NHS wait times?

smogsy

smogsy

smogsy

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im not bashing NHS, here just wondered what your experiences are? not A&E just referrals really.

now, i've not used NHS much

used it when i was 7, when i cut my head open (just stitches) A & E. took 2 odd hours to get seen
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Age 21 Broke my Arm took 30 mins to get seen, 5 mins for xray then 40 mins to get it wrapped up after. < found this most odd
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Age 24 (now) hurt my arm & back on dec 25th. after a month went to see the GP at end of January. Ive recently got the date for a Ultra scan, yes ultra scan.. 7 weeks wait (its on Friday)
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little rant
Now I've been in Serious pain since December, Cant lift my /shoulder90% of the time. Sometimes it gets stuck in position & if the bed cover touches it. its like someone is stabbing me. my fingers are also nub half the time.
my arm fell out of bed hanging the other day. took me 10+ minutes to try and get back in bed without pain, didn't work.
worst if someone makes my jump And my shoulders go up im in pain for hours!

tablets don't help heat pads don't work.
rant over

little research: i think damaged nerve.

have to wait for another week :(

whats your experiences?
 
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Dont like it? Go private. NHS are doing their best with the little money they have unfortunately.

Cant say iv had anything more than an hour wait in A+E
 
dfarrall said:
Dont like it? Go private. NHS are doing their best with the little money they have unfortunately.

Cant say iv had anything more than an hour wait in A+E
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I have to agree. Really annoys me when people moan and call the NHS useless just because their gran had to wait an hour to get a free ride home in an ambulance.

That same service saw to my mum's cancer and although could not get rid, still gave us an extra 2 years with her.

Could be worse, could be like America then we'd all be in pain.
 
No, they are not.
They are not doing their best, as for some idiotic reason the government still deludes the public into thinking our healthcare system is capable of providing everything possible at every level in superb time with zero cost.

We need to draw a line, define what is necessary, what is required, and what can be provided, and forgo any new expensive options, unless they prove themselves to be significantly better and worth it.

The stories of 'little girl can't get the drugs she needs to save her life' and those drugs happen to cost half a million, won't save her like in all likelihood, and are only provided in the US in some research facility, need to stop. I'd rather have 10 extra nurses employed, or 100 extra fracture ops done than fund one expensive treatment that likely won't work, or might extend someone's life a few months.

The system needs to be clarified so people know that limits exist and can insure themselves against other possibilities.
It was fine I the 40s and 50s and 60s where every doctor could do everything, drugs were simple affairs, with 20 tablets getting a doctor through most of his working life, and surgery involve a knife not a lase, electric, or artificial parts. The world moved on, and the concept and funding system didn't.
 
I had to wait 4 months to have my operation to replace my aus800. Seemed ok given that I'm only contributing to the cost of the operation via my taxes. The same op in a private hospital would have about 8 to 10k. If i had to wait 18 months for the op i might have dug deep to have it done.

The aftercare at ucl was very good and i know this is a cliche but the food was beyond terriable.
 
Great for emergency treatment, car crashes, broken things, burns etc etc.

Entirely useless in my experience for treating anything that isnt immediately life threatening.
 
My sister wasn't feeling well, stomach pains, saw doctor at 4pm, she referred her to hospital, admitted by 6pm, & paunched the following morning for abdominal cyst & paunched a second time two days later.

Spent 3 weeks in hospital, staff were brilliant, & at home she had districts nurses every day for 4 months for wound dressings, they were fantastic, I was surprised at how many other calls they had in a day to fit in.

In my case I caught chickenpox for the third time, was feeling very rough, saw doctor, refered to hospital admitted with chickenpox & pneumonia.
spent a week in ICU, again can't fault the care I had at our hospital.
 
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Nightglow said:
In my case I caught chickenpox for the third time, was feeling very rough, saw doctor, refered to hospital admitted with chickenpox & pneumonia..
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There's something new I learned, I thought chicken pox could only be caught once as the varicella variant, and any reactivation was the zoster shingles type effect. No idea you could 'catch' it more than once.
 
Annoys me when people bash the NHS, my mum works as a nurse doing 13 hour shifts, most times comes home having 10min for food as a break. I realize that there are issues with the NHS but people judging a few experiences they read about or the one experience where their cough was not seen to before the guy with his arm broken just because they came in first does not mean the entire system is a failure.


I've been in hospital a few times now, various whacks to the head as a young child, and when I broke my wrist in my teens. not had a bad experience yet, all the staff i came across were fantastic. most recent was my mums cancer treatment, she couldn't find fault with the staff she met, every question we asked was answered and its certainly something we couldn't afford otherwise!
 
OptimaLnrg said:
mental health patients are made to wait far longer than that for a short burst of ineffective treatment.
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I can't criticise most of the NHS, but mental health care in this country has for a very long time been completely ignored and grossly underfunded. That's more of a political issue though.
 
