NHS - A National Disgrace

[Trudi G]

Today i took Christian to the dentist because after his check-up i was told he needed a couple of temporary fillings, to refill some minor holes he had in his teeth.
When we got in to see the dentist, he told me that Christian shouldn't really have been booked in to have this done, as they have run out of NHS funding, and can no longer do any non urgent work on NHS patients.
He told me that the system had changed last year, and now instead of being able to treat any of their patients who came to them with problems, and being paid by the NHS to do so, they were allocated a certain amount of funding for the year, and once that had run out, all non urgent cases went on to a waiting list, to wait for the next years budget to be allocated.
He told me that it had been left up to the dentists to break this news to their patients.The dentist kindly did the work on Christians teeth free of charge.
I asked him what happens if i needed treatment after my check-up next week, and he told me i would be put on a waiting list. He stressed that it was better to come in for the check-up though, because i would need to get on the waiting list as soon as possible.
The dentist himself is appalled with the new system, because all he wants to be able to do is get on and do his job. He told me that the only thing he can see happening with this new system in place is that the nations dental health is going to go downhill rapidly.
I am one of the many people who cannot afford to go privately, and am being left by the wayside when it comes to this government, and i really do fear for my sons future. This new system is very obviously not working and i don't know how Tony Blair and his cronies have the gall to stand up in public and say the NHS has never been better, when the average person on the street knows this isn't true.
The class divide in a so-called classless society has never been bigger.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

How depressing - this really is a sorry state of affairs isn't it?
It's even worse that the dentists (most of whom I would expect would also disagree with this system) have to tell their own patients.

I don't blame anyone for being angry. As you say the NHS does seem to be in a bad way these days. It's all about saving money and not about treating the public!!

[Wayne]

It's terrible isn't it?
Politicians make me puke. ****ing hypocrites the lot of 'em!

[Raston]

Well it only costs 105.6bn so what do you expect.

[Rob McCow]

I'd think it was 105.6 billion well spent if it all went on providing health-care. But it's all middle-management, form-filling and bureaucracy. When my Gran was in hospital a year or two ago, my Mum saw they were putting up some metal wall brackets and extendable arms by each bed. She assumed it was for some medical equipment, something useful, but then she found out it was so a TV could be installed for each hospital bed.

I can undestand them installing some beds with TV's for those recovering patients, but then if you're well enough to watch TV, should you be in a hospital bed? Shouldn't they just have a few wards with TV's by the bed so you can have one if you ask for it? Isn't it a huge waste of money, really?

[Wayne]

but then if you're well enough to watch TV, should you be in a hospital bed? Shouldn't they just have a few wards with TV's by the bed so you can have one if you ask for it? Isn't it a huge waste of money, really?

They'll be having Playstations soon. You'll see!
When i was 20, i was in hospital for 3 weeks after they f****d up a 'simple' op where i should've been in for only 2 days. There was just one telly at the end of the ward, & that was only allowed on at certain times.
Surprisingly, they did let me have my guitar on the ward, so long as i kept it on the big high up windowsill out of the way. It's true! I was even allowed play it on the ward, although i often played it in the smoke-room if i wanted to have a real good bash.

[Alex]

Fairly obviously right now I've little good to say about the NHS.

Three trips to A&E before they realised my leg was 'severely' broken, seeing a lot of nurses and doctors being horribly dismissive and rude to patients, and being left in a corridor whilst in severe pain (due to a porter shortage) are just a couple of examples of why my experiences of it are so negative, and it really dismays me to see the service in such a state.

Obviously there is a very good side to it, at least the operation was free, and I will now make a full recovery. But I don't think it's just the politicians and middle management are only to blame - the staff really need to be trained to care about their patients much more.

On the ward front, the first one I was in had no tv (or even payphone in it), and the second had one tv between six of us and a payphone which didn't work. Which was all rather unimpressive...

[Paul Monk]

I don't know if Alex agrees but the one aspect of the NHS I had no fault with and thought were brilliant was the ambulance service.
They were calm, helpful, friendly and very reassuring and I felt totally safe in their hands.
I didn't enjoy my one night in hospital though.

[Paul Clement]

I'd think it was 105.6 billion well spent if it all went on providing health-care. But it's all middle-management, form-filling and bureaucracy. When my Gran was in hospital a year or two ago, my Mum saw they were putting up some metal wall brackets and extendable arms by each bed. She assumed it was for some medical equipment, something useful, but then she found out it was so a TV could be installed for each hospital bed.

I can undestand them installing some beds with TV's for those recovering patients, but then if you're well enough to watch TV, should you be in a hospital bed? Shouldn't they just have a few wards with TV's by the bed so you can have one if you ask for it? Isn't it a huge waste of money, really?

If you are talking about what I think you are, then it's in no way a waste of money at all. The hoispitals I've been in recently have all got these, and you can access TV, internet and phone from them. To use them, you have to top up a card for use on it. Now either they get the money from the company who supplies the machines or they get a percentage of the top ups. Either way they soon cover the cost of installing them and give the hospitals extra vital funds, so all in all I would say this is a good thing.

[Alex]

I don't know if Alex agrees but the one aspect of the NHS I had no fault with and thought were brilliant was the ambulance service.
They were calm, helpful, friendly and very reassuring and I felt totally safe in their hands.

