What a pipe dream! If you started today it would be a decade before it came to fruition and you can’t even get truck drivers now so what hope for training skilled staff?
No, you will continue to do what every OECD country does, steal qualified staff from poorer nations that can’t afford to lose them.
It must be an area thing but I’ve found the NHS good. I had some rather rough months over the last year. I know there will be little interest in why but it amounted to around 18 visits for 3 totally separate things that occurred at the same time. The appointments were for seeing consultants, having scans of various kinds and a number of day surgery operations. All of them were carried out in what I would say was in a timely fashion.
Just a good report just to balance up the bad ones a bit. We mostly only ever hear/read of the shortfalls of the service. There is little praise heard for the times when the NHS works well. I think that is the nature of the media. The UK media in particular is good at talking the country down. Such is life.
Another instance of good service. My brother fell and broke his hip in February. It was on a Saturday evening. True that the ambulance took a while to arrive and take him to A&E but by the time I got to know about it and go to the hospital early on Sunday morning, he was already in a bed. I was only there a short while and three very English nurses came to take him onto a ward. He was kept there for a few weeks, not well enough to be at home after the hip operation but bed-blocking nonetheless. He was eventually taken to a private care home and was funded for this by the NHS.
He sadly died some weeks later due to old age and other complications. The staff never gave up on him until the situation became obvious. I think relatives can always find ways for improvement in care but generally, the care he received during his final weeks in the hospital and in the care home were pretty good. Why don’t we hear of more cases like this where the NHS does live up to expectations?
I had a similar experience with my husband last year @mart. He suffered from dementia and became unable to walk he had ‘forgotten’ how to put one foot in front of the other. I managed to help him but he kept falling over, although I was able to get him up again even though he was a dead weight. Unfortunately, he fell in the middle of the night and I just couldn’t get him up because he was flailing his arms around and resisting my help. I rang for an ambulance and was told there was a two hour delay, however it arrived within 20 minutes. The ambulance people had great difficulty with him but eventually got him onto a trolley using boards to put underneath him. He was taken to hospital and remained there for 6 weeks because we/they couldn’t find a nursing home with the skills that were needed to look after him. He died last August in hospital due to the dementia preventing him from eating and his insistence on pulling out the drips that they tried to give him. They rang me in the early hours to inform me that he was coming to the end of his life but sadly he had died by the time my sons and I reached the hospital.
Throughout the whole experience both he and I were treated with the utmost care and respect by the nursing staff. I was consulted by telephone whenever he had been seen by the consultant, even though I visited him daily, in fact on a couple of occasions the consultant made the telephone call.
A couple of days following his death I received a call from the hospital welfare department enquiring if I was alright and if I had any complaints about my husband’s care - I had none, only praise for what they had done for him.
So, not all hospital stories are negative ones.
I agree with Mart and Pipsqueak’s posts…
After an MRI scan a couple of years ago that was instigated just days after first noticing that there was something wrong, it was found that my heart was on it’s last legs (38% efficient) and an ICD (Implanted Coronary Device) was fitted within weeks of the diagnosis. Several visits to the hospital while receiving tests and treatment from very efficient specialists and nurses, mostly English, were second to none, as are the follow up appointments. Since 2004 when I suffered my first heart attack, I have received nothing but excellent prompt service from a dedicated and efficient team. Even the food was good during my stays at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and The Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. Absolutely nothing but praise from me…
This is why my brother died. Nothing would persuade him to eat and so he just faded away. This is apparently quite common in dementia cases. Awful to watch it. He kept saying he wanted to go home but with the dementia, he really needed full time care. His wife died many years ago.
If only he would have eaten. I kept telling him he wouldn’t get home unless he gained strength by eating something. I’m sure he would have got another year or so at least if he had. I went to see him at 10 a.m on a Sunday morning but he had died about 20 minutes earlier. If only I hadn’t had that last cup of tea before leaving the house. 
I’d always been there for him since his wife died but wasn’t there right at the end when I should have been, We went everywhere on our bikes together, Three times a week weather permitting. We were a big part of each others lives in later years.
Anyway, I digress. Thanks NHS for looking after him so well.
Very sorry to both of you for your loss of loved ones. Dementia is such a cruel condition.
We can always think if only … I know I did too. However, I have learned to accept that this was my husband’s time and I hope that you can think that way too in time about your brother mart. What we do know for sure is that both my husband and your brother had the best of care and be grateful for that.
I miss my husband terribly but I know in my heart of hearts that he couldn’t have gone on much longer in the way that he was and that he died peacefully in his sleep.
Take care mart.
The work is difficult and stressful. I’ve met a few ex nurses who are doing completely different jobs now and say it was just too mentally and physically exhausting to carry on. The main complaint being rude patients. But also that they didn’t expect just how physically demanding the work will be. It’s the lifting and moving but also standing on your feet all day. People can be very abusive when they are sick. Seeing the way the government treats these dedicated workers would put anyone off an NHS nursing career. Now they have it in for junior doctors and consultants too. Nursing bursary was removed for years then reinstated very hush hush. The consultant pension nonsense, constant changes to all the contracts (GP contract is changing again by the way). It’s hardly surprising we have to look elsewhere! Who would want to deal with the constant upheaval?
OMG what sort of person is rude to a nurse!
Lots of people .
I once saw a women ( sad to say english ) complaining loudly in a waiting room in a Spanish hospital )and generally being rude . She was a diabetic in a wheel chair and the wait for her appointment perhaps made her insulin levels drop or something .
I felt totally embarrassed because she was British .and the waiting room was full of patients waiting patiently .
so I bought her a sandwich and a drink which calmed her down .
In the rougher areas of Britain staff do get abused by patients or their relatives which is one reason why hospitals have security men .
Having said that I expect there are some nurses who have found themselves in the wrong job and are not always ministering angels either .
Drug addicts, drunks, people with mental health issues, those with dementia, people with difficult personalities who don’t want to be in hospital, family members etc. Drunks are probably the worst to deal with because they can be violent, abusive and also lose control of their bodily functions.
Why are drunks in hospital in the first place ?
I was talking to someone about this only today. How mood and blood sugar are linked. I meant to look at some research to see if my theory is correct. Patients often have to wait hours in hospitals with poor facilities, where you can’t even buy a relative food or drink, or there may be no more cups or teabags left etc. This is likely to make them grumpy. I’ve noticed recently they bring around free sandwiches and drinks. perhaps it’s more to keep the staff happy as well as the patients by improving patient mood.
because they have collapsed in a puddle of wee in the street and are unconscious. Edited to add that ambulance staff and the public may not realise they are drunk. They just see a body on the pavement. They are at risk of choking on vomit or coronary arrest etc.
+oh dear never mind too bad I see they have erupted into mayhem over there again!!
anyone is entitled to enter a hospital for attention and treatment - doesn’t matter what state you are in - even being rather muddy wont bar you??
Yes, and see what happens when you do Strath…
We seem to have also forgot that the shortage of NHS staff in the UK is partly down to the fact than many went to work in private care or agencies after they refused to have the covid vaccinations. Same with airport staff and pilots too.
It is not anything about vaccinations that’s driving record numbers leaving the NHS
They might be leaving from stress and being overworked now because of the knock on effect from so many staff leaving because they refused to have the vaccinations. The NHS quickly backtracked on their mandate of vaccinating all staff when they saw the damage and the loss of important staff it was causing, but it was too late…You won’t hear this in the MSM will you…
with an aging popn ; range of varied cultural norms in society ; and soemtimes poor living conditions and weather conditions - the NHS should be paid extremely high salaries to provide complex and constant care - the fact that they are not says it all - they have had enough and are leaving!!
