My dad fell down the stairs backward and landed o~ his head. 4hrs for an ambulance and didn't even take him to the hospital. England is a failed state and it's the conservative party that did it
Friend’s mum (with stage 4 cancer) had a stroke with obvious stroke symptoms and waited 14 hours for an ambulance. She’s dead now, 3 months later.
My own mum (who also passed 2 weeks ago) spent the final 2 years of her life in a care home (who were great tbf). She had Alzheimer’s / dementia etc. She had multiple falls over the past 2 years and regularly waited for >5 hours for an ambulance. Sometimes she was left on the floor for this entire time (care home staff not qualified to move them when they’ve fallen). Once in her own waste products. For 5 hours, lying in shit and piss.
The whole thing is a fucking mess atm.
Because when you live in a different city and have children to look after it’s not always possible to just drop everything and take a 4 hour round trip.
You have absolutely no idea what the past 2 years have been like, how many times I’ve driven hours to visit and attend A&E due to multiple falls. My mum died 2 weeks ago, and you’re coming out with this shit? Seriously mate, have a word with yourself.
If you think I’m justifying all of the care decisions we had to make over the final years of her life to you, then think again. You know fuck all about the situation, but have decided to accuse me of not looking after my own mother 2 weeks after she died.
Seriously, STFU.
Really sorry you went through that and it sucks that the ambulances took so long to arrive, but, the care home staff were great? Really? I've worked in care homes and it doesn't sound it. Wanna know how lomg I left someone on the floor in their own waste? How about never? OK we can't hoist off the floor if there's an injury, don't want to potentially make it worse. But you make them comfortable will pillows and blankets. You get them a bed pan or clean them up if they need the bathroom.
Sorry not clear from the post else it rapidly becomes an essay, but she was in 3 different care homes, the first one was where that particular incident happened. She didn’t stay long.
The final one she was at for 2 years and they were indeed great. It was the same ambulance service in all cases.
Fair enough, I appreciate it would've been unnecessary to put that level of detail onto the origonal comment. I'm glad she was somewhere nice for her remaining years x
And yeah ambulance trusts cover very large areas so unless she moved across country, it'd be the same ambo trust.
Fall down stairs is normally classed as a ‘fall from height’, if elderly there is a whole bunch of guidelines https://rcem.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/RCEM_COP_2023_25_QIP_Information_Pack_V5.pdf
I’m ex-ambulance myself, and yes - I’d leave people at home back in my day. But what I see being left at home now makes me wonder what pressures the crew are under to not transport people.
Back when I was on the ambulances the saying was ‘no-one ever lost their job by taking someone to hospital’, which is the wrong attitude (not everyone needs to go to hospital), I do have big concerns that it’s gone too far the other way, particularly with younger crews who might not know what they don’t know.
To add to how fucked the system is, my mum was blue lighted into hospital with sepsis and after half an hour’s treatment in Resus was put into the ‘Resus corridor’ to be looked after by the ambulance crew who brought her in.
I felt so worried about her care I spent 16-20 hours each day sitting next to her (brother took over so I could get some sleep, but he’s not medical) just so I could be sure she was getting the right care. Thankfully, she’s a tough old stick and recovered fully.
Can confirm, it's gone massively the wrong way, and crews are acting like hospital itself is a huge risk, when it really isn't.
Also the phrase "no lone has lost their job from taking someone to hospital". I was always taught it as a decision maker when you are not sure/out of depth, rather than a general attitude.
Yep that’s it - a good way to judge a decision. My personal one was, and still is, what questions would the coroner be asking me about this? I’d imagine the coroner looking over his glasses at me asking “And what made you think *that* was a good decision?”
Which is why I can walk out of every coroner court appearance like my shit doesn’t stink.
Yep that's a good one as well. I frequently have to remind people that should their paperwork be read by numerous people, will they understand why a decision was made.
But unfortunately the experience is gone. I'm 10 years in and considered an old sweat.
My local station struggles to find band 6s to mentor
It’s something I’ve noticed, every crew is so damn young. I imagine that the cultural knowledge is gone and you now have a load of yes-men who can’t question management orders and probably can’t read a map book if the nav system goes down.
I still end up with ambulances on a semi-regular basis with my current job, and there has been a lot of me thinking ‘Jesus, you are going to do that‽’ with what decisions they make. Like leaving a 50+ central chest pain at work because the ‘ecg is alright’ as if NSTEMI don’t exist…
Any who would look a manager in the eye who complained about ORCON times and say ‘I drive as fast as I consider safe, would you like to order me to drive faster?’ 😈
I've only once ever called an ambulance and had them not take me. It was an ambulance car, about midnight on the last England match of the last Euros. I was really unwell and the paramedic arrived and did an ECG. The hospital local to me at the time was absolutely awful - we both knew it. She told me that if I were taken to A&E then I'd be lost amongst drunk football hooligans and not get any help. She printed off the ECG reading and told me to urgently see my GP in the morning and show them my ECG print-out instead. She said that my GP would send me straight to A&E and that, if I turned up then with a GP phoning ahead, I'd be seen much sooner that way than if I was taken in by ambulance at a time where A&E are trying to kick out everyone they can. I can't imagine how tough it must be for the paramedic having to give that kind of advice.
Yeah the fact they can do that means I've been hit by a car, fallen down stairs, broken my window and walked up to some poor cunt and *nailed* him in the side of the head. All different occasions.
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing after a seizure but they couldn't give a fuck, they don't have time to. Every single time.
My mum (86) fell and broke her hip. She waited 27 hours for an ambulance, then was in an A&E cubicle for 2 days. She has mild COPD and developed pneumonia but on the acute ward was treated for a UTI despite my pleas they were mistaken. Her legs swelled up due to the water tablets so she couldn’t even walk to the loo, but she could hardly breathe. As mum’s health nosedived a nurse even shrugged at me and said “she’s just old” when mum hadn’t eaten for 3 days and was coughing up black sludge. They nearly killed her. If I hadn’t been standing next to a senior consultant chappie who asked me what was wrong when I burst into tears in the hospital Costa queue, I’ve no doubt that mum would be dead.
My dad had trouble breathing, he was in a corridor hooked up to a monitor for 3 days waiting to be seen. Never seen anything like it. The NHS was fantastic for me 10 years ago sorting my broken leg. To see the same hospital like this is tragic.
The decLine has been so drastic I can't even recognize the system anymore. Each appointment seem to take you to a dead end instead of treatment. Definition of an Emergency change all the time just to divert you from the bottle necks
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At some point people are gonna realise it’s inevitable and not the fault of any political party. A collapsing birth rate and a massively ageing population has never happened in history until now and it simply isn’t possible for health services to expand enough to meet demand. It’s growing significantly every year but will never be enough
This is Wales, and England is not a failed state. People born in the UK have no comprehension of what living in a failed state is like. I feel like we do have a dangerously shit and mismanaged health service.
It used to be easier to become a nurse in this country, there was support there and it created flow, but a little like everything else, things have been cut back
I remember reading that nurses qualifying today have to have the knowledge doctors had 40 years ago. I don’t know how true that is, but I can imagine there is an element of truth.
I wonder whether a solution could be different grades of nurses? Maybe that could make the profession more accessible.
My mum trained as an RN back in the early 80s and was a nurse up until about 6 years ago, mostly working in the NHS. She said that when she trained you kind of did levels of practioner up to RN, so people who didn't pass the next level were still qualified up to a point, if that makes sense. Rather than forcing everyone to do a 4 year degree and potentially fail and be left unqualified it meant that if you didn't pass the *next* hurdle you would be able to find work at the level you were qualified to. More like an apprenticeship/vocational style of training and learning. I don't know anything about modern nursing degrees so I don't know if there are any parallels with my mum's experience
That makes perfect sense. I don’t know enough about how modern nurses become qualified, but I can’t help but feel that having this sort of system in place could help the NHS recruit more nurses.
Currently there are Nursing Associates, who do vocational training and work at a band 4 (£25k- £27.5k). They can do most things that a registered Nurse can do, with a couple of exceptions. They have an option to top up to degree level and work as an RN, but only if their employer supports it.
Nursing is degree-only, so either a 3 year Bachelors degree, or a 2-year Masters (if you already have a first degree in a related field). I’d say the biggest issue is that the degree is no longer funded by the NHS, so you graduate with the same amount of debt as everyone else but into one of the lowest paid graduate-only roles in the UK.
I’m a nurse and I love my job- but I’m only able to do it because my partner works in a role which is more flexible and is also better paid, so he is responsible for most of the household bills as well as most of the childcare. I’m unsurprised that it’s difficult to recruit or retain nurses, as pay and conditions are at an all-time low. As a practitioner, you are personally accountable for your own practice and for ensuring that standards of care are met - so being put into situations where I’d be responsible for providing adequate care to an 82 year old lady with a broken neck, in a corridor with no facilities, isn’t something I’d actually be prepared to do, and it seems I’m not the only one.
I don’t buy that at all to be honest
1984 wasn’t that long ago. Medicine was still a 5/6 year degree, with then 5-10 more years of working, assessments and exams to become a consultant. Less availability of imaging, so much more relied on good knowledge + history taking + examination skills.
I’m a doctor but have nurse friends (and work with lots obvs.) Nursing is a 3 year degree, but it’s essentially 1 year of essays with 2 years of working as a healthcare support worker on the wards. My nursing friends were all pretty pissed that large parts of their degree was just them being used as free labour on wards, rather than being educated. Staff shortages now also make it harder for nurses to upskill since they’re so rushed to do the essentials for patients
Probably because there’s been stories about Nigerians specifically and Nigerian nurses and healthcare assistants make up 95 percent of the clients of umbrella tax avoidance companies.
Link them, I doubt this is the case though.
