Junior Doctors Strikes

heeeed said:
Have you ever asked when appointments open up? We have tranches of appointments that open up at different times of day and every day, some urgent, some in couple of days and some in a few days or weeks time.

People still tell me when they are in front of me that all the appointments were done at 8am and it was impossible to book despite a) they are in front of me so did manage to book and b) I know what the spiel our reception team give about appointments opening up later, because I wrote it! people don’t always listen and assume there is nothing and don’t want to ring later. There may be nothing right now, but that doesn’t mean there will be none until tomorrow or day after etc. you have to have a system that covers multiple options
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I phoned up last week yo get an appointment, was just told no. Keep phoning at 0830 till I get one. Can't book past 4 days or something.

Couldnt phone at 0830 as I was working.

Why do appointments need to open up anyway, why can't I just book in for two weeks time? Its a mess of a system, at this point id be happy to see the system go private - at least then i could pay more to get an appointment. The booking system is very strange to myself and majority of the public, maybe if the NHS had to explain why it works like this it would ease people but currently it just frustates everyone.

Last time I went i was given anxiety medication, turned out I actually had a medical condition that wasn't anxiety. Just took me multiple tries at different places feeling like a nuisance.
 
ColdAsIce said:
Never seen anything about medicine cabinets. Was a poster for sepsis which 2, a&e doctors managed to miss all symptoms and sent me home. Could have died if my parents didn’t drag me back in a 3rd time.
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Sepsis is so dangerous becuase it's very difficult to spot..early symptoms can be very similar to a lot of basic illnesses.

It again comes down to the resources issues...sepsis is easy to call when you can run 5+ tests, but to do that takes time, money and staff.

All the things the NHS desperately lacks.
 
iamtheoneneo said:
Sepsis is so dangerous becuase it's very difficult to spot..early symptoms can be very similar to a lot of basic illnesses.

It again comes down to the resources issues...sepsis is easy to call when you can run 5+ tests, but to do that takes time, money and staff.

All the things the NHS desperately lacks.
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I had slurred speech, shivering. Couldn’t count the dates backwards from December (got to November) was asked my dad’s name and couldn’t recall it. 1st day at a&e I showed all these signs, plus some others. Got a brain scan, so stroke was ruled out. I got sent home that evening… 2nd visit wasn’t much better. Night in hospital and then sent home. 3rd time dad drove me. The human body is an amazing thing. Walked from the car park and 2 floors before colllapsing in a ward bed. Shivering cold. Tried to lie on the floor because my brain was telling me it was warmer than the bed. 2 nights in high dependency and a full course of anti biotics before things got put under control.
 
ColdAsIce said:
I had slurred speech, shivering. Couldn’t count the dates backwards from December (got to November) was asked my dad’s name and couldn’t recall it. 1st day at a&e I showed all these signs, plus some others. Got a brain scan, so stroke was ruled out. I got sent home that evening… 2nd visit wasn’t much better. Night in hospital and then sent home. 3rd time dad drove me. The human body is an amazing thing. Walked from the car park and 2 floors before colllapsing in a ward bed. Shivering cold. Tried to lie on the floor because my brain was telling me it was warmer than the bed. 2 nights in high dependency and a full course of anti biotics before things got put under control.
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Those symptoms to me suggest infection of some sort( parents had lots of infections) did they do any sort of tests? At the very least they should have done bloods and urine.
 
tonys said:
Those symptoms to me suggest infection of some sort( parents had lots of infections) did they do any sort of tests? At the very least they should have done bloods and urine.
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Yup, was sepsis plus infection throughout the body. Which is why they smashed me up with even antibiotic they had until figuring out it was ecoli. This was due to a side effect of liver disease. Liver not processing the old blood properly. Liver disease they are not sure why when I’m 40, not over weight and not a heavy or frequent drinker but that’s a whole story in itself. Need to ask yourself why the **** were they sending me home with all these symptoms???
 
Begbie said:
Why do appointments need to open up anyway, why can't I just book in for two weeks time? Its a mess of a system, at this point id be happy to see the system go private - at least then i could pay more to get an appointment. The booking system is very strange to myself and majority of the public, maybe if the NHS had to explain why it works like this it would ease people but currently it just frustates everyone.
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Places will have different ways to run things, but if you have all potential appointment slots open for 2 or more weeks in advance they will all rapidly get booked up and there is then no place to book urgent things, or for the review that a doctor has decided is needed to follow up in the next few days. You are having to provide a blend of urgent/semi urgent/routine/followups. Any kind of booking is a “least worst” system because there is no way to actually manage the demand that people would be happy with, as there are not enough clinicians or the money to fund them if they were magicked up.

