The NHS...2025.

[mancityvstoke]

Of course but why do people go to A&E instead ?
My Son works in A&E at the Children's Hospital in Birmingham & you wouldn't believe what people bring their Children in for

Dunno boss . I am never in hospital anymore these days thank fuck.

Parents seem to panic at the slightest child ailment these days when, in my day, as a kid you got , stop slacking and get to school, stomach ache my arse. (then died of cancer)

 

[BimboBob]

I've seen both sides throughout my cancer roller coaster.

Leicester Hospital is amazing. Sure I've had to wait a few hours for treatment when I've had to go in for the immunotherapy occasionally but they always informed, brought round free snacks etc etc.
The A&E has free hot drinks, let's the odd homeless in at night and is well staffed. The times I've used it have been excellent. At different times of the day. All the wards are well run, the food is edible at the very least.

Kettering Hospital, my local, is the complete opposite. I learnt pretty quickly when I was first diagnosed not to go to Kettering if I had an issue but to make the 40 minute journey to Leicester instead. Unfortunately, when you have an ambulance called for you, you don't get a choice. This led to 10 days in Kettering in a room on my own, nice, with no blinds, no opening windows, no light switches and a shared toilet...not so nice when my immune system had collapsed. The food was inedible meaning I lost over a stone in weight. I discharged myself. A day later I was back in Leicester.
Northampton Hospital also discharged me with a temperature of 40.5. I was fit enough to go home. 4 hours later I was in bed in Leicester Hospital again. No idea why Northampton did that, they needed the bed maybe, but it caused a bit of a back and forth between my consultants and them.

 

[mexico1970]

I've seen both sides throughout my cancer roller coaster.

I hope you are getting sorted with that mate, if it's ongoing good luck with it and if you beat in then well done pal,

 

[BimboBob]

I hope you are getting sorted with that mate, if it's ongoing good luck with it and if you beat in then well done pal,

Thanks mate, it's still ongoing but I've gone from...we are sorry it's terminal you have six months to live...to...we now can't find it. Was given the opportunity to have immunotherapy and said yes please. It seems to have worked for me. Sure I was a long time wiped out but this summer I managed a whole dig with no side effects.

Waiting on scan results at the mo for the all clear/ we found a tiny bit/ oh shit you are riddled again.

 

[mancityvstoke]

Thanks mate, it's still ongoing but I've gone from...we are sorry it's terminal you have six months to live...to...we now can't find it. Was given the opportunity to have immunotherapy and said yes please. It seems to have worked for me. Sure I was a long time wiped out but this summer I managed a whole dig with no side effects.

Waiting on scan results at the mo for the all clear/ we found a tiny bit/ oh shit you are riddled again.

That's fabulous news mate!!!!!!!

Good luck with the all clear.

 

[mexico1970]

Thanks mate, it's still ongoing but I've gone from...we are sorry it's terminal you have six months to live...to...we now can't find it. Was given the opportunity to have immunotherapy and said yes please. It seems to have worked for me. Sure I was a long time wiped out but this summer I managed a whole dig with no side effects.

Waiting on scan results at the mo for the all clear/ we found a tiny bit/ oh shit you are riddled again.

They make it sound like it's something you find down the back of a couch. Let's hope like me when I look for something I have lost under the cushions I can never find it.

Got everything crossed and with that in mind I hope that trowel scraping goes on for a LOT longer mate.

 

[BimboBob]

They make it sound like it's something you find down the back of a couch. Let's hope like me when I look for something I have lost under the cushions I can never find it.

Got everything crossed and with that in mind I hope that trowel scraping goes on for a LOT longer mate.

Thanks. They were serious, still are...that's just me. Its been over three years now, I've not lost any sleep over it, just got on with it, doing as I was told, give up drink...bugger, OK...now have the immunotherapy at home once a month, it doesn't effect me anymore, I can have a beer, go on holidays, rollerskate in white trousers...

