NHS=Negligent Health Service

Surveyor said:
As far as I can see there are no legal costs involved in a GMC investigation unless the doctor chooses to obtain representation. If legal representation is obtained I haven't found anything saying the NHS would pay for it.
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It's not just a GMC investigation there's a clinical negligence case against the hospital, which is primarily down to him.
 
Energize said:
My records vanished into thin air, I looked at the ED discharge form and was horrified to see "no treatment given" when I was in the hospital for 3 days on IV antibiotics. My GP was shocked when I told him I'd spent 3 days in hospital because they had no record of it!
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We poo our pants when records go missing because we know we can't fight a case.
In your case they will know you got admitted to a ward so where are the records?
We'll try to turn over every stone and one I've been working on for 3 weeks the records turned up, without telling anybody a Matron took them off the Clinicians desk.
I wish I could have a £1 for every person I've heard say "We tried to put a claim in but they lost my records so I couldn't claim", what absolute garbage.
 
Bassmansam said:
My 95 year old grandad is in hospital with pneumnia at the moment. He ordered haddock for dinner but got given lasagne instead.
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If you aren’t in your ward when food orders are collected, you miss out. Why couldn’t the ward staff hand over the order form to the catering staff?

Mum has had this twice. Normally a meal left once meals being dished out. Not during those times. Had a phone call from mum asking her to get a prepared salad bowl and a few bits. Stopped off at the supermarket en route to hospital.

Not everyone has family and friends living nearby to do this. So end up hungry and potentially increase their recovery time
 
Now I'm 100% recovered from a fairly serious injury here's my extremely positive experience of the NHS to offer a long counterpoint.

I fell off my mountain bike in May, my fault, not that hard an impact, just hit the road with a good whack. My wrist swelled up and it hurt mildly, but I carried on as normal for 10 days and even cycled back after the accident. I'm self employed working from home in an office capacity, so I was able to carry on working the whole time, but I wasn't getting any strength back in that hand so I called 111 after being advised to apply a wrist compressor bandage by my chemist that hurt a lot putting it on.

111 advised attending a walk in centre, so next morning visited a packed centre despite it just opening, it had miserable receptionists lacking in empathy, but fine, they deal with it every day. Unusual having to loudly speak your ailment so that the 30 other seated waiting patients can all hear it. After me a young man's friend accompanying him had to announce that his friend had a lump on his testicle to everyone - so not ideal in terms of discretion.

About an hour's wait for a consultation with a fantastic nurse, I had an x-ray 10 mins later.

"You've crushed your wrist bruv."

Turns out I had a triple break in my wrist, not a sprain, was only a week or so from it resetting badly and needing rebreaking. After a hasty cast I had to report to the same receptionist who suddenly was more empathetic realising I was actually pretty messed up. Told to take myself to hospital that day, still fine to get a bus and walk there.

A&E initial waiting room is always a nightmare whatever NHS hospital you go to - that's just the nature of A&E, it's chaotic, it's full of time wasters, it's miserable, but there's not much that can be done to improve it other than chucking a ton of money it they don't have.

Seen within 20 mins due to being legitimately injured with x-ray proof, but they lost the x-ray or can't get it, no worries, another one quickly, then a new cast, much better than the health centre's temporary one. Consulted by a succession of amazing Doctors and Nurses, advising I'd need my first ever surgery of my life in my 40's and having a metal plate and screws put in my hand, my primary hand by the way. Warning of possible irritation from plate and not getting full strength back.

Surgery booked for three days time which is in itself incredible, from not knowing about me, to providing a full surgery operation three days later, for free? Astounding.

Turned up three days later, living close to the hospital I was able to walk every time I needed to go there, sat in ward only for a Dr to apologise that someone had a horrific accident needing extensive emergency surgery and that I'd been cancelled, could I come back tomorrow. No worries. It's not that convenient but when people are in life of death situations delays can happen.

Came back the next day find the Dr had upgraded me for free to private care, so I had my own private room with bathroom, etc. The anthologist was great, I just went under and woke up with a much nicer cast, not feeling any of the operation, but couldn't feel my fingers. Also noticed cast digging into my arm a bit, asked nurse who advised lingering local anaesthetic for fingers and got cast tech for me. One snip with heavy duty scissors and cast all good. No feeling in fingers hours later so they wanted me to spend a night in hospital, my first in 40 years. Luckily it was the free private room, so not bad.

Went to sleep still not feeling my fingers, only able to sleep after after a kind nurse assured me it'd be fine. Woke next morning with full feeling restored, Dr signed me out, and I walked home.

I now have a decent sized metal plate under my wrist bones and 10 metal screws that I've never even noticed or got pain from once. After 3 visits for aftercare my wrist has fully recovered and I'm lifting weights, I can never do press ups again on that hand but other than that I can do everything as before. I carried on working only taking a week off after surgery, cast was off after 3 weeks and felt almost fully healed after 3 months.

If I was in the USA I would have been financially ruined or would have been paying through the nose for insurance anyway, yet our UK NHS gave me my hand and my life back - for free. For nothing more than the taxes I and others pay.

During my time in hospital I saw a lot of time wasters in the NHS system, I saw a guy in his 20's wheeled in on an ambulance trolley who had touched his finger to a strimmer and had a cut finger - so he called an ambulance for that. Turns out he had a minor hairline fracture in one finger. Yet a little girl of 5 who had a much worse break than that had walked in with with her Mum.

Just how much did that guy needlessly cost the NHS? The fact he could get a free ambulance for that is incredible in itself.

I saw a guy who clearly hadn't showered for a month with a totally messed up leg harassing a Dr for pain killers, but obvious to all it wasn't primarily for his leg, but because he was utterly addicted to them and likely a few other substances too.