Just got to look at the patient:doctor ratio of UK compared to other places to realise this
 
Never mind after sitting at home for their contracted hours the resident junior doctors are able to work their overtime at enhanced rates. Goodie!

Bring on some private sector reality.
 
I'd also take a punt and sya they also don't really want to do the work, hence the 'like it or lump it' price.

It's a bit like asking a trades person to come out and do a small job, you get billed accordingly.
 
Minstadave said:
Forms are nearly always non-NHS work so charges are set by the practice.
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Precisely, it's private work. I value my time at a certain rate comparable to a mid-priced solicitor. Medical forms also often have an associated risk. Just search online for that ridiculous case of someone attempting to sue their GP after they failed to pull their parachute cord on time.
 
tonys said:
It was basically to say that he was still alive.
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£150 isn't too much more than you'd pay for a lot of tradespeople for a 15 minute job out of normal hours (and filling in a private from for a GP is effectively "out of hours"), last time we had to call a plumber out it was something like £100 for the first hour whether it took them 5 minutes to fix or the full hour.

Even if it's something seemingly that simple the GP will need to read what he's actually signing for, almost certainly check the patient records (I can't think of many forms where you'd need a GP's signature just to say "he's alive") and as has been said, it's the GP's practice not the GP that has set that rate so the practice is almost certainly getting a very large cut of it.

And for those that complain about the NHS costs/efficiency, consider that this, like vet bills will be "market rate" and "private sector" costing for a medical professional, I sometimes get the impression that people forget that a GP is a proffesional on a par with, as Shadow_Boxer says, a solicitor with similar or higher overheads.


*It's not in their normal contracted NHS time.
 
Werewolf said:
£150 isn't too much more than you'd pay for a lot of tradespeople for a 15 minute job out of normal hours (and filling in a private from for a GP is effectively "out of hours"), last time we had to call a plumber out it was something like £100 for the first hour whether it took them 5 minutes to fix or the full hour.

Even if it's something seemingly that simple the GP will need to read what he's actually signing for, almost certainly check the patient records (I can't think of many forms where you'd need a GP's signature just to say "he's alive") and as has been said, it's the GP's practice not the GP that has set that rate so the practice is almost certainly getting a very large cut of it.

And for those that complain about the NHS costs/efficiency, consider that this, like vet bills will be "market rate" and "private sector" costing for a medical professional, I sometimes get the impression that people forget that a GP is a proffesional on a par with, as Shadow_Boxer says, a solicitor with similar or higher overheads.


*It's not in their normal contracted NHS time.
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Or a professional.

However GP's are not directly employed by the NHS, they are contracted by the NHS as stated above. Doctors originally refused to join the health service in it's original incarnation. They are in effect private except for those contracted hours.
 
Werewolf said:
£150 isn't too much more than you'd pay for a lot of tradespeople for a 15 minute job out of normal hours (and filling in a private from for a GP is effectively "out of hours"), last time we had to call a plumber out it was something like £100 for the first hour whether it took them 5 minutes to fix or the full hour.

Even if it's something seemingly that simple the GP will need to read what he's actually signing for, almost certainly check the patient records (I can't think of many forms where you'd need a GP's signature just to say "he's alive") and as has been said, it's the GP's practice not the GP that has set that rate so the practice is almost certainly getting a very large cut of it.

And for those that complain about the NHS costs/efficiency, consider that this, like vet bills will be "market rate" and "private sector" costing for a medical professional, I sometimes get the impression that people forget that a GP is a proffesional on a par with, as Shadow_Boxer says, a solicitor with similar or higher overheads.


*It's not in their normal contracted NHS time.
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I'm just repeating what this person said to me, they were just annoyed at the considerable jump in cost for the same form from last year.
 
Uther said:
Well there you go.
www.bbc.co.uk

Doctors vote to go ahead with five-day strike in England this week

It comes after ministers made fresh offer amid warning the walkout is risky as NHS battles wave of flu.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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The offer never addressed anything, and Wes Streeting is absolutely egging them on at this point.

The misinformation around Flu is going to kill people, the hospital never runs better than during strikes but it's being touted as an apocalypse about to happen.
 
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