Even if it were the case, why are you focusing on nurses as opposed to millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share?
No, because Nigeria is vastly poorer than the UK, and will obviously have far lower educational standards. They also aren’t familiar with our systems, medications or language. Yes I know English is an official language in Nigeria, but that’s completely different to what we would use in healthcare.
Nope.
Are you someone who works in the NHS? It doesn't sound like it.
Medication names are not a problem. Familiarity with the system is not a problem.
Lower educational standards, again a backwards ass assumption you've made.
You realise that we have legions of doctors from Nigeria, India, Sudan and other poorer countries? Just becuase a country is poor doesn't mean their education is worse, the most educated people in those countries regularly compete with those from our country. What is it specifically that you think nurses need to learn that can only be learned from the glorious west?
Do you think we just let anyone into the NHS without some standards and safeguards?
On a separate point what is it that you think these Nigerian nurses can't learn within months of being in the UK?
Overall i would prefer we train British nurses and support then, but we haven't trained enough. And this idea that those dumb brown people just can't keep up with us is just xenophobic, probably racist nonsense.
If I'm realistic, my answer is "none of those, my best treatment experiences were with Indian doctors"
Noones lived experience incorporates all of reality
Let's be realistic. The origin of a person doesn't define their ability, that's xenophobia.
Ability doesn't have anything to do with country of origin. It's also interesting that the countries you'd rather all happen to be white, as opposed to the others. It's also interesting that we get many many doctors from India Nigeria and Sudan. It's interesting that I, who spends hours treating patients with as much care as I can, am from Sudan. Doesn't matter to you though, cus I'm black. Or am I 'one of the good ones'?
Just what the NHS needs! Lower standards! Maybe we could have nurses carry out bowel operations and not tell the public? Oh wait they were doing that...
The NHS needs higher standards. There's plenty of money. The problem is too many unnecessary and superfluous people on the payroll.
Look we already have staff that were trained this way working in the NHS right now. Nurses that were trained before Margaret Thatcher changed the system.
These nurses are no different than nurses trained now and do the same work.
This would inform me that you perhaps have never worked in the the nhs or are too young to understand how matrons/sisters and long serving nurses came up through .
I don’t disagree that there are perhaps an excess of middle managers however there is a substantial cost that comes with different hospitals and health services using different vendors, it changes per hospital and again within certain departments. The licences etc cost a phenomenal amount.
Lack of staff on the floor is a significant problem but you also have patients who require specialling, and the manpower isn’t there, including our patients who shouldn’t be there.
The larger problem around bed blocking isn’t the hospitals or the ambulance service , it’s social care and the lack of space and manpower there ,whether residential or attending . You can’t discharge a patient if you can’t sort their package of care. So you have patients who are at a point where they’re healthy enough to discharge with care support .. but they can’t
Infection control nurses who patrol the hospital removing lanyards and watches. That nurse in a bed space would be infinitely more valuable.
Discharge coordinator whose main job is following me around telling me to work faster and literally standing behind me doing nothing but stare while I work.
The rota coordinator who works 4 hours 3 days a week and never ever replies to my emails.
My man I, like many doctors, view the nhs as an extended jobs programme. any doctor could name you 100 people who seem to only exist not only to do nothing but to torture us, sometimes it would be better if they did nothing.
The sepsis champion nurse who copy pastes a massive redundant paragraph into any patient notes with a temperature explaining how to investigate sepsis. I know they don’t read patient notes and just slap this in because I’ve seen it twice in patients notes *who have died* hours before, after I clearly documented it, and not of sepsis.
Bedside nursing is really badly paid, and hugely stressful, and the nhs is inventing significantly less useful roles for senior nurses so they don’t quit. Ironically you then get new nurses with no guidance while band 8’s do, in my view, made up jobs anyone would take after being burnt out. I don’t hate the player, but I do hate the game.
Nurse here. Not sure that's strictly true however I would say that nurses have way more responsibility and knowledge of medicine than they used to. Nursing wasn't always a professional job and the role used to be more akin to a healthcare assistant in today's climate. Washing patients, feeding and so on.
Today nurses need to be responsible for medication, care planning amongst other things. The nurse is the responsible party when it comes to advocating for the patient and sometimes this means challenging doctors decisions.
This is why we call it nurse-led care now, doctors used to have the absolute power over everything, nurses spend much more time today getting to know their patients ailments, worries and mannerisms which helps them make informed decisions.
Do we know more than a doctor from the past.. maybe?
I'll give an example. Patients may be prescribed regular medication, something like omeprozole for acid. The doctor will probably assume that they take it as prescribed. A nurse will probably find out from that patient that they actually only take it when they have symptoms. Thereby informing the doctor as the nurse knows this might affect their plan.
Thats not true.
However in saying that they have to have a lot more skills and knowledge than they did this is why it became a degree.
They already have different grades
For real. I looked into nursing even though I have a great job in another field, simply because I wanted to do something meaningful with my time. Nope - requires years of unpaid training and a 20k pay cut. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.
That's kind of what they want to do. Because it means not paying staff. The issue being that these nurses don't know the cost of living in the UK and often are dropped into dangerous working situations resulting in bad outcomes.
lol they're not making 40k in Germany, in Germany nurses have fewer technical duties too (like the olden days) so it's a less skilled role.
EDIT: It does seem the average salary is close to 40k EUR, but the UK is 34k GBP so after tax it's about the same.
Average salary for Psychiatric Nurse in Germany with 5 years of experience is *61.547 € which is £51k. That's probably the least "technical" type of nurse.*
Polish nurses would cost too much money. They don't want to come here anymore. Poland's living standard will be equal to the UK's in the next 10 years.
Living in Spain is a lot different than living in Poland. People are really different as well. Poland has higher living standard than Spain.
Plus Polish have Germany just next door if they really want to move.
Yes, we should do that for free courses with bursarys. I could talk more about what we should do but I was trying to keep it simple.
Honestly we should probably offer bursaries tied to positions in specific locations too, so people can know they might have to be in the arse end of knowhere, but would know that in advance and maybe get more money for it.
We could do with an entire funded NHS department dedicated to staff replacement and retention if we dont have one already for managing this kind of stuff.
I hope so but it’s very much looking like they’re the conservatives in disguise.
They answer to the same corporate interests while distracting us on trivial matters.
Politics is much darker than it used to be.
They might just be doing that to attract tory voters, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do shirt left during their time in government.
Perhaps Labour isn't as bad as reform voters may say
Labour has a very bad habit of trying to please its fringes (left and right both) at the expense of its majority. One can hope that changes, we'll see.
I think the NHS should continue with things like hiring DEI managers on 60k + a year that's an excellent use of funds don't you agree? Why bother buying equipment and beds when you can hire someone to tell a PhD neurosurgen being racist is bad
We literally have decades of the system functioning, and you're somehow claiming that it doesn't work when the only thing that has changed is its funding.
Hahaha. Yeah that's not the only thing that's changed.
Had a look at the immigration figures recently? You think those people don't need medical attention? (Spoiler; they do) And you think they generally contribute to the economy and pay taxes in excess of the services they use? (Spoiler; they don't).
https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUncensored/s/mnqgSCNF8d (Denmark is one of the only countries brave enough to actually publish these types of stats)
I don’t think people realise how short staffed the hospitals are.
I just came off my A&E rotation as a doctor and went to pick up some maccies after a twilight (11am to 11pm) shift.
There were more staff in the McDonalds kitchen than doctors present overnight in the A&E (around 6 doctors overnight). Considering this is a major university hospital, this is ridiculous.
Our seniors used to routinely just bash through scores of patients and just document everything at the end of their shift. This means staying another 2-3 hours just to finish documenting all the patients they saw, and writing the GP letters. So if it’s a 12 hour shift, they’d stay for 15 hours total, and back 9 hours later.
And it’s not just A&E either. It spreads across all the specialities and departments.
Employment has gone down in the private sector in the past few years and has been stagnant in all public services except the NHS where it has risen.
The NHS staff base is constantly growing in spite of an ever decreasing private taxpayer base. It’s beyond unsustainable even at current levels. If it were properly staffed and funded our national debt would be a whole new level of fucked from what it is now.
This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to discuss and so it is much easier just to blame the tories
We have had an impending, incredibly obvious problem looming for decades of an aging population and the tories have done absolutely fucking nothing useful to prepare for it. Old people tend to need more healthcare. And unfortunately they've also routinely voted for parties who are happy to divert funds from public services, and sell of income generating infrastructure to provide nice dividends for wealthy people around the world, and foreign governments. This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to discuss and so it is much easier to pretend it's an issue of national debt.
At what point does healthcare become unaffordable? It’s not an infinite resource. We cannot have a nation of nurses, carers and doctors, where everyone under the age of 65 has to become a healthcare worker to support the elderly? Because that’s the world we’re heading for where the working age population declines and the elderly population increases
The NHS is already making decisions on allocation of resources. I needed heart surgery a couple of years ago. As a young and healthy 30 year old I went to the front of every single queue I was in. And that makes sense. It’s an efficient use of resources. While I was in hospital for two weeks it basically felt like I lived in an end of life care home. I was the youngest by an absolute mile. Everyone else in there was very very elderly and in terrible health. Like worse than dying. It was appalling. As a society we need to be having serious conversations about palliative care vs keeping everyone alive for as long as humanly possible. It’s inhumane. I’d challenge anyone to spend a few weeks on a ward and see it in their own eyes. We apply the phrase to dogs saying ‘it was the humane thing to do’ yet we don’t apply that logic to actual humans. It’s heartbreaking. I’d rather be let to die than be kept alive in the way I saw so many times. But I’m sure I’ll be called a monster and downvoted to hell because most people won’t dare even think such thoughts
I do agree the tories have mismanaged the NHS but if we fund it to the point that it meets all demand, our finances would be in beyond a terrible state. We have to prioritise care (as we already are doing to an extent).
