councils around the country are putting up new build developments, tower blocks etc and they receive a levy which should go towards funding local services for the expansion of this population. However, such levies are a) not recurrent one off payments and b) get frittered away on pet projects or lining the finances to reduce deficits. If new builds had to put aside long term NHS (and other e.g police, schools, etc) service funding as part of the development and maintenance costs we would have more sustainable services.
On the other side of the coin, the NHS cannot recruit staff. So itās not that the buildings or equipment arenāt there but they need staff to run the service. Many immigrants come here on visas to staff our NHS. We had a great arrangement where we had a pool of talent nearby in the EU. Now people are coming from other parts of the world. Of course when people come here to work they want to bring their family too.
I think you make a very valid point about nurse shortages in the NHS. This has been a problem for years and the government has failed to address the issues driving it. In fact, the most they have done is suggest we all clap for the nurses. Yup, that will work.
This is from a report by the Royal College of Nursing, Feb '23.
āDespite public support for the nursing profession, governments across the UK are failing
to value and support nursing staff. Nurses and nursing support workers feel undervalued
and unsafe, causing an alarming number of them to leave the profession altogether.
ā¢ Between 2018 and 2022, 32% of leavers (42,756 registrants of the NMC) were aged
between 21 and 50 (NMC, 2022).
ā¢ The RCNās employment survey (2021) revealed that nursing staff aged 18-34 were more
likely to say they were thinking about leaving their job based on their feeling about pay,
with 57% saying this was the case.
ā¢ For nursing staff working at the top of bands 5 and 6 across the UK, real terms salaries
have declined by as much as 20% since 2010. This 20% real terms pay cut is the
equivalent of working a day a week unpaid, when compared to salary levels in 2010
(London Economics, 2022).ā
We should be providing our own indigenous staff and not bringing in people with little English from all over the world, including the EUā¦ This was the whole idea of leaving the EU, but apparently there is no interest of doing any of this by the tories, or any other party that may shuffle into government. And lets face it, there are only two to chose from.
What a pipe dream! If you started today it would be a decade before it came to fruition and you canāt 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 canāt afford to lose them.
It must be an area thing but Iāve 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 donāt 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 āforgottenā 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 couldnāt 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 couldnāt 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 husbandās 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 Pipsqueakās postsā¦
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 itās 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 meā¦
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 wouldnāt get home unless he gained strength by eating something. Iām 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 hadnāt had that last cup of tea before leaving the house.
Iād always been there for him since his wife died but wasnāt 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.
We can always think if only ā¦ I know I did too. However, I have learned to accept that this was my husbandās 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 couldnāt 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. Iāve 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 didnāt expect just how physically demanding the work will be. Itās 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). Itās hardly surprising we have to look elsewhere! Who would want to deal with the constant upheaval?
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 donāt 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.
