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One evening we notice our 6 year old daughters wrist is swollen, movement is quite restricted. call the gp next day wait a few days and gp looks at it, sends us up to local hospital for xray. xray done they say consultant isn't in, we'll call in morning when he reviews the image.
Duly next day we get a call, xray review nothing wrong. Back to GP, he agrees there's clearly something wrong as the wrist is very swollen at this stage but as xray is clear he can refer us to consultant but expect to wait some months.
So given the choice of waiting several months with a wrist that now can't move, we go bupa (queue jump) and see a consultant 90 mins drive away. I request the xrays so that she doesn't have to get blasted again, hospital refuses. She gets blasted again.
We enter room with consultant, he angrily asks why we haven't been to A&E, says there is evidence of trauma. we tell our story, he winds his neck in but says he'll get the original xrays and tells us he'll meet a few days later at childrens hospital back on nhs.
He duly does, and in the meantime figures out she has Juvenile arthritis. He also says he got the original xrays and apologises as the trauma was visible on them too.
At this point the hospital was pretty good, but to me the NHS is a lottery, there are lots of good staff stuck in a mad system that messes up a lot. Even now you can't get through to change appointments on the phone line, we have to go back door via the specialist nurse on email who is great but I feel bad wasting her time.
I can also mention how my mother died at 58 in 2001 after going to gp for a year and being fobbed off before a student doctor figured out it was gist cancer, but bit late, she lasted 9 weeks
How about tony blair being shocked that you couldn't book an appointment more that 48 hours in advance, their promise that no one would wait more than 2 days was met by the genius solution of banning any appointments beyond 2 days, you can't make this stuff up and it must go on all the time in the nhs, perverted solutions to meet artificial targets
A really big simple change would be to charge to see GP's, sure refund it to people on benefits. Carrier bad usage has dropped 95% since a trivial 5p charge was introduced, this is basic human nature in action, give something for free and people abuse it
Oh and 1 time we had to use medical abroad was in berlin in 2001, wife had gum infection, made call, was sent somewhere, seen in an hour, digital xrays (in 2001) and it really put uk to shame, I hear similar stories about family in france, you need a doctor you get to see one in a few days, always.
NHS is a shambolic sacred cow, figure out what France and Germany are doing so well and copy it |
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Author: Pacifico
26-11-2019 02:15:20