Sure there were a lot of dark moments, a lot of emergency dashes to hospitals, a lot of drugs but fingers crossed I'm out the otherside.

 

[mancboy]

okay from someone that works in the system, i wont try to defend it but i will try and give some context, one of the main problems with the NHS is that people dont see the larger picture, your own health is very important to you as it well should be but thats all anyone sees is their own health, take the original poster came into a&e and had a horrific wait in horrific pain and i feel for him i do but nobody ever sees whats going on in the background, how many other people are in with horrific pain, various other life threatening illnesses etc etc. All anyone sees is the wait time for how long it takes them to get seen and the NHS is bloody awful.

Also like someone else has said another problem is that it all filters down to A&E , if someone cant get an appt with a GP they just go to a&e and it jams the system up and you also have to combine that with having to take every person at their word, the amount of times you know that their is nothing objectively wrong with a person apart from that they are being a bit mard but you are not allowed to say just go home and you have to order a battery of tests etc etc just to show that you are doing your job is unbelievable.

 

[mancityvstoke]

okay from someone that works in the system, i wont try to defend it but i will try and give some context, one of the main problems with the NHS is that people dont see the larger picture, your own health is very important to you as it well should be but thats all anyone sees is their own health, take the original poster came into a&e and had a horrific wait in horrific pain and i feel for him i do but nobody ever sees whats going on in the background, how many other people are in with horrific pain, various other life threatening illnesses etc etc. All anyone sees is the wait time for how long it takes them to get seen and the NHS is bloody awful.

Also like someone else has said another problem is that it all filters down to A&E , if someone cant get an appt with a GP they just go to a&e and it jams the system up and you also have to combine that with having to take every person at their word, the amount of times you know that their is nothing objectively wrong with a person apart from that they are being a bit mard but you are not allowed to say just go home and you have to order a battery of tests etc etc just to show that you are doing your job is unbelievable.

I agree with most of that and you're a hero for working under the conditions forced upon you by a series of inept Govts but there are really sad cases where people have been sent home saying take some pain killers and ended up having, for example, throat cancer and now speak through a robotic voice box thing. Saw one the other day and the NHS were being sued. Apparently they have to pay out billions in claims. How do you stop that?

It's an impossible job all of it.

'My voice box was removed after NHS missed my throat cancer'

Steve Barton, who now has to use a prosthetic voice box after doctors dismissed his throat cancer as sinus and reflux issues, is one of many UK patients fighting medical negligence claims.

news.sky.com

google misdiagnosis nhs and there are loads.

 

[mancboy]

I agree with most of that and you're a hero for working under the conditions forced upon you by a series of inept Govts but there are really sad cases where people have been sent home saying take some pain killers and ended up having, for example, throat cancer and now speak through a robotic voice box thing. Saw one the other day and the NHS were being sued. Apparently they have to pay out billions in claims. How do you stop that?

It's an impossible job all of it.

'My voice box was removed after NHS missed my throat cancer'

Steve Barton, who now has to use a prosthetic voice box after doctors dismissed his throat cancer as sinus and reflux issues, is one of many UK patients fighting medical negligence claims.

news.sky.com

google misdiagnosis nhs and there are loads.

Like i said i am not defending it in any way shape or form, there are people in the organisation that dont do their job as they should just as there is any organisation, unfortunately when its not done properly here it can cost lives, i was just giving some context to the situation. I feel bad for anyone that has suffered when they didnt need to and it shouldnt happen but those are the stories that come to light and unfortunately are not often balanced out by the people that are successfully treated by dedicated people.

Like you say its an impossible balancing act and it takes all parties from patients onwards working together to get the right outcomes, unfortunately this is not always the case for so many reasons it would take more bandwith than ric cares to share to go through them all but the stories most people who work in it both good and bad would wide peoples eyes a little more.

 

[Blue Mist]

Minor point. I went to Specsavers for a referral for cataracts.
They gave me a referral letter with a booking reference and I sorted it online.
4 days later I received a letter from the NHS telling g me I had to make a booking !
They've wasted a typists time and the price of a stamp. It's minor but it all adds up to millions of pounds.