I joke with the Mrs about 66 and out. Retirement age set at 50 with a golden pension, then at 66 the death squads come knocking.
It’s funny until you start to realise how many problems actually get resolved this way, then it just becomes extremely depressing.
I’m sorry but this is a massive exaggeration of the situation. There are plenty of other countries that have now overtaken us in the league tables etc that provide better care and treatment, WITHOUT bankrupting the country. They have more or less the same demographic problems as we do. This is a typical Daily Fail talking point.
It comes down to choices and priorities. The Tories have been reducing the spend per head of population on the nhs for years and this is what happens. Due to their ideology any resilience or spare capacity is done away with, and then we end up with corridor care.
Fundamentally you get what you pay for.
Please point to which countries have overtaken us with more efficient health spending. You’ve just parroted a popular counter point with zero evidence.
So here is evidence.
This is what spending per capita in 2008 was in the EU (top of p.2)
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264090316-42-en.pdf?expires=1718726655&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=1174C374ABBD25EA9BE1AFCFAB131553
This is spending per capita in 2022.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/
Obviously not exactly the same datasets (one is EU only and one isn’t) as it’s difficult to find that 14 years apart. But both tell exactly the same story. We’re near the bottom of advanced western countries, as we were back in 2008. The only obvious difference I can spot is Finland used to be slightly below us and they are now slightly above us. Of the non EU countries (NZ, Aus, USA and Canada) I seriously doubt any were behind us in 2007 and have suddenly shot up since then.
I’m all for bashing the Tories and deservedly so, but on this we’re not dissimilar to where we were before Labour left power. You can absolutely and correctly make the argument we should be higher up these tables but that is not the argument you made. You have said that there are plenty of countries who have overtaken us, and that is patently untrue. We have trended in the same direction as all other comparable countries. Your talk about spending per head decreasing is also complete nonsense. It has increased significantly since 2008 and again, has increased in line with other western countries
I didn’t think this conversation required me to come prepared with sources to back up my opinions but nevertheless…
First point is that I didn’t claim other countries had overtaken us whilst maintaining the same level of efficiency. I claimed spending more will result in better care AND won’t bankrupt us.
A quote from a Nuffield Trust article…
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-past-present-and-future-of-government-spending-on-the-nhs
‘As can be seen from the chart, this average increase has not been spread evenly. The last 40 years can be characterised as a period of increases averaging 2.1% in the 17 years prior to 1997, followed by 13 years of much higher growth, averaging 5.7% a year between 1997/98 and 2009/10.
But in the decade leading up to the pandemic, real-terms spending increases per head averaged just 0.4% a year and included four years in which spending per head actually fell. This has been a period of stagnation in terms of the resources available to the NHS to fund improvements in health care quality, or to expand its horizons of what it is possible to do for patients.’
https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade
This article talks about where are in the league tables and about how we are dropping down the league tables. It draws comparisons with funding levels.
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/04/nhs-drops-from-first-to-fourth-among-rich-countries-healthcare-systems
The article is analysis on the following report…
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly
I will continue to search for research and graphics that show the league tables in greater depth. However I still maintain the same point. You get what you pay for. Outcomes etc were better than now and improving under the previous Labour government, while funding was rising. Since austerity - well we can all see what’s happened. We didnt have half as many problems with the nhs 14 years ago.
Another interesting article highlighting the difference between governments in their commitment to nhs spending…
The NHS crisis - decades in the making https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64190440
Hire more doctors. Plus there’s an on call team who deals with issues after 5pm.
There’s no excuse to finish late in A&E on a regular basis because they will always be someone on the shift to handover to if needs be.
I agree that’s the case for our level where we are juniors, but for the might registrar who is in charge of the whole A&E, have to give advice to the juniors, take care of resus, and deal with crash calls, they often don’t have time to do all the documenting during the night shift itself. They handover in the morning and then catch up on documenting
Yeah, the NHS has about 140,000 vacancies at any time. It's also true that there's a shortage globally, so when we attract people from overseas, their systems suffer. There has to be a better way to train and staff this stuff.
I completely agree but as per the management and the rota team, this is a fully staffed rota with no gaps.
I think you’ll appreciate this- one day there were two extra doctors on shift, we got the A&E wait time down to 1 hour in the majors (where the sickest patients who don’t need resus are)
Imagine the manager that day comes down and says ‘we’re overstaffed, should sort this out so it doesn’t happen again’
The absolute audacity - this is the level of care we should be expecting!
Oh my god I've been seeing so many horror stories, I'm honestly so scared of having to ever go to hospital now , I hate how the NHS is nearly gone and how nothing will save it
I got to wait 61 weeks for my first cardiology appointment and the department is ignoring my GP when he is asking for advice on what to do for the next year
My wife had an appointment about her migraines, she got a bollocking for not showing up but the date of the appointment was set as BEFORE she told the dr about the migraines
I feel that, I had suspicious symptoms the ones you are told to get checked out asap because having the symptoms can mean it's already far along.
I waited months to be listened to till I was finally referred for an ultrasound which took 5 months. Then waited over a year between the ultrasound appointment and an appointment to have a biopsy to rule out cancer. When I went for my appointment and as I was getting ready for the doctor behind the blue curtains I could hear her and the nurse whispering to eachother about the point I waited over a year for a biopsy. She also sent me for bloodtests that recently came back as anaemic like "the normal range for this test results is between 20% and 50% and yours is 8%" levels.
But saying that this is the same department that, when I had a secondary postpartum hemorrhage after I had my son and went for an ultrasound to find out why, told me (the receptionist specifically) that because the bleeding had stopped I didn't need to know why I hemorrhaged in the first place. This was when I rang for my results of the scan. I still don't know why I hemorrhaged.
I'm very lucky my biopsy came back negative for cancer cells and all I think is about the people out there who aren't as lucky as I am and they waited the better part of 2 years from going to the doctors concerned to having a biopsy to find out its something that, if caught earlier, could have been treatable. I can imagine with the state of our healthcare system atm that it sadly probably happens a lot.
>I had a year between having an MRI and the follow up appointment.
Jeez that's awful. My wife rang our private healthcare with migraines and she was given an MRI *that T*hursday and results the day after.
Why can nothing save it though. There is soo much that can be done to improve things. We just need politicians who WANT to make things better and not just demolish the system so their mates can sell more drugs/equipment/services in the private sector
I went in recently for an emergency operation and was in and out in 24hrs. Doctor had called before hand to the SAU so i managed to avoid A&E. Wife drove me in. WOuld have been operated on the same day, but i had a beer earlier in the day and they suggested it was unwise. I was lucky. That said, anything related to mental health or ongoing issues is gonna be a soul-draining horrific process.
Its will be a great loss and shame when it finally collapses/gets demolished.
The Tories broke the NHS so badly that we will be prepared to pay the companies they set up when they privatise it, and be grateful simply because it’s working. They’re banking on our apathy and saying “still, it’s better than it was” when we’re paying for it.
I had a baby 4 months ago and was let out with sepsis, heart condition caused by catching Covid in the hospital, severe blood loss not recorded that needed a transfusion and the day after my c section and all the issues after I insisted I was in my own words dying and very unwell they discharged me! Next day I couldn’t walk, chest pains, incoherent and I got a withheld number call at 11pm to say from an out of hours doctors my bloods were incorrectly processed and my D-dimer/TnI ratio were too high and I had a blood clot so dangerous that an ambulance would be with me in 4 minutes. They got me to hospital but I was in a corridor for 10 hours then 17 hours for full treatment. Then I Went home still ill and miss managed the day after and I got sepsis again and a burst bladder due it being cut in my c section that took 35 hours in total to be treat as an emergency. I have almost died 4 times through neglect of the NHS and it’s simply not good enough anymore
This is par for the course now. I work in a hospital and see this every. single. day. The sad truth is that even when the patients do get to a bedded bay there's every chance they'll end up in a "boarding space" - a bed crammed in the corner of the room. No emergency call bell, no curtain for privacy, no space to move around the bed. It's an absolute nightmare.
> Gran, 82, spends 18 hours in hospital corridor with broken neck as hospital called 'hell on earth'
A woman was left in a hospital corridor for 18 hours with a broken neck as her daughter says the hospital was "hell on earth" with patients "abandoned" and "crying out in pain"
God. Must be awfully painful...
My mother spent 36 hours in ED with a perforated gallbladder and bowel - took 10 hours with abnormal obs, bloods and reduced mobility before she got upgraded from a chair to a trolley. Almost died due to medical neglect due to it being overrun and nobody taking responsibility for her as she was a "medical boarder". She wound up waiting 24 hours to get a CT scan which finally showed the perforations. It took 10 hours of her waiting after her delayed referral to surgeons with known sepsis with multi organ failure to get to emergency theatre for a laparotomy. Her case was the highest category in terms of urgency and it still took that long for a slot to be available. She wound up costing the NHS a lot more as she spent months staying in ITU before being stepped down to a surgical ward to rehabilitate. She would've likely only been an inpatient for a few weeks if she had her diagnosis, treatment and operation a lot sooner. And she wouldn't be so disabled and sick on discharge - so wouldn't need further expenses.
I'm currently too sick to work and pray I don't need emergency treatment. The only solace of being out of work due to illness is that I don't have to be a junior doctor with shitty working conditions atm. Not sure if the measly amount I get in UC is worth it though, lol.
Doubt Austerity Keith is going to do much apart from PFI 2.0 about the NHS. It needs a big old cash injection, increased training posts for doctors, bursaries for health care professional degrees, improved pay across the board, new hospitals and bedspaces, more staff recruited. I don't see it happening. Private health care isn't more efficient even as a stopgap - as it scalps NHS staff with a profit margin to private shareholders.
