An NHS of which we can proud?

[Mr Ice-ni]

Not quite, Coops, but a good point. An excellent reason to scrap Universal Suffrage.

John

[woolybanana]

Certainly voting under 21 should be dumped

[Will]

[quote user="Mr Ice-ni"]

Not quite, Coops, but a good point. An excellent reason to scrap Universal Suffrage.

John

[/quote]

So which sections of the population would you envisage disenfranchising?

Women? Scots? Homosexuals? Dyslexics? Clergymen? Freemasons? Sun readers? Estate agents? Journalists? Small fluffy dogs? Anybody with a sub-Mensa IQ? (mind you, from my experience of Mensa I would personally be quite happy if that so-called branch of intelligentsia didn't have the vote).[;-)]

[woolybanana]

Your choices suggest something deep and meaningful about your character, Will. Not sure that small fluffy dogs have the vote, old chap, but perhaps I have missed something. Tell me, were you bullied by a Scots, transexual, dyslexic dog-collar wearing estate agent as a child? I am sure that treatment is available. I know a good psychiatrist in Transylvania[6]

[cooperlola]

[quote user="Will"]So which sections of the population would you envisage disenfranchising? [/quote]Furry fruit?[;-)]

[woolybanana]

Millions have been spent on trying to develop the furry banana for cold countries but no luck so far!

[idun]

If ever my bananas go 'furry' they go straight in the bin. [Www] Funny thing about bananas though don't often go furry, they usually go black and hard..... and then they go in the bin[:-))]

[Balham]

I spent my working life in the NHS. I was certainly happy to have worked there and would like to think that had it not been for ill health (a bit ironic really) I might still be working there.

[Alex H]

A little late to this debate but here is a quote from another website that I frequent (lots of * s to make it pass the censor)

Complaints about the NHS

I have (until recently) gained useful employment as a manager within

this island's great Health Service. I have recently left to return to

being a clinician on lower pay for reasons that I trust will become

clear as my rant develops and matures like a filled colostomy bag left

out in the afternoon sun.

There are a few problems with the NHS.

One of these is media driven perception. Hospitals are portrayed as

disease-ridden hellholes scarcely better than the black hole of Calcutta

(meh, to be fair, I have been to Chase Farm before) filled with nurses

so busy they cannot stop to fart, let alone do any patient care,

incompetent doctors and avaricious managers. All of which would be

solved by putting matron back on the ward, and generally warping back to

the 1950's.

One of the ones that always boils my **** is the

"oh lets stop wasting money on all these managers and mint some lovely

fresh nurses." Hospital management is what allows the lovely nurses to

be paid on time, get uniform, not have to spend 10 hours of a 12 hour

shift doing paperwork, work in a safe environment and generally do their

job. There seems to be a (media-led) public perception that if someone

doesn't actually lay hands on a patient to make them better, then they

are about as much use as David Rathband's etch-a-sketch.

This, unfortunately, brings me to the main throbbing artery of my rant-beast.

Complaints.

One

of my main managerial roles was investigating complaints and incidents

received from the general public. On my original job description, this

was supposed to take "around 3-5 hours per week". Most weeks I did about

20. Complaints fall into the following three areas:

Genuine complaints about clinical issues: 1-2%

Complaints made in good faith but generally due to a lack of understanding: 3-5%

Money-grabbing vexatious ****ers: 90%

The

first two categories were the easiest to deal with. Generally for the

first category, an investigation would occur and the staff involved may

have to go for some retraining. In rare cases (about 5-10% of that

figure) disciplinary action or a report to the staff member's regulatory

body had to be made. The complainants were normally very polite and

sorry to bring problems to my attention.

The second category was

usually dealt with by a letter saying something along the lines of

"thank you for your concern. Having spoken to the ambulance crew, the

reason you were taken to Big City General Hospital rather than

Lovelytown District is that it last had an accident and emergency

department around the time of Glasnost."

The final category was

the epitome of soul-destroying. Any letter entitled "For the attention

of the claims department" generally fell into this category. In addition

any use of the phrase "I think this is disgusting" or "and I want to

know what you're going to do about it" also makes sure that it falls

into my *******s-drawer (a figurative drawer - not an actual drawer

filled with ********s).

BUT

Every. Single. One. of these

complaints had to be investigated. Fully. Sometimes, staff had to be

suspended whilst these were being carried out. I had to put their

actions under intense scrutiny, trying to balance what is the gold

standard of patient care together with the actual facts of the case.

Usually when I sent my standard "Dear Sir, **** off and die" letter to

close the case, a week later I would get a reply saying "but I think

I've been badly treated and deserve money."

