From my own personal experience I believe that it’s now in a worse state than it was during the pandemic.
I’ve got a fairly major health issue that requires multiple MRI scans a year and waiting for my second surgery.
Even through 20/21 I was still getting the regular MRI scans I need. My last scheduled one was March 22. I’m still waiting for the appointment date to come through. No idea when or if my follow up surgery is happening.
The government was warned about this a decade ago, when the average age of NHS staff showed that a third would be retiring in five years. They were warned again before and after Brexit, when the crisis had already begun to take hold and a substantial number of staff came from the EU. Both times they did nothing to prevent it.
Now they claim to be implementing a long term recruitment plan, but are light when pushed on specifics. Let’s be clear: the government knew this crisis was coming, did nothing to prevent it and don’t really want to do anything about it now – they want the NHS to fail.
A risk is something that might happen, what we are dealing with is a realised risk, which is an issue.
and for that reason, we should continue to vote for those that don’t use it.
Don’t worry guys we just need to go back to clapping for our NHS workers. That’ll surely fix the problem
Welcome to the incompetent Government. They knew this was coming and have done nothing whatsoever.
My wife has been recruiting nurses from Africa, at a cost of £60k each just to get them over here and settled, that could pay the tuition fees of two student nurses.
On top of everything else, factor in a deeply rooted and accepted culture of blatant bullying and harassment by management adding to the exodus and inability to retain staff.
The managers at the trust i work within are notorious, they simply cannot contain their contempt for the staff and the turnover is tremendous.
MPs say the NHS is in crises? Maybe we should have a word with the people who’ve been running it for the past 12 years or so…
And? NHS crises give the tories a raging stiffy at the thought of some tasty private contracts.
The public need to start mass protesting on behalf of the staff, I’ve seen patients moan about NHS wait times, say staff deserve more pay for a decade now but generally go no further in their frustration and continue voting against their interests. Rinse and repeat same complaint the next time they go to A and E or book a GP.
I’m tempted to unfollow this sub. It’s just constant misery and despair.
Here’s a fucking clue, how about paying Dr’s/Nurses a decent wage to start with, then get rid of the thousands of managers that do fuck all and finally once they’ve gone give the trusts enough money to provide the services. OH wait Tories can’t make any money with a policy like that forgot myself there for a second.
No such thing as a staff shortage. There is a wage shortage.
Can we also not forget that the NHS doesn’t just run on doctors and nurses.
Back office staff in terms of finance and, especially IT, have been taking a massive hit as staff leave to the private sector…on better pay and conditions.
To keep advertising a Cyber Engineer on 32K and then scratching heads on why no suitable applicants is only going to make it worse.
Without back office staff, appropriately compensated, the NHS ceases to function…no matter how many nursing and clinical staff you have.
12 years is plenty to have sorted out any crises in the NHS. They could have had people graduate three times over in that time!
Jeremy hunt said, it takes 7 years to train a doctor and that the government should put in place a strategy to have enough doctors.
So it is 2022, that means that the policies created in 2015 would have impacted how many doctors we have now. **Guess who was Heath secretary in 2015. That’s right, Jeremy fucking hunt.**
He has basically admitted that the conservatives and he are shit.
I left a hospital pharmacy job for a completely different role as a hire controller. I had really bad management issues and the lack of a decent pay rise in over 4 years! Only been at this job for 8 months and already had a 2k increase with another one promised within another 4 months. I started off on a higher wage that I was on and much nicer management.
I remember when I was at the hospital, staff were saying how the NHS won’t last another 15 years.
If you vote Tory you voted for this. It’s really that simple
From someone who works in a busy hospital theatre this comes at no surprise. There have been so many failings in the last few years, in my entire career it’s never been as bad as it is right now. Just a few examples of what’s going wrong;
We cannot recruit. Half our staff are European and have left, but worse we now can’t recruit any European nurses. We’ve finally had a recruitment drive from India, which is great, but these nurses have a much lower skill set than the nurses we were getting from Italy and Portugal. So we have to spend longer training them. A few years ago that wouldn’t of been too bad, but all our senior staff have quit, retired or died during the pandemic, and not been replacement.