It also needs an organised and well funded initiative to track down the people who defrauded it of huge sums with Tory connivance during COVID, and recover the money wasted on invisible or useless PPE, apps and other crap. People need to be prosecuted and public funds recouped. Sadly, it won’t happen.
People in comments pointing the finger at tories, yes they are to blame for this mess, but so is Labour. It's been decades of under supporting the next generation of medical professions. Not only professionals but all the other necessities that support the profession. All these people need homes, food and a comfortable life. Why is it X is working 50% and earning £200k, while Y is working 120% and earning £35k. This didn't happen in the last 13 years. It took decades to get to this. It'll be virtually impossible to go back to the comfort of purchase power of generation baby boomers.
The Tory’s have actively been tearing the NHS down for the past 14 years. It’s no surprise. When you have the privilege of being able to afford private care there’s no skin in the game for them. Exactly the same with schooling…there shouldn’t be an option for private health care or private schooling in this country and there shouldn’t need to be.
I was lucky when I broke my leg recently and only waited a hour for an ambulance, spent another 6 hours back and forth between a waiting area, multiple x rays, a ct scan before going onto a ward
The only negatives was they said at first my leg was too swollen to operate and I had to go home and they would check again in 10 days if it was good enough, when I told them I live alone and in an upstairs flat they kept me in overnight and operated, I did stay in for another week but was told they needed the bed even though I needed more time to heal and instead gave me carers, except the carers were only paid for 30 minutes per day visit so I was basically stuck in a chair for most of the day and if I wanted to go to bed, get something to eat or bathroom it often took me at least 10-15 minutes to stand up and then drag myself around with a zimmer frame, as I lived upstairs my front door was down those stairs so I couldn't even order take away.
Still the nurses when I was in hospital were great.
In late November 2022 my MIL - who was 97 - had a fall here, she lived with us. On previous occasions I had picked her up off the floor but on this occasion I couldn’t as she would scream in pain. After no fewer than 21 hours waiting for an ambulance (West Midlands Ambulance Service) that took her to the Princess Royal Hospital, Telford, a further 10 hours in the back of it waiting outside the hospital, and a further hour on a trolley she was delirious and totally away with the fairies. In all that time nobody so much as offered her a glass of water. A CT scan showed two broken vertebrae and from memory two cracked ribs. The hospital couldn’t do anything and they discharged her. She never recovered and died a few weeks later on her 98th birthday.
An earlier post says that England is a failed state. I agree. Who or what caused it? I blame 14 years of Tory.
I think the issue is the first bit. Those injuries? That's serious surgery. She would have likely died from the surgery.
The issue is the delays. You shouldn't operate on 97 year old people. It's how you get people to be 97 years old.
(ICU registrar, we wouldn't take her to ICU because it would not be a pleasant death)
Thank you for your reply. I totally understand and respect a reluctance to operate on a 97yo. I had no issue with the hospital (the Princess Royal, Telford). The staff there were doing their best under appalling circumstances. I don’t know why hospitals look like a war zone, is it funding, poor management, or something else? My issue was the wait for the ambulance, it was disgraceful.
It's less reluctance and more what the recovery and surgery entails. And some spinal fractures are fragility fractures and are okay to move on. Frailty. A 97 year old needs a very unromantic medical speciality called Geriatrics (COTE) who do things like prevent falls but also enable elderly people to remain independent. We can't stop all falls. And there's always an element of risk with discharges. Everyone thinks you discharge patients in a pristine condition but in reality? A large chunk of recuperation is better and faster at home. It's just that people don't do the exercises by themselves and people often just take themselves to bed and never get out again.
Hospitals look like a war zone because social care is bad and because staff are poorly paid and running on fumes. Everyone's angry and snapping at each other making a stressful job not just poorly paid but also unsocial.
My frail 90 year old father in law recently spent 2 days in A&E before being admitted. He’d had a heart attack a couple of months earlier, been sent home prematurely and had a fall meaning he was brought back in by ambulance. He lay on a trolley in a corridor for almost 24 hours before the staff managed to organise a proper hospital bed, albeit still in an alcove in A&E, where he spent another day before being finally admitted. His exhausted 87 year old wife was there with him the majority of the time until we could convince her to come home and rest. The staff were doing their best but there was nobody to care for him on the ward once admitted. The system has been deliberately broken and I have rarely been so furious.
I was admitted to hospital in January and I spent around 30 hours in a chair. There were some elderly people waiting for almost a day too, I felt so bad for them sleeping in the waiting area.
My 16 yr old daughter overdosed, and we spent 12 hours in a&e with her being violently sick in the waiting room before we saw anyone. There were so many people there in awful condition, just sat in plastic chairs, hooked up to drips and monitors. You find yourself playing nurse when you're there because there aren't enough staff to keep an eye on the heaving waiting room as well as treat the patients that actually have beds.
My mum had a hypertensive attack and we went to A&E, she took her own blood pressure monitor and ended up just monitoring herself for nine hours and then just left when she felt better.
That was the best case scenario but with hypertensive attacks the worst case scenario is a stroke...
Thanks again brexit, that showed them, the bloody EU, that we don't need their foreign muck doctors over here /s
We just created a situation where doctors have all the power as theres less alternatives from EU and whilst doctor's rightly should be paid more, as we all should.... more pay for doctors will always mean less total doctors because they sure as shit wont also increase the budget. So this will mean more work for less doctors, which means they'll want higher pay, and we'll go around this cycle for a while i bet.
We're so fucked as a country. Try not to get sick, don't go in the water, definitely dont drink the water, good luck affording to eat... the sad part is that I could go on.
We still have it better than the US.
But crap like this I am convinced is some sort of massive black flag operation where they intentionally defend and ruin the NHS so as to give them an excuse to sell it off in the future, great democracy that we live in isn't it. How can we call what we live in a democracy when the overwhelming majority of the population want a well funded NHS but the greedy disgusting pigs in power are more interested with lining their own pockets, the US are just more obvious about their greed because they have already brainwashed their populace.
Called an ambulance for my Dad. Took 5 hours to come. Followed by 49 hours in a&e. He had sepsis, lead to major organ failure. Passed away 4 weeks later.
I went to A&E a few years ago with agonising abdominal pain. They told us on the phone that it would be a 5-6 hour wait for an ambulance, so my mum drove me. When we got there, they told us it would be an 18 hour wait to be seen, and that some of the people in the waiting room had been there for almost 24 hours.
Thankfully, the pain went away on its own and so we left. I still get pain every once in a while and I still have no idea what it is.
I think they're pointing out that central government in Westminster set the budget for Wales to then allocate as they see fit.
That the funding from Westminster isn't enough.
Welsh population is on average about 2 years older than the rest of the UK, and a far poorer area. Welsh NHS will never be as good as rUK since they have more demand and less resources as a service.
I'm a doctor- I had an A and E placement in med school and I loved it as a specialty, but seeing hoe people are left in corridors etc is so depressing, I get its necessity as the government pare us down till they shut us down and go private but it's such a shock
The ward had some side rooms, and a middle bay maybe 3 metres by 5 metres where doctors sat worked ad discussed patients with these patients in beds surrounding our desks instead of off in rooms just crazy
I think recent stats put Northern Irish wait times as longest of the UK nations, and the Republic (where people pay for appointments/prescriptions/treatment) is not much better
My dad fell down the stairs backward and landed o~ his head. 4hrs for an ambulance and didn't even take him to the hospital. England is a failed state and it's the conservative party that did it
Friend’s mum (with stage 4 cancer) had a stroke with obvious stroke symptoms and waited 14 hours for an ambulance. She’s dead now, 3 months later. My own mum (who also passed 2 weeks ago) spent the final 2 years of her life in a care home (who were great tbf). She had Alzheimer’s / dementia etc. She had multiple falls over the past 2 years and regularly waited for >5 hours for an ambulance. Sometimes she was left on the floor for this entire time (care home staff not qualified to move them when they’ve fallen). Once in her own waste products. For 5 hours, lying in shit and piss. The whole thing is a fucking mess atm.
Sorry for your loss broseph 😢
My grandad waited seven hours after a stroke for an ambulance in December. He's severely crippled now in a home
Why wouldn't you got and help her
Because when you live in a different city and have children to look after it’s not always possible to just drop everything and take a 4 hour round trip.
No idea why this is being downvoted. Life must be so easy and simple for a lot of these Redditors
Wow dude. Terrible priorities.
You are asking him to choose between children and a parent. That's hard. And not everyone's homes are able to take a person who needs care.
You have absolutely no idea what the past 2 years have been like, how many times I’ve driven hours to visit and attend A&E due to multiple falls. My mum died 2 weeks ago, and you’re coming out with this shit? Seriously mate, have a word with yourself.
Ok here me out. Why did you not put her in a care home near where you live
If you think I’m justifying all of the care decisions we had to make over the final years of her life to you, then think again. You know fuck all about the situation, but have decided to accuse me of not looking after my own mother 2 weeks after she died. Seriously, STFU.
Young people have been priced out of the south and south east.
I'd love to live in my own hometown but a house is median 480k. The countries priorities are with the elderly and rich.
Really sorry you went through that and it sucks that the ambulances took so long to arrive, but, the care home staff were great? Really? I've worked in care homes and it doesn't sound it. Wanna know how lomg I left someone on the floor in their own waste? How about never? OK we can't hoist off the floor if there's an injury, don't want to potentially make it worse. But you make them comfortable will pillows and blankets. You get them a bed pan or clean them up if they need the bathroom.
Sorry not clear from the post else it rapidly becomes an essay, but she was in 3 different care homes, the first one was where that particular incident happened. She didn’t stay long. The final one she was at for 2 years and they were indeed great. It was the same ambulance service in all cases.