 

[flook]

Personally. I wish it was like America where we all pay.

I sympathise with your plight, I really do, but that last line is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen posted on BM outside the matchday thread

 

[mancboy]

I sympathise with your plight, I really do, but that last line is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen posted on BM outside the matchday thread

what i would say to that is that their is plenty of private healthcare in this country not just america, if they wanted to pay the mechanism is there.

 

[ballbag]

My old man had a stroke a few months back. Took him to Fairfield A&E. Staff were brill and did all they could, but corridors were rammed with old/young folk on beds, chairs and the floor. My dad spent three days in a bed in A&E because the stroke ward didn't have any beds. Staff on the ward were fantastic too.

I was in hospital for a few weeks after a car accident. Had to go to Preston hospital as they are apparently the best place for spine injuries. Again, the staff on the major trauma ward were amazing. I wouldn't have survived without them. But after being discharged from their care, I've waited 30 months for physio. I've filled in three separate self-referrals after my local GP said they hadn't received the spinal consultants referral I watched him fill in and send on. Finally got physio now (4 weeks in) and have severe muscle atrophy in my neck, back, chest and shoulder.

So in my experience, the hospital part of the NHS has always been fantastic (and I've had to use it a lot with injuries and accidents). But I can't say the same for the NHS outside of hospitals. They are wank.

 

[blue44]

I have 9 months left to work in it before I retire, I'v saved like fk for the last 10 years so I can go early at 61,I'll use
most of my savings to live on till I get to my state pension at 67.
I despise management,my manager is still allowed to work 1 day from home since covid,what a life if you can get it.

 

[pace89]

Part of the problem with the NHS is that people think of it as a single organisation when in reality it's a health system like any other. There's very little evidence that it's less efficient than other systems in Europe and it's administration costs are generally lower because it doesn't have the transaction costs prevalent in insurance based systems.

The main difference between the NHS and European health systems is that we have spent about 1% of GDP per annum less on health and social care than the European average and ultimately you get what you pay for. And our GDP growth has been poor because of the post 2010 collapse in productivity and then Brexit.

 

[Kompany Car]

The Mother in Law collapsed whilst on holiday and ended up in a hospital in Spain. Within the space of 4 days they had run a CT scan, MRI scan and an encepholagram (to check she hadnt had a stroke), various ultrasound sounds and found out it was a heart problem. They then did an angiogram and identified the actual problems. They even determined that it was probably due to her suffering from Rheumatic fever when she was a kid, although smoking when she was younger also didn't help. If she would have stayed in Spain they could have done the operation within 2 weeks.

She was flow back to the UK in an air ambulance and for the past 4 weeks has been sat in a UK hospital awaiting "urgent" heart surgery to replace her Aortic and Mitral Valves. We were told yesterday that it might be another 4-6 weeks.

I asked them if she could be moved to another hospital within the north and if that would speed it up, we didnt mind travelling to see her. What I didnt realise is that even with urgent operations they wont transfer patients outside the particularly primary care trust, which to me sounds crazy. Surely if for instance a hospital in Manchester has a waiting time of 8 weeks but a hospital in Leeds has a waiting time of 3 weeks you transfer the patient to Leeds and get it done, but apparently not.

How did we end up with such a stupid fragmented health care system ? Surely there could be a system that allows the costs to be recharged back to the appropriate trust to keep the bean counters happy.

 

[mancityvstoke]

The Mother in Law collapsed whilst on holiday and ended up in a hospital in Spain. Within the space of 4 days they had run a CT scan, MRI scan and an encepholagram (to check she hadnt had a stroke), various ultrasound sounds and found out it was a heart problem. They then did an angiogram and identified the actual problems. They even determined that it was probably due to her suffering from Rheumatic fever when she was a kid, although smoking when she was younger also didn't help. If she would have stayed in Spain they could have done the operation within 2 weeks.