Speaking of not replacing senior staff, our department has fantastic senior nurses and odps running the theatre for years. Since the pandemic most of them have retired. We lost 5 nurses/odps. Guess how many have been replaced? 0. Meanwhile, right before the pandemic, we employed multiple senior managers into brand new roles who are out of department. So we’ve ended up with no real leadership left, while employing very expensive senior managers who we never see.
Back to recruitment. No one wants to train as a nurse or odp since they removed the bursary. The university I studied at had to cut their course because of lack of applicants. I can count on one hand the number of students we’ve had in the last 3 years.
Then finally it’s the pay. Honestly the pay isn’t terrible for someone in my position in the NHS. The problem is my pay will never change. There is no opportunities for development, career progression or pay rises. Meanwhile all of my friends in non-NHS careers have had steady promotions, pay rises, etc. I’m at the point where I’m considering a complete career change, I’m 32, have a mortgage and about to have my first child. So I can’t make any drastic changes, but I’m not convinced going to work everyday and seeing/dealing with the shit we deal with everyday is worth it, especially because I will be paid the same for effectively the rest of my life.
It’s been sad watching the department I once cared so much about slowly get worse and worse. But there is a sense of hopelessness and there’s nothing we can do.
The only thing that surprises me, is that anybody is at all surprised.
I’m old, I’ve worked in medicine for around 40 years – 32 of those for the NHS. Most people who I’ve worked with tend to like what they do. We feel we have some sort of “calling” – or at least can go home feeling that “We’ve made a difference”. That said, things have been slifing for some years. We don’t do this primarily for the money, but you do need money.
Since 2010, budgets have been constantly under strain – both hospital and personal. It was almost funny to hear, in around 2018-19 that “wages have finally recovered to pre 2010 level following the global financial crisis” – because I and many of my colleagues were around 25% down from that level.
Then Covid hit. It is difficult to explain to those not involved just how much of a shock to the system it has been. 2020 was by far the worst year I have experienced in my years of working: Hopsitals full too overflowing, the death rates out of control, losing colleagues to the illness, the unrelenting pressure and stress – massive amounts of overtime/covering for colleagues – weeks with no days off (because there was nobody left to cover).
Post first rounds of vaccinations, things have got easier – but the punishing shift patterns that we all agreed to as a temporary measure have not gone. Nobody has any sort of “work life balance”, we have lost maybe 10-15% of our qualified staff because of “mental health/can’t take this any more/I just want to have some sort of normal life” issues. European colleagues have nearly all left to go home – and they were well qualified and hard working – but political changes just caused too many issues.
the TLDR is that after years of decline, the changes in the pandemic have pushed us all over the edge – and that was before this year’s “real terms” pay cut.
Sorry for the rant.
Staffing is the number one issue with the NHS at the moment.
After scraping the bursaries for student nursing intake dropped off massively. There was something like 50 applicants for a year that usually has 450 a couple of years ago. We’ve only survived at our trust because of a massive intake of overseas nurses from India who have saved us quite frankly.
On top of that everyone is completely burnt out. The stress and fatigue is so real. Everyone is over tired and unhappy. We’ve had around a third of our ward leave in the past six months alone.
There was a lot of support for the NHS during the pandemic. The fucking clapping and all that. That goodwill has quickly evaporated since we’ve opened back up and everyone is back to using the stretch service as normal. Aggression and threats are a daily occurrence on the ward I work on and we’re literally saving people’s lives.
Remember, whenever people are complaining about the NHS being broken, that is because the Tories systematically and deliberately broke it, and are hoping people will be gullible enough to think this is the fault of the NHS as a concept, and let them bring in privatised US style healthcare.
A reminder that less than 6 months ago, this sub was whooping and celebrating that approx 80000 NHS staff were potentially facing the sack.
Funny how the echo chamber can shift so fast.
Can we be surprised? My partners a nurse…here’s her story.
Started as a clinical support worker 10 years ago.
