Author Topic: The NHS and my hiking experiences  (Read 4229 times)

harland

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #15 on: 12:59:38, 26/06/18 »
As for the nurses standing round talking to each other...well blow me down with a feather! Quite often they don't have a dinner hour, like the nurse who looked after me. She was on for 12 hours, no set dinner time and grabbed a cuppa and eat her sandwiches, in the sort of control room where she monitored me and others throughout the night.
I guess that I hit a raw nerve, not intended but when you see nurses standing around for 20/30 minutes and not dealing with issues then you are likely to have a jaundiced view although accepting that NHS is a valuable service.  12 hour shifts are, in my knowledge, preferred especially at night.  No set dinner time as you say "well blow me down with a feather".  I am happy to fund the NHS but it is not an open cheque book it can always find good ways to spend more money.

April

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #16 on: 19:57:41, 26/06/18 »
I have tried not responding to this but after working all my working life in the NHS retiring as a prof and senior bod in the service,  after nearly 40 years it is hard not to.
 

I had no idea you were a prof  :o Thank you mananddog, where would we be without people like you.

You are right, people are very quick to complain but not as quick showing gratitude. We are very lucky to have the NHS, yes it does have problems but I think this is lack of adequate funding IMO.

I am pleased the government has now relaxed restrictions on overseas doctors and nurses working here, we need people from other countries to fill the posts we are struggling to fill.
Hate will never win

mananddog

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #17 on: 07:59:51, 27/06/18 »

I had no idea you were a prof  :o 



Tips to become a prof -
choose an unpopular area, learn more and more about less and less, convince people to give you research money and hang around long enough. :D

happyhiker

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #18 on: 21:22:30, 27/06/18 »
Two experiences.


1) My aged mother who had dementia was admitted with a broken ankle. The ankle treatment was ok but general care, such as making sure she drank adequately was crap. I made an official complaint and got the usual stuff about "learning lessons" (how long have they been at it?).


2) I needed a heart bypass. The full story is on the blog section of my website but without going into details here, the treatment I had was absolutely fantastic. The situation seems to be, if you are at death's door, you will get great treatment. Anything else, watch out!

tenmilesplus

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #19 on: 23:49:16, 27/06/18 »
At the risk of turning this thread into a NHS experience thread and ignoring the hiking part..

  My view is that the Government actively encourage the population to 'fight' amongst itself and the NHS is the biggest topic 'hand grenade' the Establishment have.. This way the establishment can 'guide' your opinion to be the same as theirs and turn their opinion into your opinion you think you are clever and thus the individual feels they are involved... What the individual should do of course is find out the facts for themselves and NOT listen to what a politician or Media tells you, they just tell you what they want you to know..


There is definitely a North South divide.. Why is it the population of the South won't say hello when out in the Countryside or have half the manners that the folk in the North have but feel as if they can comment on things they think they know about but in reality they know nothing.. I get it every day in my job, ( in Hampshire ) I get called in to fix a dishwasher and instead of just telling me the fault I get told how to fix it, this attitude has been far more widespread since the Devil that is the internet.. Why am I there then ?? Therefore more and more people must think they know what a Nurse or an employee of the NHS does for a job and feel the need to comment as if what they know is FACT and that 'everyone is at it'.. The only Fact is that unless you have done the job you DON'T know and can't comment.. I would prefer people to use their brains more and mouth less, be pleasant, be considerate, treat others as you would want to be treated and NO one is interest in being force fed pointless opinion..

 As far as the NHS goes, if we were all more pleasant, thankful and kind to each other, the folk that have the difficult jobs in the NHS might actually get less stressed.. The NHS isn't failing because the people that work there are making it fail, it's failing because the Government are deliberately underfunding and making it fail so they get the support of the population to privatise it.. We shouldn't let this happen because then the NHS will turn into a Corporate Tax dodge just like the UK Utilities and rail system.. There's a whole other discussion for another time... SUPPORT THE NHS... SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS..
Gone for a walk, back in a bit..

April

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #20 on: 08:52:43, 28/06/18 »
There is definitely a North South divide.. Why is it the population of the South won't say hello when out in the Countryside or have half the manners that the folk in the North have

There are some southerners who are ok  ;)

As far as the NHS goes, if we were all more pleasant, thankful and kind to each other, the folk that have the difficult jobs in the NHS might actually get less stressed.. The NHS isn't failing because the people that work there are making it fail, it's failing because the Government are deliberately underfunding and making it fail so they get the support of the population to privatise it.. We shouldn't let this happen because then the NHS will turn into a Corporate Tax dodge just like the UK Utilities and rail system.. There's a whole other discussion for another time... SUPPORT THE NHS... SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS.. SUPPORT THE NHS..

I might not agree with your generalisation about people from the south but I wholeheartedly agree with your views on the NHS  :)

Hate will never win

harland

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #21 on: 09:36:04, 28/06/18 »
What the individual should do of course is find out the facts for themselves.

The NHS is failing because the Government are deliberately underfunding and making it fail so they get the support of the population to privatise it.

I would prefer people to use their brains more and mouth less, no one is interested in being force fed pointless opinion.
Totally agree with the first and last paragraph but isn't that at variance to the 2nd paragraph. :-\

pauldawes

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #22 on: 13:58:03, 28/06/18 »
Totally agree with the first and last paragraph but isn't that at variance to the 2nd paragraph. :-\


I must admit that I find it bizarre that any comment that suggests NHS is less than perfect, however worded, is taken as inherently rude, or suggestive of a deep desire to privatise it all.