People of the UK:  You have a healthcare system that is free at the point of

access, is at the forefront of clinical care in many areas, and 99.9% of

the time fixes you up and gets you back to where you should be. Live

with it.

[Balham]

I think that's briliant, when peopleel say things agianst the NHS it is like they think the people in the NHS try to be difficlut. Iwas never dificult . . .

[Gardengirl]

''People of the UK:  You have a healthcare system that is free at the point of

access, is at the forefront of clinical care in many areas, and 99.9% of

the time fixes you up and gets you back to where you should be. Live

with it.''

Too long to quote it all. I enjoyed the read, but thought the last bit quoted above was a bit much - the vast majority of us don't write to complain about anything at all. The vast majority of us are appreciative of the NHS; we live with it mostly happily and  we pay for it too. I do hope this person (if real),  was a patient clinician, with a good bedside manner. I suspect not - probably ranting about patients as I write - if real, of course.

[Thibault]

In a political sense, the NHS is the new 'immigration',  It is impossible to have a rational debate about real or perceived problems in the NHS and the means to deal with them, without discussion becoming polarised and irrational.

Saying there is nothing wrong in the NHS and it should continue the way it is ad infinitum, but with more and more money thrown at it,  is not a sensible starting point, yet it is frequently suggested as the only way forward.  Until the public and NHS staff and politicians can have a truly rational debate, nothing will get done properly.

[idun]

As a former clerk and consequently a manager, I will take great issue with the comment about managers. They should be very few with good and efficient systems set up. The clerks good and well trained, including those that superivse the others, they don't need to be managers. Re overtime, the supervisors, what Sisters on medical wards, or above, should be able to sign that off and maybe or maybe not their supervisors, then straight to the pay dept.

Managers are good a justifying other managers, and I know that you don't need many of  them, just good 'uns. 

Re wasted money in the NHS, well it is blatantly obvious to me who was out of it so long as to the waste of time and money. I am frankly sick of getting unsolicited appointments coming through the post for me and there may have been more, as junk mail is binned.

Re the medical side though; I have been happy enough with it.

[pachapapa]

Whenever I visit a hospital in the UK there are people all over the place, sometimes more people in uniform than patients.

Looks like a classic case of over-manning, it would be interesting to do a classic study to ascertain what these uniformed people did in one particular day. I would be surprised if a cost-benefit study would justify their employment.

[idun]

And I don't see a difference between the two systems with regards to staffing at a basic level in hospitals in either country. I spent more hours than I would even want to think about in A&E's in France with my kids sporting accidents. The A&E in the city we lived near in France was always busy and there was always an eclectic mix of people waiting to be seen............for hours and hours and hours. And now we are in England, our son still manages to have sporting accidents....... there is one thing that we suspect though, that he gets in a little quicker in the UK with his rugby accidents.

[Russethouse]

Thibault, one reason for the way the NHS is discussed is that everyones experience is different - for instance I'm pretty happy with our local hospital, but not impressed by my mothers local hospital at all. 

[Chancer]

And as you are talking about uniformed people PPP then you must be referring to the public areas, you have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

I did the access control systems for many of the sensitive areas of the John Radcliffe Hospital, microbiology etc, and was always aghast at just how many staff there were, they outnumbered the patients probably 20 to 1, just as in further education the goal of most of them was to avoid all contact with the very people that their existence actually depended on.

[powerdesal]

Interesting to see mention of the John Radcliffe as its our local hospital. The A & E dept are great, the Heart Clinic is great, the geriatric ward on the other hand is appalling. The outpatients X ray dept looks pretty run down but seems to be very efficient. There are bad aspects of the JR however, from a purely personal point of view I cannot accept that they could totally lose the heart traces taken at A & E when the patient is transferred to a ward, I cannot accept the logic of switching off a heart monitor on a patient admitted with a heart problem and I cannot see the logic in transferring a heart patient from A & E to the geriatric ward when the patient was not ''geriatric''.

There are other aspects which are personal and this (or any) forum is not the place to air them.

[Hoddy]

There are a lot of people walking about in our local hospital too. They wear a sort of short tabard and have an identity tag. Quite of number of them are unpaid volunteers who help people find their destination or call a taxi for them and so on. I've never needed them but I'm glad they are there.

Hoddy

[Russethouse]

Same in our hospital too, additionally if you have a distance to walk and are infirm for any reason volunteers man 'golf buggies' to take you from one end of the hospital to the other...in my ignorance I thought everywhere had them now, that was until I had to do a real hike when visiting my mother in Wexham Park....goodness knows how an elderly person would have coped....