I do, they were brilliant, and they also had that lovely lovely gas stuff which stopped the pain really quickly. It's a shame you can't buy that stuff in the shops actually

[Jon Masters]

To misquote Joseph de Maistre, every country has the health service it deserves

[WhiteCrow]

They'll be having Playstations soon. You'll see!

No, Playstations are only for Prisons!

[Captain Tancredi]

I'm not the NHS's greatest fan- probably a combination of my own experiences trying to get NHS psychotherapy (basically I was enough of a case for a private therapist to refer me, but not enough of one for the NHS to actually want to treat me) and the circumstances surrounding my grandma's death, where she and my family were poorly treated because she was inconsiderate enough to have a stroke on a Bank Holiday (there were 37 action points in the report which followed my mum and aunt's formal complaint).

So what's the problem? Are we too wedded to the idea of the lifelong free treatment with which the NHS was founded to even consider that other ways of doing things might be both more efficient and cheaper? The NHS is too much of a dogma for Labour ever to openly question it, and too much of an Achilles heel for the Tories to propose something else. I suspect that we won't be able to do much about it unless and until we accept that we want more from the NHS than we're prepared to pay for- but that doesn't stop it being disgusting that budgets dictate which cancer patients get medication and which don't. Even with an infinite budget, the NHS would still have to deal with a finite number of doctors and nurses, so perhaps the answer is to have a smaller and cheaper NHS covering the GP service, accident and emergency and care for those people who can't protect themselves and explore whether the private sector can do the rest better than a bloated state bureaucracy.

[WhiteCrow]

I love the way they're openly pouring tax money into the NHS now because it was "so bad" under the Tories, and that money has been going ... where?

[Raston]

Wages and admin staff mostly.

In principle the NHS is a very very good thing, but in practice it has become the biggest waste of money in the UK- those 105 Billion need to be much more carefully spent so that we actually get the health service that we are paying for.

As i keep saying-the NHS is like a bucket with a hole in it-the more you pour in the more you waste you need to fix the hole first before it will get better.

[Trudi G]

I'd think it was 105.6 billion well spent if it all went on providing health-care. But it's all middle-management, form-filling and bureaucracy. When my Gran was in hospital a year or two ago, my Mum saw they were putting up some metal wall brackets and extendable arms by each bed. She assumed it was for some medical equipment, something useful, but then she found out it was so a TV could be installed for each hospital bed.

I can undestand them installing some beds with TV's for those recovering patients, but then if you're well enough to watch TV, should you be in a hospital bed? Shouldn't they just have a few wards with TV's by the bed so you can have one if you ask for it? Isn't it a huge waste of money, really?

Actually it's quite the opposite - it's a way of making money cos they charge for the use of the tv.

[buglass]

I was in hospital (off and on, but mostly on) for over a year and a half. I had nothing but excellent care from them.

That said, I was in a unit that receives many, many donations from peoples. On the occasions I got my own room I had a TV (which was free) and a fridge. It was almost heaven. Apart from the endless treatment of course

Don't get me wrong. I've seen various other wards of the hospital and wondered why it was so awful. When you have wards set up in Portakabins then something must be up. I just thought I'd point out that some of it is fairly good, cause I'm, like, alive and that.

Of course some people may see that last bit as a reason it's so awful.

[Kaybee Bailey]

Hmm, well. Since September I've had to go to hospital fourteen times for various types of appointment ranging from initial A&E drop in, return clinics, physios, specialist clinics, scans and surgical preliminaries. What I can't understand is the inconsistancy. One day you get in at the time you were told, get top notch care, someone who really explains what's going to happen. The next, you get seen three hours after you were told, get a nurse when you were due to see a specialist and get asked such questions as: 'do you know why you have an appointment today?' when I'd just been told I needed a ten day review.

In the back of my head, there's also the fact that I've got my grandad who's waited nearly six months for a routine operation and only got a date last week. I've been told 8 months to be fit, but that's working on the basis of all appointments coming in the shortest time possible. I'm not holding my breath.

[Captain Tancredi]

Reminds me of the time the optician packed me off to hospital with a minor eye injury. I spoke to the reception desk and explained why I'd come, they said "oh, the eye clinic is down there, first left, second right etc...". I followed the instructions, found some seats and sat down and waited on my own until a passing nurse saw me there and said "oh, there isn't an eye clinic on Thursdays, you'll have to go to the minor injuries unit". After about three hours in the minor injuries unit (I don't recall more than one or two people passing through while I was there), I was finally seen, had my eye stained so they could see the injury and a cotton wool pad stuck over it, told to come back in a few days to the next eye clinic and left to make my own way home. I'd left the house at about 9 and it was 3 by this stage- nobody had asked me if I needed to ring anybody and I didn't have enough cash on me for both a payphone and bus fare, so I ended up having to reverse the charges and walk to my friend John's to beg a lift home.

[Dave Tudor]

The NHS are certainly a disgrace when it comes to the lack of NHS dentists across the country. Should 21st-century Britain really see scenes of hundreds of people queueing up in the vain hope of registering with a dentist which takes NHS patients as soon as one opens? Certainly not, but it happens all too often.

I haven't been to a dentist for about ten years now (shocking, I know) and have never registered with a dentist since moving to Shrewsbury in 1998. I refuse to go private, partly because, like Trudi, I can't really afford to, but mostly on principle - the NHS always used to provide enough dental care for everyone, and they should still do so. Sadly, I can't see the situation changing anytime soon.