I’d have thought some of the scandals over the years suggest that overall checks and balances leave something to be desired...and that pretending all is perfect will not lead to improvements.

tonyk

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #23 on: 22:49:01, 28/06/18 »
Deleted this post as I don't feel this forum is the right place for discussing the NHS.
« Last Edit: 09:13:50, 29/06/18 by tonyk »

tyreon

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #24 on: 19:00:19, 14/07/18 »

late in the day,I know...is this ghunwharfeman who,later, woz asking for advice as to what next to do when unable to walk...and he's just dun the GR10!! I might be mixed up,and advanced apologies for being too lazy to verify if it woz one nd the same. Man,yer 'aving a larf! You've just done that walk...you've got plenty of miles in those legs yet(if it was you) Yer doing well+++ Keep on keeping on,no worries. Just watch the mileage or terrain,yer doing fine.
Best wishes and good health

tyreon

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #25 on: 19:03:00, 14/07/18 »

just checked. It was you!!


D'ya wanna swop knees!

rambling oldie

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #26 on: 14:46:25, 15/07/18 »
I’ve mentioned this before, and my probs are a lot less than some, but it’s because of an NHS podiatrist diagnosis and provision of inserts to deal with my claw toes and an NHS leg clinic diagnosis and provision of compression tights for my slight vascular difficulties that I’m still able to enjoy leading a bunch of around 20  lovely people for 6 miles around the Hampshire countryside once a month who then join me in a pub for lunch.  
Also still able to whirl Mrs Rambling Oldie round the dance floor in a stylish foxtrot!     O0
The NHS is full of dedicated bloody clever people who just get held back by admin and funding.  


Doddy

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #27 on: 11:58:24, 18/07/18 »

Best to count our blessings. On a trail in the US I fell in with a guy who
after a snake bite [/color]  
was returning to the trail after a spell in the emergency room and hospital, then several days in a Motel resting. Total cost about
$3000 and he was telling me about the overall effect on his life paying for treatment.[/color]  


I did have a bad experience waiting for three hours for an ambulance to take my mother home who was in wheelchair. I was in East Yorkshire and the ambulance service was in South Yorkshire about 90 miles away. Talking to them about the delay unsurprisingly it was evident that the drivers and call staff had no local knowledge for our area and relying on technology to arrange transport. Some local knowledge would have allowed people needing transporting in the same direction could then have been taken together. We were not the only ones waiting.

Jim Parkin

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #28 on: 22:42:38, 24/07/18 »
I have tried not responding to this but after working all my working life in the NHS retiring as a prof and senior bod in the service,  after nearly 40 years it is hard not to.


I have heard all that time how bad we are, what a lousy job we do, how it should all be privatised, etc etc. Patients in the latter years of my practice would come in and say how surprised they were that the staff were so pleasant how they saw me quickly and were pleasantly surprised at the speed and standard of care. They had taken in all the negative press. The fact that we have a staffing problem is understandable given this constant undermining. If you say what you do there is always someone who will stop you in the pub to tell you their bad experiences of the NHS, never their good, and by implication blame you. I am free of most of that now.


Let us consider the public responsibility to the NHS. The real threat to the NHS for all of us is the health behaviours of the UK population leading to obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, increased cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and more all of these are avoidable if people took responsibility for their own health but there it little evidence that the UK population is willing to do this- they keep getting fatter and more sedentary. But even there the NHS gets the blame for the public failing to take responsibility for themselves.  Chronic conditions (my area) are, by their nature not curable, they are persistent and require a combined approach to care for the patient and the clinician to maximise benefits. I don't think clinicians are very good at managing this because they have been taught to see lack of a cure a failure and are not geared towards helping people cope, and many of the general public want nothing short of a cure without the responsibility of doing things for themselves.


The NHS is not perfect we all know that, there will always be examples of bad behaviour in a huge organisation and the NHS is the biggest organisation in Europe. If many people in industry do not do their job to 100% the consequences are negligible in healthcare they can be fatal. We spend less on health care than comparable nations, have fewer staff, especially specialist staff as the report published today  highlights. We have a recruitment problem exacerbated by underinvestment in training and a cap on allowing overseas workers.


The NHS is by international standards and comparisons the most efficient health service for health outcomes. Efficient means the best outcomes to the amount of funding and there is the rub. If we spend the average others spend, invest better in the staff, we might start doing better.


Sorry for the rant.
Well said

Elsewhere I am on a forum with a lot of Americans.  When we discuss healthcare - I point out that the US spends slightly a higher proportion of its GDP on publicly-funded healthcare than the UK.  And that is not available to many, so they need to spend more on private care as well.  And on average, it's nearly the same amount again. 

I can see why those in the US who are prevented from accessing public healthcare would resent their taxes being spent on it, in a way that I don't due to having access to the NHS. 

Ronin83

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Re: The NHS and my hiking experiences
« Reply #29 on: 09:11:28, 25/07/18 »

I must admit that I find it bizarre that any comment that suggests NHS is less than perfect, however worded, is taken as inherently rude, or suggestive of a deep desire to privatise it all.


I’d have thought some of the scandals over the years suggest that overall checks and balances leave something to be desired...and that pretending all is perfect will not lead to improvements.


Exactly.
I've sat there for almost an hour waiting for a description of an x-ray which was sitting right in front of us, whilst a doctor spoke to his friend on the phone about cricket.
A really nice guy I'm sure, but does he know or care about the state of the NHS? Maybe hes already overworked and grabbing an unofficial break, I dont know.
Also the NHS' procurement is awful. Probably where most of the funds are getting lost. Money goes to greedy suppliers. Welcome to capitalism.
Totally against privatisation btw.

 

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