Where is the NHS when you need it?

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midlife

Legendary Member
If you have an accident or are acutely ill then the NHS is open for business 7 days a week.

If you need an appointment then the weekends are tricky as some staff (like me) are not paid to work the weekend and indeed my clinic is closed because there are no doors open, no receptionist, no nurses and the other support services are not there either.

Shaun
 

mcshroom

Bionic Subsonic
I'll chuck in my story from last summer. Came off bike riding to work, broke my right humerus in two. I arrived at A&E in the West Cumberland Hospital* at 9:10am after getting a lift to hospital, was in X-ray before 9:30.

I couldn't get to the fracture clinic that afternoon (as it's in Carlisle thanks to recent cuts), but was there the following day, and operated on the day after. Great service, good follow up physio in my local doctors less than 1km away and overall the only issue I have is that non-emergency trauma has been relocated 80km away in the last couple years, and I had to be there for surgery before I could arrive by public transport. All of this and I didn't need to worry about my insurance, or how much it would cost.

*The trust is in Special Measures, so not exactly a centre of excellence
 

GrumpyGregry

Here for rides.
May have had are the words I wrote, not have had. In general I am happy with the NHS, although a 5 week wait for a doctors appointment is a tad long. As I said earlier though, I feel some staff could try harder.
Then you may as well have written

"For every good expereince somebody may have been murdered by a nurse, or had their house burgled by a paramedic, or been abducted by aliens."


because you are speculating about an equivalence between bad experiences vs good ones that just ain't so.

And I suspect you know it.
 

PaulSB

Squire
My grandson broke a bone in his hand and had an appointment at 8 am for an operation so my wife took him . At 4pm, he was sent home and told he may be contacted at 8pm tonight for the operation. So they both spent all day at the hospital for nothing and there is no certainty that he will be seen tonight either. Who says the NHS is so wonderful? Certainly not in North Wales!

A great friend of mine is dying of cancer. Had to go in last week for some intravenous anti-biotics. The wait was 7.5 hours.

She had a mild rant when she came home. I felt that was quite justified.
 

Richard.1

Senior Member
I have been working in the NHS for 2 years after being in different countries and various industries. The NHS is in very poor state, the reasons seem to me to be -
1. a greater demand than supply
2. low moral across the board
3. managers who lack the necessary skills due to being trained as clinicians and not managers and not seeming to be provided the training to be good managers
4. overworked GPs who are sometimes reluctant to refer to hospitals as they know how stretched hospitals are
these are just a few I have seen. this article is interesting http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11936737/Reform-the-NHS-or-watch-it-fade-and-die.html
 
Location
Northampton
I quite appreciate many people's tolerance or acceptance of the experience of OP in view of their belief in the NHS.
However we should not accept that it is a good standard of care. Once the surgery is sorted, please do make a complaint. This will be helpful in two ways. One, you will be able to come to terms with it once you know why you had to wait. Then if the NHS Trust is good enough, this will be addressed to prevent it from happening again.
 
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