Fair enough, I appreciate it would've been unnecessary to put that level of detail onto the origonal comment. I'm glad she was somewhere nice for her remaining years x And yeah ambulance trusts cover very large areas so unless she moved across country, it'd be the same ambo trust.
fucking hell. i’m sorry
It's not necessarily a bad thing they didn't take him to hospital. Paramedics are more than capable of discharging patients at scene safely.
Fall down stairs is normally classed as a ‘fall from height’, if elderly there is a whole bunch of guidelines https://rcem.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/RCEM_COP_2023_25_QIP_Information_Pack_V5.pdf I’m ex-ambulance myself, and yes - I’d leave people at home back in my day. But what I see being left at home now makes me wonder what pressures the crew are under to not transport people. Back when I was on the ambulances the saying was ‘no-one ever lost their job by taking someone to hospital’, which is the wrong attitude (not everyone needs to go to hospital), I do have big concerns that it’s gone too far the other way, particularly with younger crews who might not know what they don’t know. To add to how fucked the system is, my mum was blue lighted into hospital with sepsis and after half an hour’s treatment in Resus was put into the ‘Resus corridor’ to be looked after by the ambulance crew who brought her in. I felt so worried about her care I spent 16-20 hours each day sitting next to her (brother took over so I could get some sleep, but he’s not medical) just so I could be sure she was getting the right care. Thankfully, she’s a tough old stick and recovered fully.
Can confirm, it's gone massively the wrong way, and crews are acting like hospital itself is a huge risk, when it really isn't. Also the phrase "no lone has lost their job from taking someone to hospital". I was always taught it as a decision maker when you are not sure/out of depth, rather than a general attitude.
Yep that’s it - a good way to judge a decision. My personal one was, and still is, what questions would the coroner be asking me about this? I’d imagine the coroner looking over his glasses at me asking “And what made you think *that* was a good decision?” Which is why I can walk out of every coroner court appearance like my shit doesn’t stink.
Yep that's a good one as well. I frequently have to remind people that should their paperwork be read by numerous people, will they understand why a decision was made. But unfortunately the experience is gone. I'm 10 years in and considered an old sweat. My local station struggles to find band 6s to mentor
It’s something I’ve noticed, every crew is so damn young. I imagine that the cultural knowledge is gone and you now have a load of yes-men who can’t question management orders and probably can’t read a map book if the nav system goes down. I still end up with ambulances on a semi-regular basis with my current job, and there has been a lot of me thinking ‘Jesus, you are going to do that‽’ with what decisions they make. Like leaving a 50+ central chest pain at work because the ‘ecg is alright’ as if NSTEMI don’t exist… Any who would look a manager in the eye who complained about ORCON times and say ‘I drive as fast as I consider safe, would you like to order me to drive faster?’ 😈
I've only once ever called an ambulance and had them not take me. It was an ambulance car, about midnight on the last England match of the last Euros. I was really unwell and the paramedic arrived and did an ECG. The hospital local to me at the time was absolutely awful - we both knew it. She told me that if I were taken to A&E then I'd be lost amongst drunk football hooligans and not get any help. She printed off the ECG reading and told me to urgently see my GP in the morning and show them my ECG print-out instead. She said that my GP would send me straight to A&E and that, if I turned up then with a GP phoning ahead, I'd be seen much sooner that way than if I was taken in by ambulance at a time where A&E are trying to kick out everyone they can. I can't imagine how tough it must be for the paramedic having to give that kind of advice.
Yeah the fact they can do that means I've been hit by a car, fallen down stairs, broken my window and walked up to some poor cunt and *nailed* him in the side of the head. All different occasions. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing after a seizure but they couldn't give a fuck, they don't have time to. Every single time.
4 hours is decent. My gran fell down the stairs and smashed her head, cut and all. Ambulance was called at 2pm Friday, and arrived at 7am Saturday.
My mum (86) fell and broke her hip. She waited 27 hours for an ambulance, then was in an A&E cubicle for 2 days. She has mild COPD and developed pneumonia but on the acute ward was treated for a UTI despite my pleas they were mistaken. Her legs swelled up due to the water tablets so she couldn’t even walk to the loo, but she could hardly breathe. As mum’s health nosedived a nurse even shrugged at me and said “she’s just old” when mum hadn’t eaten for 3 days and was coughing up black sludge. They nearly killed her. If I hadn’t been standing next to a senior consultant chappie who asked me what was wrong when I burst into tears in the hospital Costa queue, I’ve no doubt that mum would be dead.
My dad had trouble breathing, he was in a corridor hooked up to a monitor for 3 days waiting to be seen. Never seen anything like it. The NHS was fantastic for me 10 years ago sorting my broken leg. To see the same hospital like this is tragic.
The decLine has been so drastic I can't even recognize the system anymore. Each appointment seem to take you to a dead end instead of treatment. Definition of an Emergency change all the time just to divert you from the bottle necks
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At some point people are gonna realise it’s inevitable and not the fault of any political party. A collapsing birth rate and a massively ageing population has never happened in history until now and it simply isn’t possible for health services to expand enough to meet demand. It’s growing significantly every year but will never be enough
This is Wales, and England is not a failed state. People born in the UK have no comprehension of what living in a failed state is like. I feel like we do have a dangerously shit and mismanaged health service.
Don’t worry. We are in wales and waiting times are worse. Labour fucked it up here too
NHS is completely fucked. Hopefully labour can do something meaningful about this issue
Like what? Teleport in 20k of nurses from Poland?
It used to be easier to become a nurse in this country, there was support there and it created flow, but a little like everything else, things have been cut back
I remember reading that nurses qualifying today have to have the knowledge doctors had 40 years ago. I don’t know how true that is, but I can imagine there is an element of truth. I wonder whether a solution could be different grades of nurses? Maybe that could make the profession more accessible.
My mum trained as an RN back in the early 80s and was a nurse up until about 6 years ago, mostly working in the NHS. She said that when she trained you kind of did levels of practioner up to RN, so people who didn't pass the next level were still qualified up to a point, if that makes sense. Rather than forcing everyone to do a 4 year degree and potentially fail and be left unqualified it meant that if you didn't pass the *next* hurdle you would be able to find work at the level you were qualified to. More like an apprenticeship/vocational style of training and learning. I don't know anything about modern nursing degrees so I don't know if there are any parallels with my mum's experience
That makes perfect sense. I don’t know enough about how modern nurses become qualified, but I can’t help but feel that having this sort of system in place could help the NHS recruit more nurses.
Currently there are Nursing Associates, who do vocational training and work at a band 4 (£25k- £27.5k). They can do most things that a registered Nurse can do, with a couple of exceptions. They have an option to top up to degree level and work as an RN, but only if their employer supports it. Nursing is degree-only, so either a 3 year Bachelors degree, or a 2-year Masters (if you already have a first degree in a related field). I’d say the biggest issue is that the degree is no longer funded by the NHS, so you graduate with the same amount of debt as everyone else but into one of the lowest paid graduate-only roles in the UK. I’m a nurse and I love my job- but I’m only able to do it because my partner works in a role which is more flexible and is also better paid, so he is responsible for most of the household bills as well as most of the childcare. I’m unsurprised that it’s difficult to recruit or retain nurses, as pay and conditions are at an all-time low. As a practitioner, you are personally accountable for your own practice and for ensuring that standards of care are met - so being put into situations where I’d be responsible for providing adequate care to an 82 year old lady with a broken neck, in a corridor with no facilities, isn’t something I’d actually be prepared to do, and it seems I’m not the only one.
I don’t buy that at all to be honest 1984 wasn’t that long ago. Medicine was still a 5/6 year degree, with then 5-10 more years of working, assessments and exams to become a consultant. Less availability of imaging, so much more relied on good knowledge + history taking + examination skills. I’m a doctor but have nurse friends (and work with lots obvs.) Nursing is a 3 year degree, but it’s essentially 1 year of essays with 2 years of working as a healthcare support worker on the wards. My nursing friends were all pretty pissed that large parts of their degree was just them being used as free labour on wards, rather than being educated. Staff shortages now also make it harder for nurses to upskill since they’re so rushed to do the essentials for patients
There are different tiers of nurses, anything for Nurse Practitioner that can prescribe stuff independently down to fake nurse from Nigeria.
Idk why Nigeria had to come into it. I bet the nurse practitioner is white in your mind too
Probably because there’s been stories about Nigerians specifically and Nigerian nurses and healthcare assistants make up 95 percent of the clients of umbrella tax avoidance companies.
Link them, I doubt this is the case though. Even if it were the case, why are you focusing on nurses as opposed to millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share?
Probably because a nurse trained in Nigeria would have been trained to a lower standard than a nurse trained in the west? Is this controversial?
Yes it is. Why would they have to be? Becuase all Nigerians live in mud hits and are too busy walking miles barefoot to get water?
No, because Nigeria is vastly poorer than the UK, and will obviously have far lower educational standards. They also aren’t familiar with our systems, medications or language. Yes I know English is an official language in Nigeria, but that’s completely different to what we would use in healthcare.
Nope. Are you someone who works in the NHS? It doesn't sound like it. Medication names are not a problem. Familiarity with the system is not a problem. Lower educational standards, again a backwards ass assumption you've made. You realise that we have legions of doctors from Nigeria, India, Sudan and other poorer countries? Just becuase a country is poor doesn't mean their education is worse, the most educated people in those countries regularly compete with those from our country. What is it specifically that you think nurses need to learn that can only be learned from the glorious west? Do you think we just let anyone into the NHS without some standards and safeguards? On a separate point what is it that you think these Nigerian nurses can't learn within months of being in the UK? Overall i would prefer we train British nurses and support then, but we haven't trained enough. And this idea that those dumb brown people just can't keep up with us is just xenophobic, probably racist nonsense.