She was flow back to the UK in an air ambulance and for the past 4 weeks has been sat in a UK hospital awaiting "urgent" heart surgery to replace her Aortic and Mitral Valves. We were told yesterday that it might be another 4-6 weeks.

I asked them if she could be moved to another hospital within the north and if that would speed it up, we didnt mind travelling to see her. What I didnt realise is that even with urgent operations they wont transfer patients outside the particularly primary care trust, which to me sounds crazy. Surely if for instance a hospital in Manchester has a waiting time of 8 weeks but a hospital in Leeds has a waiting time of 3 weeks you transfer the patient to Leeds and get it done, but apparently not.

How did we end up with such a stupid fragmented health care system ? Surely there could be a system that allows the costs to be recharged back to the appropriate trust to keep the bean counters happy.

Stop with the sensible shit.

 

[mexico1970]

The Mother in Law collapsed whilst on holiday and ended up in a hospital in Spain. Within the space of 4 days they had run a CT scan, MRI scan and an encepholagram (to check she hadnt had a stroke), various ultrasound sounds and found out it was a heart problem. They then did an angiogram and identified the actual problems. They even determined that it was probably due to her suffering from Rheumatic fever when she was a kid, although smoking when she was younger also didn't help. If she would have stayed in Spain they could have done the operation within 2 weeks.

She was flow back to the UK in an air ambulance and for the past 4 weeks has been sat in a UK hospital awaiting "urgent" heart surgery to replace her Aortic and Mitral Valves. We were told yesterday that it might be another 4-6 weeks.

I asked them if she could be moved to another hospital within the north and if that would speed it up, we didnt mind travelling to see her. What I didnt realise is that even with urgent operations they wont transfer patients outside the particularly primary care trust, which to me sounds crazy. Surely if for instance a hospital in Manchester has a waiting time of 8 weeks but a hospital in Leeds has a waiting time of 3 weeks you transfer the patient to Leeds and get it done, but apparently not.

How did we end up with such a stupid fragmented health care system ? Surely there could be a system that allows the costs to be recharged back to the appropriate trust to keep the bean counters happy.

Wishing your mum in law well mate hope it gets sorted for her.

 

[St Helens Blue (Exiled)]

okay from someone that works in the system, i wont try to defend it but i will try and give some context, one of the main problems with the NHS is that people dont see the larger picture, your own health is very important to you as it well should be but thats all anyone sees is their own health, take the original poster came into a&e and had a horrific wait in horrific pain and i feel for him i do but nobody ever sees whats going on in the background, how many other people are in with horrific pain, various other life threatening illnesses etc etc. All anyone sees is the wait time for how long it takes them to get seen and the NHS is bloody awful.

Also like someone else has said another problem is that it all filters down to A&E , if someone cant get an appt with a GP they just go to a&e and it jams the system up and you also have to combine that with having to take every person at their word, the amount of times you know that their is nothing objectively wrong with a person apart from that they are being a bit mard but you are not allowed to say just go home and you have to order a battery of tests etc etc just to show that you are doing your job is unbelievable.

Having just caught up with this thread as I was the original poster, you make a really valid point and made me think. You are right, I was in a lot of pain but I know there were a lot of people who with much more pain and life threatening illness. I suppose at the time back in Jan I was looking at my situation due to the pain I was in rather than the bigger picture. Having worked in police dispatch for nearly 27yrs now I know all about staffing issues in public services 40 to 50 jobs versus 10 cops to give them to, its like fire fighting with a tea spoon pal.
Anyway. Back is in a good place, feeling in my leg came back after 8 weeks approximateley. Occy health at work have been brilliant and the NHS finally discharged me early July.
Its all about personal management for my diagnosis. I'm sure I will have further issues as I progress to my older years (52 in Jan) but learning to manage it is what I have been taught.
Final point regarding hospitals. Somebody made a point of knowing which hospitals are best. So true. My kids only get taken to Alder Hey now rather than Whiston. Literally like chalk amd cheese.

PS I'm not a dipper....