Took a 4 year open uni degree working on a surgical ward 25 miles away. Passes and instantly thrown into covid wards with a mask 1 year past its use by date. All NHS staff continually denied pay rises, has to pay hundreds annually for her nurse PIN, a fee only trumped by her annual cost to park at her own workplace, not to mention parking fines for parking an inch out the parking space! The only entity which attacks the nurses more than the privatised companies running the car park’s are the NHS HR policies which seem to to out of their way to attack those they’re meant to serve. The hospitals are understaffed, and those left, sick of 14 hour shifts are leaving to work an unskilled job for fewer hours and greater pay.
Those left are fueled by dedication, dedication to help, they know what will happen if they don’t. But her wage simply can’t absorb the cost of living rises, especially when HMRC keep taking hundreds for a student loan which doesn’t exist. Name another profession where you need a degree and 10 years experience to make 5k under the UK average salary.
Well if they’d given nurses an actual pay rise instead of expecting them to pay bills on claps and 🤬ing rainbows maybe more people would want to be nurses.
You know what this really is tho? It’s the Tory way of getting rid of the NHS so their pals with stakes in private healthcare companies can cash in and give them a cut.
1. starve NHS of funding for years
2. make nursing an unattractive option
3. complain to anyone who listens about how bad the NHS is (obvs get media to go wild on this one)
4. ooh! Private healthcare! AKA Profit!!!
Oh, and killing off all these disgusting lazy poors. There’s a bit of that too.
I took early retirement from General Practice two years ago, for the sake of my health and sanity.
Covid was not a major factor, in fact, once it hit, I had planned to delay retirement so as not to leave colleagues in the lurch. Then I got a new illness and the treatment rendered me at higher risk from covid, so my coleagues encouraaged me to finish as planned.
So, I am one of the minus several hundred reality of the promise by Hunt and subsequent Health Ministers of 5000 *extra* GPs. Each one who leaves without being replaced increases the pressure on those who remain, and push *them* closer to quitting – it is like a stack of dominoes toppling.
I know people who are like I had planned – they have only stuck it out thus far because they do not want to leave their colleagues in an even worse situation during covid – but they will not carry on forever – indeed, a former colleague has recently taken their own delayed-but-still-early retirement.
The workforce situation is bad already, but it is going to get a *lot* worse. The government are promising all sorts of waiting time initiatives, but there are already barely the staff to cover the daily work, nevermind tackling the backlog. And more and more are saying “enough is enough”.
People have talked about new staff being trained. Well, that is the absolute basic essential, but ignores two connected issues with this.
First (as with police numbers) highly experienced staff are quitting, and they are being replaced with newly qualified staff with no experience at all. And related to that is that classroom training can never replace on-the-job experience where the inexperienced learn from their experienced colleagues. But those experienced colleagues are either no longer there, or have no time to train up their junior colleagues because they are constantly firefighting.
The workforce isn’t even the only issue. My Dad had a massive stroke a few weeks ago, and my family and I have seen so many problems, it’s obscene. My Mum was a nurse and an NHS employee for 45 years and my brother works in the NHS, so they’re pretty qualified.
The ambulance took 90 minutes to arrive and, upon arriving back at the hospital, the stroke nurse wouldn’t thrombolyse him (apparently standard for a night time stroke… even though we explained he was awake when it happened) so my Mum had to fuck about wasting another 20 mins getting a consultant to approve thrombolysis, since apparently the stroke nurse refused to do it. Meanwhile my dad is on a bed in A&E with a significant portion of his brain dying, and the paramedics are stood around waiting for him to be admitted. Where’s the duty of care?
Based on the discussion we had with paramedics, the process of admitting a patient is so convoluted that it means they’re either waiting in a queue at the hospital or waiting for someone to get their act together for anywhere up to an hour. It’s no wonder ambulance wait times are what they are.
