NHS collapsing....

Eloethan

12 years ago (I think it's been 12 years), the Labour Party warned that electing a Conservative government would result in the ruination of the NHS. What a pity some people weren't listening.

This

I am OK - thanks to those who asked. Once my heart settles back into a normal rhythm I am absolutely fine - until the next time!

But the result of biopsy of black thing on toe has not yet arrived. Five weeks now - but I am told by others who have been in the same boat that theirs came after six weeks. I am assuming it would be quicker if it was bad news!

I’m cross that DD2s podiatry appointment has been cancelled for the fourth time since October. Following a week’s stay in Hospital, she was told she’s at high risk because of her disability and needs to be seen regularly - she hasn’t been seen at all since discharge.
So, what’s going on?

Georgesgran

I’m cross that DD2s podiatry appointment has been cancelled for the fourth time since October. Following a week’s stay in Hospital, she was told she’s at high risk because of her disability and needs to be seen regularly - she hasn’t been seen at all since discharge.
So, what’s going on?

The Tories in charge of us at the moment don't want the NHS cos most of them don't use it, they pay to go private all the time and don't want to pay the part of our taxes & national insurance that they are currently obliged to do. They know this is not going to be a popular policy so they run down the NHS so people loose confidence in it, say its a load of rubbish and sign up to a private scheme. Same with dentists. I don't get podiatry any more now cos of cuts unless I pay same with dentists, my NHS appt. has been cancelled several times over a few months and now the surgery no longer offers NHS appointments. I'm sure the same will be true of GP services if the Tories get in again. Labour built the NHS & Labour will fix it when they get in next time. Rishi will not agree to a general election now cos he knows they will loose badly. I'm furious as are many others cos they don't have a mandate for this cos it was never in their manifesto before the election they won.

Sorry you had a bad experience. I got rushed into mine after being given some antibiotics that I shouldn’t have been given with the medication I take. It clearly states on the website that all pharmacies and drs look at. Anyway I kept blacking out I somehow managed to ring 111 and they sent ambulance who took me to hospital from 111 to ambulance crew to emergency department to ward I couldn’t have thanked them enough for all the care I received. They locked my house grab my bag my phone as I was so out of it and only remember vague things. Turned out I had an allergic reaction to the medication. Not all hospitals are bad.

We are very lucky in our area - things do get done - BUT after 2 years of my husband being on dialysis followed by a kidney transplant all the visits to various hospitals just showed how poor and time consuming their working practices are. They don't seem to have embraced technology to help them and the waste (drugs, equipment, their time - and ours is unbelievable). I witnessed qualified nurses doing admin jobs, and I had the "dispose of 6 months worth of dialysis fluids because they wouldn't take them back, even though they were still in their unopened boxes and double wrapped in plastic inside. I do appreciate the wonderful job they do but they need to understand that such wastage is not acceptable - It isn't a matter of simply throwing more money at the NHS - the staff all need to work smarter and not waste the precious resources they are being given to work with If you gave a beggar a sandwich and he threw it away, you wouldn't give him another one would you!

Sadly there are areas/hospital departments which are just not fit for purpose. We need to really have a grown up conversation about what we want from our NHS, how we pay for it, how fund training for those who want to work in it and if there are areas where treatment can be removed from the NHS altogether. It is all very well keeping people alive at all costs but if their lives are uncomfortable and the people with non life threatening problems have a miserable life because they are in so much pain, are we treading the right path?

Oops, pressed the wrong button.

...are we treading the right path?

I am aware that in the worst case scenario I would want treatment at any cost or if my children were in that position, I would want it. However, there are people I see at my mother's end of life where continual treatment seems cruel. Palliative care would seem kinder.

Sad to say, but it appears that there is a bit of a postcode lottery going on as regards the level of NHS care available. Everywhere is most certainly under intense pressure, but some places appear to be faring better than others. Here in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, my partner and I, with multiple age-related health problems, are still being well-cared for, despite having the odd hospital appointment postponed. No problem with getting GP appointments, either. I'm sure that all involved are doing their best, often with limited budgets and serious under-manning. Even if major Government investment is forthcoming, which there needs to be, I can't see anything improving very much anytime soon.

The current gov't use lots of private companies to provide different sorts of care and they are more expensive and not necessarily better, because they are allowed to use the NHS logo it's not immediately obvious. Private companies have shareholders who expect a payout so that money does not go into frontline services. In time Labour will return to the old funding model which is better value and more ethical

We all know that hospitals are understaffed and staff underpaid, but really the problems OP described have more to do with whoever is in charge not being up to their job.

A sister or staff nurse who finds staff not wearing masks when they should be, is not doing her job properly if she only tells them to put them on and does not come back to check that they are actually wearing them.

If she was competent she would have done so, or the problem would never have arisen, as the staff would not have dared take masks off.

Likewise, if hospital notes and journals are not to be found, someone else is slipping up badly.

If British hospitals are not yet using digital journals that any consultant, junior doctor, or nurse can access, then all who need the notes should make sure they are returned to a medical secretary who files them properly and can find them again next time they are needed.

A great many of these problems would be solved if administrators were better at their jobs, or if the day-to-day running of any ward was put back into the hands of the ward sister. We are all of us old enough to remember the martinets that even consultants were afraid of - no-one lost journals or was incorrectly dressed when those ladies were in charge.

It is clear that hospitals, departments, doctors and nurses are of variable quality. Patients have bad and good experiences. But it is also clear that pay is not adequate to support recruitment and retention regardless of individuals' wanting more pay. Staff move abroad and into the private sector. Brexit has robbed the NHS of experienced immigrant staff. International comparison shows we have less hospital beds, less staff and up to date equipment per 1000 population in France and Germany to name but two. There is obvious underfunding but also little attempt to reform the NHS and primary care to make them deliver better. Both main Parties must carry responsibility for this but the Tories have been in power 13 years so recent problems were theirs to fix. Social care of the elderly was supposed to be 'fixed' by Johnson but I can see no sign of that and it contributes to NHS bed inefficiency.

👏👏👏 grandtanteJ.

I don't want to go into political views but I am told that many of the the health service's staff feel that this particular government would like to make changes, echoing the American system. Time and time again I hear this, which of course, horrifies me.

I have only protested on the streets once but this would have me out in a nanosecond. The NHS is being run down with, so it seems, the long-term goal of disbanding what we all know and love in mind.

The only evidence I have for the above statements is that from NHS personnel which of course, are subjective but the ones I know all say the same thing.

Luckygirl 13, I will PM you.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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.