Just thought I'd post a little story and heap praise on the often-maligned flagship health service we have here in the UK.
Over the course of last week, my wife noticed an issue that was getting steadily worse and, on Thursday morning, the day after Boxing Day, decided to phone for an appointment to see the GP. By 12:10 the same day, she was seeing that GP. The GP wasn't certain about the correct course of action for the diagnosis and phoned Swindon Great Western Hospital for a second opinion. They said to send her in for a consult. By 14:30, my wife was undergoing a surprisingly lengthy, but thankfully non-emergency surgical procedure. By 16:00, we were back home with a course of antibiotics. Less than four hours in total.
We have private medical insurance and thoroughly expected to have to make use of it once we got to the GP. However, the whole NHS process was flawless from start to finish and everyone involved from the GPs receptionist (English), the GP herself (English, but Caribbean heritage, I know), the two gynae nurses (one English, the other Eastern European) the surgical registrar (Nigerian, at a guess) and the pharmacist (South African) were professional, kind, helpful and efficient.
The NHS gets so much flack - tales of fortnight waits to see a GP and several months for non-emergency procedures - I just thought I'd show a different side to such stories. I was impressed.
The NHS
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People like to say the NHS is failing and have been for as long as I can remember - I suspect from before I was born. However, it still continues, I've never had a bad experience with it (ok, waiting times are quite long sometimes but I've never been a real emergency in the 4 or 5 times I've needed to go myself), and the few times I've had to call an ambulance out it's arrived within 10 minutes, even if it's felt like hours.
You only usually hear the small amount of bad stories. When it works like it's supposed to, which must be 95% of the time at least, where's the story in that?
"The NHS is failing, it needs billions more investment". It's mostly fear tactics by political opponents to get the public on side with them.
You only usually hear the small amount of bad stories. When it works like it's supposed to, which must be 95% of the time at least, where's the story in that?
"The NHS is failing, it needs billions more investment". It's mostly fear tactics by political opponents to get the public on side with them.
Unfortunately Shade the NHS is slowly failing but, and a big BUT at that, it is by no means a fault of the staff, nurses, doctors etc but is to do with the lack of funding etc that you hear politicians going on about.
I can’t give details but I know of one Glos hospital department that was struggling to get purchase orders approved because of funding and therefore were nearly out of stock for what they needed to provide the service they provided. Luckily non emergency.
Another department currently has staff working all hours and still struggles to ensure patients are seen in a timely manner following referral. Again no fault of current staff but lack of funding to have adequate resource in place.
Etc etc.
However back to asl - it is good to see praise and I hope your wife is and will be ok going forward.
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I can’t give details but I know of one Glos hospital department that was struggling to get purchase orders approved because of funding and therefore were nearly out of stock for what they needed to provide the service they provided. Luckily non emergency.
Another department currently has staff working all hours and still struggles to ensure patients are seen in a timely manner following referral. Again no fault of current staff but lack of funding to have adequate resource in place.
Etc etc.
However back to asl - it is good to see praise and I hope your wife is and will be ok going forward.
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This is endemic within the whole of the public sector, people in highly paid jobs who unable to make decisions, waste money without a thought and still work with attitude of us and them.Shade wrote:And I know from people that work at hospitals how a lot of the spending and time wasting at hospitals is down to "managers" who don't do a very good job and waste a lot of money. Two sides to every story.
It all comes from the top. You look at the likes of Chris Grayling, the useless transport secretary. Blaming the staff for the rises in train fares and not the Managers who have caused huge losses.
Many of them would be unemployable in the private sector.
I don’t disagree with that either as have also seen evidence of this.Shade wrote:And I know from people that work at hospitals how a lot of the spending and time wasting at hospitals is down to "managers" who don't do a very good job and waste a lot of money. Two sides to every story.
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