The hospital, which was once the pride of our small city, has had very little investment in the last 20 years and is dated, dilapidated, and borderline third world. He is currently in an acute stroke ward of 30 patients. There are 6 patients in his room, with no aircon, and they have a single small tabletop fan for the whole room. In 40 degree heat. He has spent most of his time dehydrated and delirious, and that’s AFTER I bought him two personal fans. We’ve had to argue the toss with caregivers that having your piss that dark is not normal. Most of the time they’d just say ‘maybe he has a bladder infection’, even though there was no blood in the urine. They tested for it nearly two weeks ago now and we haven’t had the results yet.
There’s very little communication from consultants anymore – he’s being dragged off at all hours of the day for tests and scans without us actually being told what or why. We’ve had two face to face discussions with a consultant since he went in, which is ridiculous for a serious stroke. My brother has had to explain most of the more technical stuff to us. Last week we came in to see him and just found some pens and a piece of paper on a fold out table on his bed. We have no idea why, and none of the nurses knew.
There’s no consistency in staffing. We get different nurses on the ward every day, so nobody is around who is aware of the patients, their state, and their needs.
The nurses and consultants, though, to their credit have mostly been amazing when we’ve been able to see them. They’ve really tried to help in most cases, they’re just stretched too thin and the NHS is broken.
tl;dr the NHS is fucked. But hey at least the tories can sell it off to their mates without too much fuss, which was probably their plan all along.
“Oh no, we’re short of NHS staff, what do we do? How about a 6% pay cut and one of us says nurses were having drinks parties during covid?”
It’s legitimately scary at this point.
I went to the GP recently with anxiety/depression. First had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment. Then you go in and have 10 minutes at the most. They never read your notes or know your history. Then I asked about counselling/CBT and I kid you not, was told that waiting lists were about a year! I mean I’m not too bad but some people might not make it past a year if their mental health deteriorates. I was given a CD that had CBT exercises on it and sent on my way.
Luckily I have savings that I’ve used to book counselling sessions privately. But a 50 minute session is £80! So I can only afford to go twice a month and probably can’t do it as a long term solution. I feel so sorry for people who aren’t as lucky as me who can’t afford to go private. I mean isn’t the point of the NHS that it’s available for everyone but now it seems like if you have the economic resources, you can buy better or at least more immediate, care.
30 comments
From my own personal experience I believe that it’s now in a worse state than it was during the pandemic.
I’ve got a fairly major health issue that requires multiple MRI scans a year and waiting for my second surgery.
Even through 20/21 I was still getting the regular MRI scans I need. My last scheduled one was March 22. I’m still waiting for the appointment date to come through. No idea when or if my follow up surgery is happening.
The government was warned about this a decade ago, when the average age of NHS staff showed that a third would be retiring in five years. They were warned again before and after Brexit, when the crisis had already begun to take hold and a substantial number of staff came from the EU. Both times they did nothing to prevent it.
Now they claim to be implementing a long term recruitment plan, but are light when pushed on specifics. Let’s be clear: the government knew this crisis was coming, did nothing to prevent it and don’t really want to do anything about it now – they want the NHS to fail.
A risk is something that might happen, what we are dealing with is a realised risk, which is an issue.
and for that reason, we should continue to vote for those that don’t use it.
Don’t worry guys we just need to go back to clapping for our NHS workers. That’ll surely fix the problem
Welcome to the incompetent Government. They knew this was coming and have done nothing whatsoever.
My wife has been recruiting nurses from Africa, at a cost of £60k each just to get them over here and settled, that could pay the tuition fees of two student nurses.
On top of everything else, factor in a deeply rooted and accepted culture of blatant bullying and harassment by management adding to the exodus and inability to retain staff.
The managers at the trust i work within are notorious, they simply cannot contain their contempt for the staff and the turnover is tremendous.
MPs say the NHS is in crises? Maybe we should have a word with the people who’ve been running it for the past 12 years or so…
And? NHS crises give the tories a raging stiffy at the thought of some tasty private contracts.
The public need to start mass protesting on behalf of the staff, I’ve seen patients moan about NHS wait times, say staff deserve more pay for a decade now but generally go no further in their frustration and continue voting against their interests. Rinse and repeat same complaint the next time they go to A and E or book a GP.
I’m tempted to unfollow this sub. It’s just constant misery and despair.