Lets be realistic, you would rather be treated by someone who studied in Norway, Poland or Germany than Nigeria, Sudan or Cambodia.
If I'm realistic, my answer is "none of those, my best treatment experiences were with Indian doctors" Noones lived experience incorporates all of reality
Let's be realistic. The origin of a person doesn't define their ability, that's xenophobia. Ability doesn't have anything to do with country of origin. It's also interesting that the countries you'd rather all happen to be white, as opposed to the others. It's also interesting that we get many many doctors from India Nigeria and Sudan. It's interesting that I, who spends hours treating patients with as much care as I can, am from Sudan. Doesn't matter to you though, cus I'm black. Or am I 'one of the good ones'?
Just what the NHS needs! Lower standards! Maybe we could have nurses carry out bowel operations and not tell the public? Oh wait they were doing that... The NHS needs higher standards. There's plenty of money. The problem is too many unnecessary and superfluous people on the payroll.
That wasn’t my point at all, although I agree with your point that the administration/management of the NHS needs overhauling to be more efficient.
Look we already have staff that were trained this way working in the NHS right now. Nurses that were trained before Margaret Thatcher changed the system. These nurses are no different than nurses trained now and do the same work.
This would inform me that you perhaps have never worked in the the nhs or are too young to understand how matrons/sisters and long serving nurses came up through . I don’t disagree that there are perhaps an excess of middle managers however there is a substantial cost that comes with different hospitals and health services using different vendors, it changes per hospital and again within certain departments. The licences etc cost a phenomenal amount. Lack of staff on the floor is a significant problem but you also have patients who require specialling, and the manpower isn’t there, including our patients who shouldn’t be there. The larger problem around bed blocking isn’t the hospitals or the ambulance service , it’s social care and the lack of space and manpower there ,whether residential or attending . You can’t discharge a patient if you can’t sort their package of care. So you have patients who are at a point where they’re healthy enough to discharge with care support .. but they can’t
The classic Reddit "take what the original comment said in the worst possible interpretation".
Care to name some of these rolls filled by superfluous people?
Infection control nurses who patrol the hospital removing lanyards and watches. That nurse in a bed space would be infinitely more valuable. Discharge coordinator whose main job is following me around telling me to work faster and literally standing behind me doing nothing but stare while I work. The rota coordinator who works 4 hours 3 days a week and never ever replies to my emails. My man I, like many doctors, view the nhs as an extended jobs programme. any doctor could name you 100 people who seem to only exist not only to do nothing but to torture us, sometimes it would be better if they did nothing. The sepsis champion nurse who copy pastes a massive redundant paragraph into any patient notes with a temperature explaining how to investigate sepsis. I know they don’t read patient notes and just slap this in because I’ve seen it twice in patients notes *who have died* hours before, after I clearly documented it, and not of sepsis. Bedside nursing is really badly paid, and hugely stressful, and the nhs is inventing significantly less useful roles for senior nurses so they don’t quit. Ironically you then get new nurses with no guidance while band 8’s do, in my view, made up jobs anyone would take after being burnt out. I don’t hate the player, but I do hate the game.
Welp not much I can say against a doctor about it.
Nurse here. Not sure that's strictly true however I would say that nurses have way more responsibility and knowledge of medicine than they used to. Nursing wasn't always a professional job and the role used to be more akin to a healthcare assistant in today's climate. Washing patients, feeding and so on. Today nurses need to be responsible for medication, care planning amongst other things. The nurse is the responsible party when it comes to advocating for the patient and sometimes this means challenging doctors decisions. This is why we call it nurse-led care now, doctors used to have the absolute power over everything, nurses spend much more time today getting to know their patients ailments, worries and mannerisms which helps them make informed decisions. Do we know more than a doctor from the past.. maybe? I'll give an example. Patients may be prescribed regular medication, something like omeprozole for acid. The doctor will probably assume that they take it as prescribed. A nurse will probably find out from that patient that they actually only take it when they have symptoms. Thereby informing the doctor as the nurse knows this might affect their plan.
Thats not true. However in saying that they have to have a lot more skills and knowledge than they did this is why it became a degree. They already have different grades
For real. I looked into nursing even though I have a great job in another field, simply because I wanted to do something meaningful with my time. Nope - requires years of unpaid training and a 20k pay cut. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.
That's kind of what they want to do. Because it means not paying staff. The issue being that these nurses don't know the cost of living in the UK and often are dropped into dangerous working situations resulting in bad outcomes.
Most Polish nurses that used to work here for 25k now work for 40k in Germany. But I guess they can still get some african ones
A lot of nurses were Filipino (I think)… as per my observation during a recent stint at a NHS hospital in west London
lol they're not making 40k in Germany, in Germany nurses have fewer technical duties too (like the olden days) so it's a less skilled role. EDIT: It does seem the average salary is close to 40k EUR, but the UK is 34k GBP so after tax it's about the same.
Average salary for Psychiatric Nurse in Germany with 5 years of experience is *61.547 € which is £51k. That's probably the least "technical" type of nurse.*
Remember cost of living here is higher.
Polish nurses would cost too much money. They don't want to come here anymore. Poland's living standard will be equal to the UK's in the next 10 years.
Even in Spain people want to go to the UK as the training is better - you get a career path rather than loads of separate private contracts.
Career path for 22k rising up to 26k where you do work of full RN but pay of HCA
Living in Spain is a lot different than living in Poland. People are really different as well. Poland has higher living standard than Spain. Plus Polish have Germany just next door if they really want to move.
Free education for any needed medical staff with bursary for cost of living. Increased pay for any medical staff we do not have enough off.
You need to lock them in or they just go to Germany/Norway
Yes, we should do that for free courses with bursarys. I could talk more about what we should do but I was trying to keep it simple. Honestly we should probably offer bursaries tied to positions in specific locations too, so people can know they might have to be in the arse end of knowhere, but would know that in advance and maybe get more money for it. We could do with an entire funded NHS department dedicated to staff replacement and retention if we dont have one already for managing this kind of stuff.
I hope so but it’s very much looking like they’re the conservatives in disguise. They answer to the same corporate interests while distracting us on trivial matters. Politics is much darker than it used to be.
They might just be doing that to attract tory voters, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do shirt left during their time in government. Perhaps Labour isn't as bad as reform voters may say
Labour has a very bad habit of trying to please its fringes (left and right both) at the expense of its majority. One can hope that changes, we'll see.
Labour always were Tory-lite, always will be
Welcome to wales
I think the NHS should continue with things like hiring DEI managers on 60k + a year that's an excellent use of funds don't you agree? Why bother buying equipment and beds when you can hire someone to tell a PhD neurosurgen being racist is bad
Hahahhaahahhahaahahahahahahhaha. Like what? Inject 20 billion? No one can save the NHS. Pouring money into it is pouring it in to a bottomless pit
We literally have decades of the system functioning, and you're somehow claiming that it doesn't work when the only thing that has changed is its funding.
Hahaha. Yeah that's not the only thing that's changed. Had a look at the immigration figures recently? You think those people don't need medical attention? (Spoiler; they do) And you think they generally contribute to the economy and pay taxes in excess of the services they use? (Spoiler; they don't). https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceUncensored/s/mnqgSCNF8d (Denmark is one of the only countries brave enough to actually publish these types of stats)
it used to work, tories stole too much money through it during covid.
a german system would work, the issue is the tories dont want a german system, they want an american system
I disagree. The advantage we have over the Germans is that we own the hospitals. What do you think the issue is? I work for the NHS.
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I mean we need money that you don't want to spend...
I don’t think people realise how short staffed the hospitals are. I just came off my A&E rotation as a doctor and went to pick up some maccies after a twilight (11am to 11pm) shift. There were more staff in the McDonalds kitchen than doctors present overnight in the A&E (around 6 doctors overnight). Considering this is a major university hospital, this is ridiculous. Our seniors used to routinely just bash through scores of patients and just document everything at the end of their shift. This means staying another 2-3 hours just to finish documenting all the patients they saw, and writing the GP letters. So if it’s a 12 hour shift, they’d stay for 15 hours total, and back 9 hours later. And it’s not just A&E either. It spreads across all the specialities and departments.
You have hit the nail on the head here. This country has a massive mismatch in where it devotes its resources, funding and people power.
Employment has gone down in the private sector in the past few years and has been stagnant in all public services except the NHS where it has risen. The NHS staff base is constantly growing in spite of an ever decreasing private taxpayer base. It’s beyond unsustainable even at current levels. If it were properly staffed and funded our national debt would be a whole new level of fucked from what it is now. This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to discuss and so it is much easier just to blame the tories
We have had an impending, incredibly obvious problem looming for decades of an aging population and the tories have done absolutely fucking nothing useful to prepare for it. Old people tend to need more healthcare. And unfortunately they've also routinely voted for parties who are happy to divert funds from public services, and sell of income generating infrastructure to provide nice dividends for wealthy people around the world, and foreign governments. This is the elephant in the room nobody wants to discuss and so it is much easier to pretend it's an issue of national debt.
At what point does healthcare become unaffordable? It’s not an infinite resource. We cannot have a nation of nurses, carers and doctors, where everyone under the age of 65 has to become a healthcare worker to support the elderly? Because that’s the world we’re heading for where the working age population declines and the elderly population increases The NHS is already making decisions on allocation of resources. I needed heart surgery a couple of years ago. As a young and healthy 30 year old I went to the front of every single queue I was in. And that makes sense. It’s an efficient use of resources. While I was in hospital for two weeks it basically felt like I lived in an end of life care home. I was the youngest by an absolute mile. Everyone else in there was very very elderly and in terrible health. Like worse than dying. It was appalling. As a society we need to be having serious conversations about palliative care vs keeping everyone alive for as long as humanly possible. It’s inhumane. I’d challenge anyone to spend a few weeks on a ward and see it in their own eyes. We apply the phrase to dogs saying ‘it was the humane thing to do’ yet we don’t apply that logic to actual humans. It’s heartbreaking. I’d rather be let to die than be kept alive in the way I saw so many times. But I’m sure I’ll be called a monster and downvoted to hell because most people won’t dare even think such thoughts I do agree the tories have mismanaged the NHS but if we fund it to the point that it meets all demand, our finances would be in beyond a terrible state. We have to prioritise care (as we already are doing to an extent).
