| It might just be me .... |
| Friday, 14 August 2009 08:11 | |||
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Now I think there are some great stories about the NHS and I am sure that everyone will have one or two. But how many people who have these stories to share also have stories of not being seen, not being listened to etc etc. It is undeniable how much the NHS has made differences in people's lives but we need to ration healthcare in this country, waiting lists are still much longer than they should be, so whilst there may be much to love there is also much to loathe. In our family we have had experience of being passed form pillar to post, agency to agency with one situation which has now gone on for 2 and a half years, still with no end in sight. We phoned our GP surgery to get an appointment for one of the kids and was told there would be one 2 weeks from the date I phoned. I tried to insist and eventually got a nurse to see it. First person didn't know what it was, went to get another nurse. They didn't know what it was, went to get a doctor. Doctor confirms what we knew it was and said we should have gone to see him earlier .... aaarrrggghhh! We have another very similar story that ended just before our eldest had to be admited to hopsital for an infection poisoning the blood stream. And I know that we are not alone! It always makes me wonder, if the the NHS GP service provides front line care, in order that people can be seen and presumably not jam up the accident and emergency departments then surely they need to have a mechanism in place to get a regular appointment earlier than 2 weeks ... and that was with any doctor by the way, we didn't ask for a specific one! The mechanism at the moment is that you have to plead with the receptionist on the phone, wait for a doctor to call you back who consults over the phone and then decides whether it is serious enough to get an appointment .... come on! On the day we went to the doctors and were told we should have seen a doctor earlier we arrived at the surgery (where we couldn't get an appointment for 2 weeks) and the waiting room was empty. I later discovered many of the doctors do not have appointments on that specific day! The NHS are about to roll out the swine flu vaccine and we read that doctors are now concerned they will not be reimbursed for administering the jab. A spokesperson from the BMA reported in the Health Service Journal said “The seasonal flu jab costs £7.51, but because the swine flu vaccination programme will be on a much larger scale there are also other issues to consider, not least the workload for general practice. We want to ensure GPs are still able to provide a good service to patients ill with conditions other than swine flu and that’s why we are continuing to negotiate with the government on this issue.” With empty waiting rooms, better working conditions for doctors in the NHS I do wonder where the extra workload is. Perhaps we could give out extra appointments for those who need them, reducing the waiting lists, enabling people to be seen before things become really serious and that might stop people goignt o see their doctor with a huge list of symptoms because they dont know when they will next be able to get seen so they might as well list everything that might be wrong with them. Yes we love the NHS, and yes there is much to give thanks for, including the many dedicated staff who pour their life into it. Universal healthcare for all is a must for any country but I don't think we have it quite right yet! Still its only been around for 61 years - its early days!
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I am a fan of Twitter and have been tweeting for some months now. There are many celebrity fans as well - Philip Schofield, Stephen Fry and Number 10. Yes, that's right the government are now even using Twitter. Not too bad generally as you do get to hear a bit of what is going on however the latest one takes the biscuit. The Health Secretary want people to tweet and say why they love the NHS! This is nothing more than a political point scoring exercise. There is no room for saying why you don't love the NHS as you think there might be in a democracy. No instead, we have all to put our wonderful stories about how we love the NHS.
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