Here’s a fucking clue, how about paying Dr’s/Nurses a decent wage to start with, then get rid of the thousands of managers that do fuck all and finally once they’ve gone give the trusts enough money to provide the services. OH wait Tories can’t make any money with a policy like that forgot myself there for a second.
No such thing as a staff shortage. There is a wage shortage.
Can we also not forget that the NHS doesn’t just run on doctors and nurses.
Back office staff in terms of finance and, especially IT, have been taking a massive hit as staff leave to the private sector…on better pay and conditions.
To keep advertising a Cyber Engineer on 32K and then scratching heads on why no suitable applicants is only going to make it worse.
Without back office staff, appropriately compensated, the NHS ceases to function…no matter how many nursing and clinical staff you have.
12 years is plenty to have sorted out any crises in the NHS. They could have had people graduate three times over in that time!
Jeremy hunt said, it takes 7 years to train a doctor and that the government should put in place a strategy to have enough doctors.
So it is 2022, that means that the policies created in 2015 would have impacted how many doctors we have now. **Guess who was Heath secretary in 2015. That’s right, Jeremy fucking hunt.**
He has basically admitted that the conservatives and he are shit.
I left a hospital pharmacy job for a completely different role as a hire controller. I had really bad management issues and the lack of a decent pay rise in over 4 years! Only been at this job for 8 months and already had a 2k increase with another one promised within another 4 months. I started off on a higher wage that I was on and much nicer management.
I remember when I was at the hospital, staff were saying how the NHS won’t last another 15 years.
If you vote Tory you voted for this. It’s really that simple
From someone who works in a busy hospital theatre this comes at no surprise. There have been so many failings in the last few years, in my entire career it’s never been as bad as it is right now. Just a few examples of what’s going wrong;
We cannot recruit. Half our staff are European and have left, but worse we now can’t recruit any European nurses. We’ve finally had a recruitment drive from India, which is great, but these nurses have a much lower skill set than the nurses we were getting from Italy and Portugal. So we have to spend longer training them. A few years ago that wouldn’t of been too bad, but all our senior staff have quit, retired or died during the pandemic, and not been replacement.
Speaking of not replacing senior staff, our department has fantastic senior nurses and odps running the theatre for years. Since the pandemic most of them have retired. We lost 5 nurses/odps. Guess how many have been replaced? 0. Meanwhile, right before the pandemic, we employed multiple senior managers into brand new roles who are out of department. So we’ve ended up with no real leadership left, while employing very expensive senior managers who we never see.
Back to recruitment. No one wants to train as a nurse or odp since they removed the bursary. The university I studied at had to cut their course because of lack of applicants. I can count on one hand the number of students we’ve had in the last 3 years.
Then finally it’s the pay. Honestly the pay isn’t terrible for someone in my position in the NHS. The problem is my pay will never change. There is no opportunities for development, career progression or pay rises. Meanwhile all of my friends in non-NHS careers have had steady promotions, pay rises, etc. I’m at the point where I’m considering a complete career change, I’m 32, have a mortgage and about to have my first child. So I can’t make any drastic changes, but I’m not convinced going to work everyday and seeing/dealing with the shit we deal with everyday is worth it, especially because I will be paid the same for effectively the rest of my life.
It’s been sad watching the department I once cared so much about slowly get worse and worse. But there is a sense of hopelessness and there’s nothing we can do.
The only thing that surprises me, is that anybody is at all surprised.
I’m old, I’ve worked in medicine for around 40 years – 32 of those for the NHS. Most people who I’ve worked with tend to like what they do. We feel we have some sort of “calling” – or at least can go home feeling that “We’ve made a difference”. That said, things have been slifing for some years. We don’t do this primarily for the money, but you do need money.
Since 2010, budgets have been constantly under strain – both hospital and personal. It was almost funny to hear, in around 2018-19 that “wages have finally recovered to pre 2010 level following the global financial crisis” – because I and many of my colleagues were around 25% down from that level.
