We had a horrible one last year.
On a Ward a patient was on a bed with both his legs up in slings because he had major trauma to them.
He must have upset another patient who pulled him off the bed onto the floor
I can't imagine how much he must have annoyed someone for that to happen, unless the other person was a bit of a nut and it was something utterly trivial.
I expect that must have been a fun one for the hospital to sort out, as the hospital has a duty of care but at the same time has to try and treat everyone, doesn't have the space, staff or wish to reward PITA's with an isolated bed and can't monitor every bay/bed 24/7 (the guy near my dad actually had security sat looking utterly bored out of his skull watching him for at least a day, and when there was a security shift change one of the nursing assistants ended up sat wasting her time for a good hour or two whilst they waited for a replacement security guy).
None of the politicians ever seem to want to talk about that because it'd shine light on their massive incompetence.
I've heard about the Swiss system - I may be wrong but it seems you're screwed if you can't afford those contributions so it's not perfect either. I don't know what the answer is for the NHS but I do think we should be looking elsewhere at what works with a view to root and branch reform. I'm just baffled at how it's still some sort of sacred cow that must not be touched.
As Heed says, it's not that it shouldn't be touched, it's that every time any government tries to change it, certainly in the last 15 years it's made things much worse.
The changes I would make are pretty simple.
Make changes to the pay and conditions to improve them, not constantly cut them (IIRC Hunt the culture* effectively gave hospital doctors and nurses a 20% pay cut by insisting on below inflation pay rises), pay for these by basically removing agency nursing over time - when you're potentially paying an emergency agency the equivalent to a weeks wage for a nurse to cover a single shift that's a huge amount, especially when it's become routine, you'd be far better to pay the existing staff a couple of pounds an hour more to try and make it worth them staying as "staff", as if you're having to get an agency nurse in every day/shift that could cover an awful lot of additional pay for the other nurses on those shifts.
I'd remove fees for anyone who wishes to train to be a doctor or a nurse and ongoing training fees, the flipside being they sign a contract stating that they will once qualified as a doctor or a nurse work in the NHS for say 10 years, or pay back a decreasing amount of their tuition fees (the longer you work for the NHS the lower the amount to be repaid). At worst a doctor or nurse is no worse off than they are now, but whilst they are working for the NHS they're not paying any tuition fees thus giving them an effective, quite substantial pay rise and if they decide to leave the NHS to work elsewhere the government gets the same payback they would now.
Improve placements for doctors and nurses, as I understand it at the moment if you're a trainee/junior doctor or nurse you can basically be told to move to the other side of the country (pretty much regardless of family circumstances) at very short notice for the next 6-12 months.
Do away with a lot of the arbitrary targets.
Insist that any new large planning application for housing developments includes a fee, paid up front to help cover the cost of say a new walk in clinic or improving medical facilities at an existing GP and dental practice. In our area they've built something like 5-10k new homes in the last 25 years (huge housing estates in all directions), every time there has been talk of the developers paying towards things like a new walk in clinic, or building something in the development suitable for say a medical centre etc (usually as part of the planning application they include something like that), every single time they "forget" or plead "the housing market is bad, we're barely making a profit" and get away with it** just after they've finished building the last house.
It's utterly insane that you can basically increase a towns population by 25-50% in the space of a few decades but do nothing to improve the access to basic medical facilities.
Build and fund more local walk in clinics, and encourage the likes of the local GP's to work together to staff them out of normal hours - IIRC that's already done voluntarily by a lot of practices but they're not really getting funded for it and a lot of surgeries don't have the equipment, space or sufficient staff to really do it.
I just picked my dad up this morning (he was making jokes about jumping the fence whilst I was pushing his wheelchair), and the staff at the hospital were brilliant, and apparently one of the doctors was quite surprised when in response to his comment that he needed my dad to get a blood test at the GP's practice on X day and complaint at how long it took/how the GP's practices often didn't get the results back to them in time, that my dad suggested "My son can bring me in here to get the test if that helps".
About 90 minutes later I'm at the GP's practice making arrangements for my dad to have an injection tomorrow, and I overhear one of the receptionists commenting they've had a hell of a morning as they're two staff down due to sickness and have had to cancel all the blood tests which was upsetting patients (and I'm thinking, yeah probably just as well my dad volunteered me to take him to the hospital for it
).
*technically a yeast infection, or mrsi swab is a culture...
**I notice that when the local Tesco wanted to expand the council held them to a very different standard. From memory they required Tesco to pay for refurbishment of a bridge that was one of two main access ways to the store, major changes to the road leading to it, and IIRC redoing the pavements and some artwork for the town centre, all completed before any work started on the expansion to the store from memory.
followed by "junior staff".