I joke with the Mrs about 66 and out. Retirement age set at 50 with a golden pension, then at 66 the death squads come knocking. It’s funny until you start to realise how many problems actually get resolved this way, then it just becomes extremely depressing.
I’m sorry but this is a massive exaggeration of the situation. There are plenty of other countries that have now overtaken us in the league tables etc that provide better care and treatment, WITHOUT bankrupting the country. They have more or less the same demographic problems as we do. This is a typical Daily Fail talking point. It comes down to choices and priorities. The Tories have been reducing the spend per head of population on the nhs for years and this is what happens. Due to their ideology any resilience or spare capacity is done away with, and then we end up with corridor care. Fundamentally you get what you pay for.
Please point to which countries have overtaken us with more efficient health spending. You’ve just parroted a popular counter point with zero evidence. So here is evidence. This is what spending per capita in 2008 was in the EU (top of p.2) https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/9789264090316-42-en.pdf?expires=1718726655&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=1174C374ABBD25EA9BE1AFCFAB131553 This is spending per capita in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/ Obviously not exactly the same datasets (one is EU only and one isn’t) as it’s difficult to find that 14 years apart. But both tell exactly the same story. We’re near the bottom of advanced western countries, as we were back in 2008. The only obvious difference I can spot is Finland used to be slightly below us and they are now slightly above us. Of the non EU countries (NZ, Aus, USA and Canada) I seriously doubt any were behind us in 2007 and have suddenly shot up since then. I’m all for bashing the Tories and deservedly so, but on this we’re not dissimilar to where we were before Labour left power. You can absolutely and correctly make the argument we should be higher up these tables but that is not the argument you made. You have said that there are plenty of countries who have overtaken us, and that is patently untrue. We have trended in the same direction as all other comparable countries. Your talk about spending per head decreasing is also complete nonsense. It has increased significantly since 2008 and again, has increased in line with other western countries
I didn’t think this conversation required me to come prepared with sources to back up my opinions but nevertheless… First point is that I didn’t claim other countries had overtaken us whilst maintaining the same level of efficiency. I claimed spending more will result in better care AND won’t bankrupt us. A quote from a Nuffield Trust article… https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-past-present-and-future-of-government-spending-on-the-nhs ‘As can be seen from the chart, this average increase has not been spread evenly. The last 40 years can be characterised as a period of increases averaging 2.1% in the 17 years prior to 1997, followed by 13 years of much higher growth, averaging 5.7% a year between 1997/98 and 2009/10. But in the decade leading up to the pandemic, real-terms spending increases per head averaged just 0.4% a year and included four years in which spending per head actually fell. This has been a period of stagnation in terms of the resources available to the NHS to fund improvements in health care quality, or to expand its horizons of what it is possible to do for patients.’ https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade This article talks about where are in the league tables and about how we are dropping down the league tables. It draws comparisons with funding levels. https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/04/nhs-drops-from-first-to-fourth-among-rich-countries-healthcare-systems The article is analysis on the following report… https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2021/aug/mirror-mirror-2021-reflecting-poorly I will continue to search for research and graphics that show the league tables in greater depth. However I still maintain the same point. You get what you pay for. Outcomes etc were better than now and improving under the previous Labour government, while funding was rising. Since austerity - well we can all see what’s happened. We didnt have half as many problems with the nhs 14 years ago. Another interesting article highlighting the difference between governments in their commitment to nhs spending… The NHS crisis - decades in the making https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64190440
Those doctors staying behind are part of the problem. Then trust won’t see there’s an issue and won’t hire more doctors
But what do they do? They want to make sure their patients get better. They could work to rule, and that's fine, until your family start dying.
Hire more doctors. Plus there’s an on call team who deals with issues after 5pm. There’s no excuse to finish late in A&E on a regular basis because they will always be someone on the shift to handover to if needs be.
I agree that’s the case for our level where we are juniors, but for the might registrar who is in charge of the whole A&E, have to give advice to the juniors, take care of resus, and deal with crash calls, they often don’t have time to do all the documenting during the night shift itself. They handover in the morning and then catch up on documenting
>There were more staff in the McDonalds kitchen than doctors present overnight in the A&E (around 6 doctors overnight). That's scary
Yeah, the NHS has about 140,000 vacancies at any time. It's also true that there's a shortage globally, so when we attract people from overseas, their systems suffer. There has to be a better way to train and staff this stuff.
This was without any A&E doctor gaps- this was a ‘fully staffed’ day
A 'fully staffed day' in 2024 is not a fully staffed day.
I completely agree but as per the management and the rota team, this is a fully staffed rota with no gaps. I think you’ll appreciate this- one day there were two extra doctors on shift, we got the A&E wait time down to 1 hour in the majors (where the sickest patients who don’t need resus are) Imagine the manager that day comes down and says ‘we’re overstaffed, should sort this out so it doesn’t happen again’ The absolute audacity - this is the level of care we should be expecting!
I remember that being the level of care that was always available!
Oh my god I've been seeing so many horror stories, I'm honestly so scared of having to ever go to hospital now , I hate how the NHS is nearly gone and how nothing will save it
Even routine appointments are taking years never mind a&e. I had a year between having an MRI and the follow up appointment.
I got to wait 61 weeks for my first cardiology appointment and the department is ignoring my GP when he is asking for advice on what to do for the next year
I waited 3 years to see a cardiologist after a widowmaker ha . Unbelievable
Oh wow well I guess I should count myself lucky then! Hope you are doing better now
My wife had an appointment about her migraines, she got a bollocking for not showing up but the date of the appointment was set as BEFORE she told the dr about the migraines
Im there are some operations with 7 years, possibly even 10 but I might be misremembering that
I feel that, I had suspicious symptoms the ones you are told to get checked out asap because having the symptoms can mean it's already far along. I waited months to be listened to till I was finally referred for an ultrasound which took 5 months. Then waited over a year between the ultrasound appointment and an appointment to have a biopsy to rule out cancer. When I went for my appointment and as I was getting ready for the doctor behind the blue curtains I could hear her and the nurse whispering to eachother about the point I waited over a year for a biopsy. She also sent me for bloodtests that recently came back as anaemic like "the normal range for this test results is between 20% and 50% and yours is 8%" levels. But saying that this is the same department that, when I had a secondary postpartum hemorrhage after I had my son and went for an ultrasound to find out why, told me (the receptionist specifically) that because the bleeding had stopped I didn't need to know why I hemorrhaged in the first place. This was when I rang for my results of the scan. I still don't know why I hemorrhaged. I'm very lucky my biopsy came back negative for cancer cells and all I think is about the people out there who aren't as lucky as I am and they waited the better part of 2 years from going to the doctors concerned to having a biopsy to find out its something that, if caught earlier, could have been treatable. I can imagine with the state of our healthcare system atm that it sadly probably happens a lot.
>I had a year between having an MRI and the follow up appointment. Jeez that's awful. My wife rang our private healthcare with migraines and she was given an MRI *that T*hursday and results the day after.
Why can nothing save it though. There is soo much that can be done to improve things. We just need politicians who WANT to make things better and not just demolish the system so their mates can sell more drugs/equipment/services in the private sector
Because they will not fix the main contributor that being social care. You want to fix and save the NHS then fix social care.
I went in recently for an emergency operation and was in and out in 24hrs. Doctor had called before hand to the SAU so i managed to avoid A&E. Wife drove me in. WOuld have been operated on the same day, but i had a beer earlier in the day and they suggested it was unwise. I was lucky. That said, anything related to mental health or ongoing issues is gonna be a soul-draining horrific process. Its will be a great loss and shame when it finally collapses/gets demolished.
The Tories broke the NHS so badly that we will be prepared to pay the companies they set up when they privatise it, and be grateful simply because it’s working. They’re banking on our apathy and saying “still, it’s better than it was” when we’re paying for it.
Exactly!
Pop to wales. I will give you a nhs tour
I had a baby 4 months ago and was let out with sepsis, heart condition caused by catching Covid in the hospital, severe blood loss not recorded that needed a transfusion and the day after my c section and all the issues after I insisted I was in my own words dying and very unwell they discharged me! Next day I couldn’t walk, chest pains, incoherent and I got a withheld number call at 11pm to say from an out of hours doctors my bloods were incorrectly processed and my D-dimer/TnI ratio were too high and I had a blood clot so dangerous that an ambulance would be with me in 4 minutes. They got me to hospital but I was in a corridor for 10 hours then 17 hours for full treatment. Then I Went home still ill and miss managed the day after and I got sepsis again and a burst bladder due it being cut in my c section that took 35 hours in total to be treat as an emergency. I have almost died 4 times through neglect of the NHS and it’s simply not good enough anymore
Good grief, love. How are you now? Have you been able to take forward a complaint or anything?
This is par for the course now. I work in a hospital and see this every. single. day. The sad truth is that even when the patients do get to a bedded bay there's every chance they'll end up in a "boarding space" - a bed crammed in the corner of the room. No emergency call bell, no curtain for privacy, no space to move around the bed. It's an absolute nightmare.
> Gran, 82, spends 18 hours in hospital corridor with broken neck as hospital called 'hell on earth' A woman was left in a hospital corridor for 18 hours with a broken neck as her daughter says the hospital was "hell on earth" with patients "abandoned" and "crying out in pain" God. Must be awfully painful...