Then Covid hit. It is difficult to explain to those not involved just how much of a shock to the system it has been. 2020 was by far the worst year I have experienced in my years of working: Hopsitals full too overflowing, the death rates out of control, losing colleagues to the illness, the unrelenting pressure and stress – massive amounts of overtime/covering for colleagues – weeks with no days off (because there was nobody left to cover).
Post first rounds of vaccinations, things have got easier – but the punishing shift patterns that we all agreed to as a temporary measure have not gone. Nobody has any sort of “work life balance”, we have lost maybe 10-15% of our qualified staff because of “mental health/can’t take this any more/I just want to have some sort of normal life” issues. European colleagues have nearly all left to go home – and they were well qualified and hard working – but political changes just caused too many issues.
the TLDR is that after years of decline, the changes in the pandemic have pushed us all over the edge – and that was before this year’s “real terms” pay cut.
Sorry for the rant.
Staffing is the number one issue with the NHS at the moment.
After scraping the bursaries for student nursing intake dropped off massively. There was something like 50 applicants for a year that usually has 450 a couple of years ago. We’ve only survived at our trust because of a massive intake of overseas nurses from India who have saved us quite frankly.
On top of that everyone is completely burnt out. The stress and fatigue is so real. Everyone is over tired and unhappy. We’ve had around a third of our ward leave in the past six months alone.
There was a lot of support for the NHS during the pandemic. The fucking clapping and all that. That goodwill has quickly evaporated since we’ve opened back up and everyone is back to using the stretch service as normal. Aggression and threats are a daily occurrence on the ward I work on and we’re literally saving people’s lives.
Remember, whenever people are complaining about the NHS being broken, that is because the Tories systematically and deliberately broke it, and are hoping people will be gullible enough to think this is the fault of the NHS as a concept, and let them bring in privatised US style healthcare.
A reminder that less than 6 months ago, this sub was whooping and celebrating that approx 80000 NHS staff were potentially facing the sack.
Funny how the echo chamber can shift so fast.
Can we be surprised? My partners a nurse…here’s her story.
Started as a clinical support worker 10 years ago.
Took a 4 year open uni degree working on a surgical ward 25 miles away. Passes and instantly thrown into covid wards with a mask 1 year past its use by date. All NHS staff continually denied pay rises, has to pay hundreds annually for her nurse PIN, a fee only trumped by her annual cost to park at her own workplace, not to mention parking fines for parking an inch out the parking space! The only entity which attacks the nurses more than the privatised companies running the car park’s are the NHS HR policies which seem to to out of their way to attack those they’re meant to serve. The hospitals are understaffed, and those left, sick of 14 hour shifts are leaving to work an unskilled job for fewer hours and greater pay.
Those left are fueled by dedication, dedication to help, they know what will happen if they don’t. But her wage simply can’t absorb the cost of living rises, especially when HMRC keep taking hundreds for a student loan which doesn’t exist. Name another profession where you need a degree and 10 years experience to make 5k under the UK average salary.
Well if they’d given nurses an actual pay rise instead of expecting them to pay bills on claps and 🤬ing rainbows maybe more people would want to be nurses.
You know what this really is tho? It’s the Tory way of getting rid of the NHS so their pals with stakes in private healthcare companies can cash in and give them a cut.
1. starve NHS of funding for years
2. make nursing an unattractive option
3. complain to anyone who listens about how bad the NHS is (obvs get media to go wild on this one)
4. ooh! Private healthcare! AKA Profit!!!
Oh, and killing off all these disgusting lazy poors. There’s a bit of that too.
I took early retirement from General Practice two years ago, for the sake of my health and sanity.
Covid was not a major factor, in fact, once it hit, I had planned to delay retirement so as not to leave colleagues in the lurch. Then I got a new illness and the treatment rendered me at higher risk from covid, so my coleagues encouraaged me to finish as planned.
So, I am one of the minus several hundred reality of the promise by Hunt and subsequent Health Ministers of 5000 *extra* GPs. Each one who leaves without being replaced increases the pressure on those who remain, and push *them* closer to quitting – it is like a stack of dominoes toppling.