R-evans said:
Could be worse, could be like America then we'd all be in pain.
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I have never needed the NHS apart from a few visits to A&E but my wife who came here from the US is horrified at the level of care. The very obvious cost cutting at the coalface caused us an enormous amount of grief and the wait times have been comical. In the US the level of medical care is decades ahead of the UK. You do pay for it however if you have a reasonable medical insurance policy (which pretty much any job will come with), you might have a small co-pay to worry about rather than a huge bill. Need an MRI scan? How about this afternoon? :p

I always thought the cost of private healthcare in the UK was quite expensive but I'd rather make a few material sacrifices for the peace of mind a decent medical insurance policy offers compared to the NHS.
 
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Age 24 (now) hurt my arm & back on dec 25th. after a month went to see the GP at end of January.
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Now I've been in Serious pain since December, Cant lift my /shoulder90% of the time. Sometimes it gets stuck in position & if the bed cover touches it. its like someone is stabbing me. my fingers are also nub half the time.
my arm fell out of bed hanging the other day. took me 10+ minutes to try and get back in bed without pain, didn't work.
worst if someone makes my jump And my shoulders go up im in pain for hours!
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You may not appreciate the waiting time but if you hadn't delayed seeing your GP for a month you'd likely have had the scan several weeks ago.

With symptoms like that you should have got the ball rolling much sooner.
 
atpbx said:
Great for emergency treatment, car crashes, broken things, burns etc etc.

Entirely useless in my experience for treating anything that isnt immediately life threatening.
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My experience has been varied, but mostly with good reason.

~25 years ago I went into A&E when I caught my foot on an exposed pipe in the middle of the night (I was renting a room in a clumsily extended house and going to the toilet in the dark). I felt something snap and the pain made me a bit dizzy, so I thought I'd better get it looked at when the initial pain died down a bit and I could hobble around. I didn't know if it was serious or not, so I wanted to have it looked at it by someone who would know. I was in A&E for a few hours, but I was triaged quickly and rightly bumped down the list to make time for people with serious injuries - it was a bad night at the A&E that night. Next time I broke a toe, I just strapped it up myself because I knew it wasn't serious.

~15 years ago I developed almost continuous pain in one testicle. I was, of course, worrying about cancer so I went to my GP to get it looked at. They referred me to a urologist and I got an appointment to see them...more than a year later. Seriously, more than a year. So I paid £100 for a private appointment...and saw the same urologist two days later. They referred me back to the NHS for surgery, which took place about 10 days later. I've still got the pain and probably always will, but knowing that it's not caused by something serious was the important point.

Last year, I went to my GP with pitting oedema in my legs. The response was faultless - I quickly got tests for pretty much all known causes in order of seriousness. Buckets of blood tests, abdominal ultrasound scan, echocardiogram (I got to watch video of my own heart working, which is very cool), doppler ultrasound on my legs to check circulation, abdominal MRI to investigate my liver in more detail due to an abnormality on the ultrasound scan (they were almost sure it was a harmless "birthmark" after the ultrasound, but had an MRI done to be completely sure). They never found a cause, but the testing was thorough and done quickly. Knowing that there's nothing serious wrong is what matters to me - I can live with the idiopathic oedema like I live with the idiopathic testicular pain.


So the only thing I can fault the NHS on was referral to a urologist ~15 years ago. Other than that, it's been excellent for me and people I know, whether the problem is life-threatening or not. More serious things get priority, but that's as it should be.
 
Wait times are terrible at my local hospital. At least it seemed that way because there wasn't many patients just lots of people walking around the place.

Last year when I suspected I had fractured my ankle I went to A&E. I waited around 45 mins to an hour to get seen to. Got told I'd have to go to the x-ray department to get an x-ray done. Waited another 30 minutes or so to get seen and have my x-ray done. X-ray took less than 5 minutes to do. Got given a slip that I had to hand into A&E so I could see someone and they could examine my x-ray. Waited another 30 minutes and got called to go down the hall. Waited another 15 or so minutes before being called by some nurse to examine my x-ray. I walk around the corner and all of the nurses are sitting there quite happily sipping on a cup of tea. Nothing wrong in the end.

Total wait time: 2 hours +. Wasn't even that busy either.
 
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I was shown to have a serious hernia a few years ago, the fat in my body had wrapped around my organs and was "pulling it down" in my body through the hole of the hernia.

They said I needed immediate surgery within a few weeks......... 6 months went by, agony, because they hadn't been able to get in me for surgery in time, the NHS sent me a letter advising they were now obligated to pay for me to go private and cover all costs, I called the NHS and then the private hospital about this and I had surgery the very next day when I was on the records of the private hospital.
 
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