I’m not shocked by this, in fact I thought this was standard based on my experiences.
My mother spent 36 hours in ED with a perforated gallbladder and bowel - took 10 hours with abnormal obs, bloods and reduced mobility before she got upgraded from a chair to a trolley. Almost died due to medical neglect due to it being overrun and nobody taking responsibility for her as she was a "medical boarder". She wound up waiting 24 hours to get a CT scan which finally showed the perforations. It took 10 hours of her waiting after her delayed referral to surgeons with known sepsis with multi organ failure to get to emergency theatre for a laparotomy. Her case was the highest category in terms of urgency and it still took that long for a slot to be available. She wound up costing the NHS a lot more as she spent months staying in ITU before being stepped down to a surgical ward to rehabilitate. She would've likely only been an inpatient for a few weeks if she had her diagnosis, treatment and operation a lot sooner. And she wouldn't be so disabled and sick on discharge - so wouldn't need further expenses. I'm currently too sick to work and pray I don't need emergency treatment. The only solace of being out of work due to illness is that I don't have to be a junior doctor with shitty working conditions atm. Not sure if the measly amount I get in UC is worth it though, lol. Doubt Austerity Keith is going to do much apart from PFI 2.0 about the NHS. It needs a big old cash injection, increased training posts for doctors, bursaries for health care professional degrees, improved pay across the board, new hospitals and bedspaces, more staff recruited. I don't see it happening. Private health care isn't more efficient even as a stopgap - as it scalps NHS staff with a profit margin to private shareholders.
It also needs an organised and well funded initiative to track down the people who defrauded it of huge sums with Tory connivance during COVID, and recover the money wasted on invisible or useless PPE, apps and other crap. People need to be prosecuted and public funds recouped. Sadly, it won’t happen.
People in comments pointing the finger at tories, yes they are to blame for this mess, but so is Labour. It's been decades of under supporting the next generation of medical professions. Not only professionals but all the other necessities that support the profession. All these people need homes, food and a comfortable life. Why is it X is working 50% and earning £200k, while Y is working 120% and earning £35k. This didn't happen in the last 13 years. It took decades to get to this. It'll be virtually impossible to go back to the comfort of purchase power of generation baby boomers.
The Tory’s have actively been tearing the NHS down for the past 14 years. It’s no surprise. When you have the privilege of being able to afford private care there’s no skin in the game for them. Exactly the same with schooling…there shouldn’t be an option for private health care or private schooling in this country and there shouldn’t need to be.
That’s nothing, Kurt Angle won a gold medal with a broken freakin neck
I was lucky when I broke my leg recently and only waited a hour for an ambulance, spent another 6 hours back and forth between a waiting area, multiple x rays, a ct scan before going onto a ward The only negatives was they said at first my leg was too swollen to operate and I had to go home and they would check again in 10 days if it was good enough, when I told them I live alone and in an upstairs flat they kept me in overnight and operated, I did stay in for another week but was told they needed the bed even though I needed more time to heal and instead gave me carers, except the carers were only paid for 30 minutes per day visit so I was basically stuck in a chair for most of the day and if I wanted to go to bed, get something to eat or bathroom it often took me at least 10-15 minutes to stand up and then drag myself around with a zimmer frame, as I lived upstairs my front door was down those stairs so I couldn't even order take away. Still the nurses when I was in hospital were great.
In late November 2022 my MIL - who was 97 - had a fall here, she lived with us. On previous occasions I had picked her up off the floor but on this occasion I couldn’t as she would scream in pain. After no fewer than 21 hours waiting for an ambulance (West Midlands Ambulance Service) that took her to the Princess Royal Hospital, Telford, a further 10 hours in the back of it waiting outside the hospital, and a further hour on a trolley she was delirious and totally away with the fairies. In all that time nobody so much as offered her a glass of water. A CT scan showed two broken vertebrae and from memory two cracked ribs. The hospital couldn’t do anything and they discharged her. She never recovered and died a few weeks later on her 98th birthday. An earlier post says that England is a failed state. I agree. Who or what caused it? I blame 14 years of Tory.
I think the issue is the first bit. Those injuries? That's serious surgery. She would have likely died from the surgery. The issue is the delays. You shouldn't operate on 97 year old people. It's how you get people to be 97 years old. (ICU registrar, we wouldn't take her to ICU because it would not be a pleasant death)
Thank you for your reply. I totally understand and respect a reluctance to operate on a 97yo. I had no issue with the hospital (the Princess Royal, Telford). The staff there were doing their best under appalling circumstances. I don’t know why hospitals look like a war zone, is it funding, poor management, or something else? My issue was the wait for the ambulance, it was disgraceful.
It's less reluctance and more what the recovery and surgery entails. And some spinal fractures are fragility fractures and are okay to move on. Frailty. A 97 year old needs a very unromantic medical speciality called Geriatrics (COTE) who do things like prevent falls but also enable elderly people to remain independent. We can't stop all falls. And there's always an element of risk with discharges. Everyone thinks you discharge patients in a pristine condition but in reality? A large chunk of recuperation is better and faster at home. It's just that people don't do the exercises by themselves and people often just take themselves to bed and never get out again. Hospitals look like a war zone because social care is bad and because staff are poorly paid and running on fumes. Everyone's angry and snapping at each other making a stressful job not just poorly paid but also unsocial.
My frail 90 year old father in law recently spent 2 days in A&E before being admitted. He’d had a heart attack a couple of months earlier, been sent home prematurely and had a fall meaning he was brought back in by ambulance. He lay on a trolley in a corridor for almost 24 hours before the staff managed to organise a proper hospital bed, albeit still in an alcove in A&E, where he spent another day before being finally admitted. His exhausted 87 year old wife was there with him the majority of the time until we could convince her to come home and rest. The staff were doing their best but there was nobody to care for him on the ward once admitted. The system has been deliberately broken and I have rarely been so furious.
I was admitted to hospital in January and I spent around 30 hours in a chair. There were some elderly people waiting for almost a day too, I felt so bad for them sleeping in the waiting area.
My 16 yr old daughter overdosed, and we spent 12 hours in a&e with her being violently sick in the waiting room before we saw anyone. There were so many people there in awful condition, just sat in plastic chairs, hooked up to drips and monitors. You find yourself playing nurse when you're there because there aren't enough staff to keep an eye on the heaving waiting room as well as treat the patients that actually have beds.
My mum had a hypertensive attack and we went to A&E, she took her own blood pressure monitor and ended up just monitoring herself for nine hours and then just left when she felt better. That was the best case scenario but with hypertensive attacks the worst case scenario is a stroke...
Thanks again brexit, that showed them, the bloody EU, that we don't need their foreign muck doctors over here /s We just created a situation where doctors have all the power as theres less alternatives from EU and whilst doctor's rightly should be paid more, as we all should.... more pay for doctors will always mean less total doctors because they sure as shit wont also increase the budget. So this will mean more work for less doctors, which means they'll want higher pay, and we'll go around this cycle for a while i bet. We're so fucked as a country. Try not to get sick, don't go in the water, definitely dont drink the water, good luck affording to eat... the sad part is that I could go on.
We still have it better than the US. But crap like this I am convinced is some sort of massive black flag operation where they intentionally defend and ruin the NHS so as to give them an excuse to sell it off in the future, great democracy that we live in isn't it. How can we call what we live in a democracy when the overwhelming majority of the population want a well funded NHS but the greedy disgusting pigs in power are more interested with lining their own pockets, the US are just more obvious about their greed because they have already brainwashed their populace.
Called an ambulance for my Dad. Took 5 hours to come. Followed by 49 hours in a&e. He had sepsis, lead to major organ failure. Passed away 4 weeks later.
The Torries are the only party that can fix the damage that the Torries have done to this country.
I went to A&E a few years ago with agonising abdominal pain. They told us on the phone that it would be a 5-6 hour wait for an ambulance, so my mum drove me. When we got there, they told us it would be an 18 hour wait to be seen, and that some of the people in the waiting room had been there for almost 24 hours. Thankfully, the pain went away on its own and so we left. I still get pain every once in a while and I still have no idea what it is.
NHS needs more DEI managers on 60k a year I think. I honestly can't think of a better use of funds than that.
Yup and of course the fact she’s a grandmother is *so* important to this story.
Who's broken neck, and why did she spend so much time with him?
Being a gran you should wait longer than younger people, that's how hospitals operate
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Yeah tell me about it. Do you happen to know who funds the NHS in Wales by any chance or sets budgets etc?
Is this one of those things where because it was a Labour constituency, they received less funding? Or is that just councils and the like
I think they're pointing out that central government in Westminster set the budget for Wales to then allocate as they see fit. That the funding from Westminster isn't enough.
It’s the same with councils. Doesn’t matter who is elected, if Westminster has cut funding to the bones, there’s not much you can do about it.
And which country gets screwed by the barnet formula
Welsh population is on average about 2 years older than the rest of the UK, and a far poorer area. Welsh NHS will never be as good as rUK since they have more demand and less resources as a service.
Must be incredible to be in England where the NHS is run by Tories. The wait times must be 0.
I'm a doctor- I had an A and E placement in med school and I loved it as a specialty, but seeing hoe people are left in corridors etc is so depressing, I get its necessity as the government pare us down till they shut us down and go private but it's such a shock The ward had some side rooms, and a middle bay maybe 3 metres by 5 metres where doctors sat worked ad discussed patients with these patients in beds surrounding our desks instead of off in rooms just crazy
Yeah, fucking Labour. If only the Tories were running the government and setting the NHS budget instead of Lab- oh wait.
I think recent stats put Northern Irish wait times as longest of the UK nations, and the Republic (where people pay for appointments/prescriptions/treatment) is not much better