They insisted on giving me 2 packs of heavy opiate painkillers that I didn't take any of, the image of that addicted was guy clear in my mind, I just took paracetamol instead, no doubt if I was in the USA they would have chucked opiate painkillers at me like they were Smarties, or at least they used to.

So the NHS isn't perfect, but it is a miracle in many ways that is also overloaded by time wasters and administrative waste. The people who work there are generally amazing who respect stoicism and having a good attitude a lot, they will go the extra mile for you if they possibly can.
 
Supply and demand apply to our NHS, when demand outstrip the supply then standard will drop. There an limited amount of funding available and a bucket full of holes does not help the situation which is the real negligent. I personally witness daily the concept of "free" and hence the feeling of entitlement vs personal responsibilities of ones health, obesity/over weight vs cardiovascular problems, smoker/vape vs asthma, stress/lifestyle vs depression..... A lot of the treatments and resources can be mitigated with long term lifestyle changes and follow simple healthy advise yet people will choose to take a pill and have surgery.

If it cost personally per appointment or per pill then we will start to take health advise seriously and avoid at all "cost", but since it is taxed already it is free and may as well use it as much as we can...

Mistake do happen and I am sure there will be negligent cases where professional just plan evil but if all the holes are fixed and there are enough resource to go where it is needed it will be like a 3 star Michelin stat restaurant experience in hospitals, much less error and things to go wrong.
 
NHS keep banging on about missed appointments.
Problem is if you try to ring the hospital dept to inform them you are unable to attend, the phone keeps ringing or go onto voicemail, leave a message and never call back. Don’t blame us if we can’t get hold of you!

Plus those who don’t have a mobile phone, rely on RM to get appts. If the letter is lost, the patient has no idea about appts.

Have seen patients report to reception only to find out the appt was rescheduled and they never received the letter. Reception tries to squeeze the patient somewhere between other patients’ appts, esp those who have traveled 20 plus miles.

No idea what the solution would be.
 
cheesefest said:
NHS keep banging on about missed appointments.
Problem is if you try to ring the hospital dept to inform them you are unable to attend, the phone keeps ringing or go onto voicemail, leave a message and never call back. Don’t blame us if we can’t get hold of you!
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An absolute minority of patients.

cheesefest said:
Plus those who don’t have a mobile phone, rely on RM to get appts. If the letter is lost, the patient has no idea about appts.
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Mobile phone is the way it is going, and should be going IMO. It's only the 80+ in my experience that don't use a mobile phone.
I send dozens of texts to patients in their 70s without issue weekly.
The NHS app is slowly becoming useful and will be the future to keep a track of everything.
Having a mobile is a basic need these days.
Every day, that passes, an even smaller number of people don't have them.
Letters are dead.
 
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I work in the city and most of my older patients love their NHS patient access phone app for ordering their regular medications, the ones who don't have phone or cannot navigate phone app usually have carer or relative who looking after them who use the app etc. There are very few people who still call surgery or rely on us to call surgery for their regular medications. The hospital near me do not have the time to answer phone and that is the fact, it is not that they are lazy or having cup of tea while patient trying to call through. There is just not enough resources to deal with the workload, there is just not enough funding to maintain the level of service needed. Private hospital where each appointment cost £250+ will have no problem answering your call, the matter of fact that I never had any trouble getting hold of private clinic for any prescription queries I needed clarifying, if consultants is not available I always get a call back within hours.......... that is service which NHS cannot complete.
 
cheesefest said:
NHS keep banging on about missed appointments.
Problem is if you try to ring the hospital dept to inform them you are unable to attend, the phone keeps ringing or go onto voicemail, leave a message and never call back. Don’t blame us if we can’t get hold of you!
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I work there and agree with this.
My phone rang and a robot asked if I was attending so I pressed 2 for no.
It then said somebody would be in touch to rearrange.
I then got a message after the appointment to tell me how naughty I was for not attending without informing them :)

I had another phone call for another appointment, I pressed 1 to attend.
Following day I spent all day on my office phone to get through to appointments to cancel so I ended up walking to the department and cancelled it.
 
tres said:
An absolute minority of patients.


Mobile phone is the way it is going, and should be going IMO. It's only the 80+ in my experience that don't use a mobile phone.
I send dozens of texts to patients in their 70s without issue weekly.
The NHS app is slowly becoming useful and will be the future to keep a track of everything.
Having a mobile is a basic need these days.
Every day, that passes, an even smaller number of people don't have them.
Letters are dead.
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No hospital or referrals on my NHS app. All GP. Nothing about my colonoscopies I had in the spring
 
cheesefest said:
No hospital or referrals on my NHS app. All GP. Nothing about my colonoscopies I had in the spring
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It's in the pipeline, like i said, it's slowly becoming useful and will be the future to keep track of everything.
The GP side works well at the moment. Still lots to do but much better than the systems 5 yrs ago.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
I work there and agree with this.
My phone rang and a robot asked if I was attending so I pressed 2 for no.
It then said somebody would be in touch to rearrange.
I then got a message after the appointment to tell me how naughty I was for not attending without informing them :)

I had another phone call for another appointment, I pressed 1 to attend.
Following day I spent all day on my office phone to get through to appointments to cancel so I ended up walking to the department and cancelled it.
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I can top that. I recently received an appointment for the past. Impressive, the NHS has invented time-travel!
 
In the past, pre RM strikes and covid, I had letters from NHS dated 10 days after I received it.

This particular appt was for the following day and work weren't impressed as I thought I was to blame for not informing them with notice. A bit difficult to explain this when you arrive home at 8pm to supposly start at 8am the following morning. Good job that the appt didn't require to do anything before appt such as a colonoscopy. Then need 72 hours notice for prep.
 
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