.

When the fact that we spend less per capita on health care than other European countries is brought up, one doesn't hear about any problems other countries have. What are their hospital emergency rooms like? Are their hospitals short of beds? what are waiting times like, etc?

Not saying I don't agree that better funding, better organisation, etc wouldn't make a difference here (I'm sure they would), but the simple comparison of spending is not enough to make a balanced judgement about whether our NHS is particularly worse than in other European countries. Have they, for instance, planned better for aging populations?

bags laying on a sofa with a heart attack whilst there is a bed sorted will very likely lead to your demise so I suppose that is one way of sorting the problem

I couldn't be twelve hours anywhere without needing the loo several times. Just mentioning that as a practical consideration.

I accept that there are serious, very serious, problems within the NHS. But I think it was quite wrong of the Red Cross to call the current situation a humanitarian crisis. Such talk is excessive. A humanitarian crisis is when a country is failing to get basics like food and water to its people, a humanitarian crisis describes a war zone or disaster zone. The Red Cross knows this full well.

There is far too much exaggeration in news stories.

Reading news reports, day after day, what strikes me is the repeated claim that people cannot get appointments with their GP. That seems to me to be the fundamental problem.

Another thing that strikes me is this: if you can wait twelve hours for treatment in a corridor on a hospital trolley, why couldn't you wait twelve hours in bed or wrapped up on the sofa at home? I know any politician who says there are many people at A&E who don't need to be there gets slammed for saying it, but something that can wait twelve hours isn't an emergency, is it?

Do I need to revise my internal definition of emergency?

The problem with the hospital on last night, St Mary's I think, was that as well as functioning as a specialised trauma hospital it had to function in every other area too.

With only 16 ICU beds that was obviously too few. They had the staff, the expertise, the theatres, but again it was a question of beds. And thus certainly wasn't a case of the elderly clogging up the system.

ww,

I'm not sure that they have more capacity. I think the idea is that expertise is concentrated in one place.

f77ms

I spent a few weeks in hospital every year until until I was 7. One year I spent even longer, because I had meningitis. I had to attend outpatients until I was into my teens. I was absolutely petrified of hospitals and dreaded being told I might need to be admitted. My son (now age 19) had two stays in hospital as a child and I can honestly say that the way children are treated has improved beyond recognition.

I started watching it, Anya, but as I had an aortic dissection 3 years ago, with all those statistics, I couldn't watch the operation, so recorded the rest.
I might watch it when I feel braver.
I wasn't sure whether to be impressed that she drove her car. I certainly couldn't have, but I only had to go to a hospital a quarter of an hour away, which then sent me to a different one half an hour in the other direction when they realised that I didn't just have back-ache.
And, yes, Ana, I know I've said it all before, so you needn't bother to say so.

What a magnificent testament to the hard work and humanity of (most of) the people who work in hospitals. How they work under such pressure, especially doctors who already have the responsibility for people's lives, I can't imagine.

As one of the doctors said in the programme "there are only so many "efficiencies" one can make" and she went on to say that the people who are working so hard in the NHS are getting very tired of being told to be more efficient.

I felt so sorry for the chap whose cancer surgery was cancelled for the second time and really sad to see at the end of the programme that, despite an optimistic prognosis on discharge, he had died a few weeks later after contracting an infection. His doctor, who seemed such a lovely man who really cared about his patient, must have been upset.

I thought the idea was that these centres were created with the promise of more capacity to deal with the surrounding population.

daphnedill what you describe mirrors my own experience as a child . An awful , frightening and painful experience , my Mum was not allowed to visit because of the risk of infection , I was in for three weeks ! Most of the nurses were hard and wouldn`t put up with crying children . I was also not given pain relief after surgery and still remember the pain now ! Things weren`t always rosy in the `old` days

It's bloody inhuman poor bugger

You mean you've only just come across it now?

This was on Radio 4 You and Yours yesterday.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087pf0l

The hospital involved had been told that Theresa May didn't want any of this to get out.
Just thought I'd tell you. Pass it on.

Oh oh I don't think I can watch!!!