I know people who are like I had planned – they have only stuck it out thus far because they do not want to leave their colleagues in an even worse situation during covid – but they will not carry on forever – indeed, a former colleague has recently taken their own delayed-but-still-early retirement.
The workforce situation is bad already, but it is going to get a *lot* worse. The government are promising all sorts of waiting time initiatives, but there are already barely the staff to cover the daily work, nevermind tackling the backlog. And more and more are saying “enough is enough”.
People have talked about new staff being trained. Well, that is the absolute basic essential, but ignores two connected issues with this.
First (as with police numbers) highly experienced staff are quitting, and they are being replaced with newly qualified staff with no experience at all. And related to that is that classroom training can never replace on-the-job experience where the inexperienced learn from their experienced colleagues. But those experienced colleagues are either no longer there, or have no time to train up their junior colleagues because they are constantly firefighting.
The workforce isn’t even the only issue. My Dad had a massive stroke a few weeks ago, and my family and I have seen so many problems, it’s obscene. My Mum was a nurse and an NHS employee for 45 years and my brother works in the NHS, so they’re pretty qualified.
The ambulance took 90 minutes to arrive and, upon arriving back at the hospital, the stroke nurse wouldn’t thrombolyse him (apparently standard for a night time stroke… even though we explained he was awake when it happened) so my Mum had to fuck about wasting another 20 mins getting a consultant to approve thrombolysis, since apparently the stroke nurse refused to do it. Meanwhile my dad is on a bed in A&E with a significant portion of his brain dying, and the paramedics are stood around waiting for him to be admitted. Where’s the duty of care?
Based on the discussion we had with paramedics, the process of admitting a patient is so convoluted that it means they’re either waiting in a queue at the hospital or waiting for someone to get their act together for anywhere up to an hour. It’s no wonder ambulance wait times are what they are.
The hospital, which was once the pride of our small city, has had very little investment in the last 20 years and is dated, dilapidated, and borderline third world. He is currently in an acute stroke ward of 30 patients. There are 6 patients in his room, with no aircon, and they have a single small tabletop fan for the whole room. In 40 degree heat. He has spent most of his time dehydrated and delirious, and that’s AFTER I bought him two personal fans. We’ve had to argue the toss with caregivers that having your piss that dark is not normal. Most of the time they’d just say ‘maybe he has a bladder infection’, even though there was no blood in the urine. They tested for it nearly two weeks ago now and we haven’t had the results yet.
There’s very little communication from consultants anymore – he’s being dragged off at all hours of the day for tests and scans without us actually being told what or why. We’ve had two face to face discussions with a consultant since he went in, which is ridiculous for a serious stroke. My brother has had to explain most of the more technical stuff to us. Last week we came in to see him and just found some pens and a piece of paper on a fold out table on his bed. We have no idea why, and none of the nurses knew.
There’s no consistency in staffing. We get different nurses on the ward every day, so nobody is around who is aware of the patients, their state, and their needs.
The nurses and consultants, though, to their credit have mostly been amazing when we’ve been able to see them. They’ve really tried to help in most cases, they’re just stretched too thin and the NHS is broken.
tl;dr the NHS is fucked. But hey at least the tories can sell it off to their mates without too much fuss, which was probably their plan all along.
“Oh no, we’re short of NHS staff, what do we do? How about a 6% pay cut and one of us says nurses were having drinks parties during covid?”
It’s legitimately scary at this point.
I went to the GP recently with anxiety/depression. First had to wait 2 weeks for an appointment. Then you go in and have 10 minutes at the most. They never read your notes or know your history. Then I asked about counselling/CBT and I kid you not, was told that waiting lists were about a year! I mean I’m not too bad but some people might not make it past a year if their mental health deteriorates. I was given a CD that had CBT exercises on it and sent on my way.
Luckily I have savings that I’ve used to book counselling sessions privately. But a 50 minute session is £80! So I can only afford to go twice a month and probably can’t do it as a long term solution. I feel so sorry for people who aren’t as lucky as me who can’t afford to go private. I mean isn’t the point of the NHS that it’s available for everyone but now it seems like if you have the economic resources, you can buy better or at least more immediate, care.