National Health Service - the good and the bad

So...the NHS! We've just had some close encounters with the health service and while we've nothing but praise for the people we're less than impressed with the organisation.

My brother and father fell sick at the same time and initially it seemed to be the same cause but turned out to be completely different. Over the course of four days I consulted two pharmacists, the NHS Helpline, the Out-of-Hours GP service, our own GP, called an ambulance out to Dad four times and I drove my brother to hospital for a diagnosis. Every individual was brilliant.

The problems came not with the individuals but with the system. It all started on a Friday, early evening and this is not a good time to be ill. The surgeries are closed for the weekend so you can't access your own GP. The population are heading out on the town and hospitals become inundated with drunks and fight injuries. Add the fact that there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds causing hospitalisation for the elderly and the very young and you have a service that is pushed to breaking point.

In order to get to someone who can actually give you an informed opinion on both the NHS Helpline and the Out-of-Hours GP service you have to go through several layers of staff. An operator who logs the call with the level of urgency and arranges for a nurse to ring you back. The nurse rings back and 'triage's' the call and arranges for a doctor to call back.

There are so many ambulance call-outs that what would normally be considered an emergency is put on the back-burner in favour of life-threatening situations. I agree with the reasoning but reason sort of goes out of the window when you are watching someone in enormous pain and deep distress. The shortest response time was fifteen minutes and the longest was two and a half hours. Each wait felt like an eternity.

On the last call-out my father was taken into hospital, something the ambulancemen had been reluctant to do for several reasons. They were good reasons but eventually we all had to accept the inevitable as it was obviously safer for him to be in hospital than at home.

Once in hospital they moved relatively quickly with tests but once he was out of isolation and into a main ward the organisation broke down.

It was hard to get information. We were told only X, Y or Z person could discuss his case. X,Y or Z weren't around during visiting times so we were told to phone in. When we phoned in we were told they weren't allowed to discuss cases on the phone!

Notes got lost between the admissions ward and where he ended up so his homecoming was delayed, not only bad for him but they were desperate for beds. Some wards were closed due to illness, no-one allowed in or out, so patients were spread between other wards. Dad was the fifth bed in a four-bed ward, pushed up against the back wall. There is very little time for the staff to attend to a patient's personal needs.

The usual options of a convalescent place in a local care home or a team or carers on the NHS coming to the house instead simply wasn't possible. No beds available, not enough carers to go round. In order for him to come home we wanted to set up a 'lifeline' system whereby he could press a button on a wrist band if he couldn't get us to hear him for any reason. Also, we needed to arrange for personal care-workers to come in daily and we could have moved on all this a lot sooner had we been able to speak to someone properly.

We managed to get him home on Friday on the basis we were making arrangements for home care. We've arranged for a carer to come from a private firm each morning to help him get up - they are also pushed because the NHS is already using them for overflow work! A 'lifeline' is being installed tomorrow so in the meantime the family are working in shifts to ensure he is never alone and my brother is sleeping on a mattress in his room at night.

We're lucky, between us we're able to afford a private carer for an hour each day, at least in the short term. So many people can't and would have to wait until a place became available on the NHS. In fact, we received a letter today from a friend apologising for not sending a Christmas card. He'd had knee replacement surgery but had to wait in hospital for eight weeks because of a shortage of Support staff - he had no family to help. No wonder hospital beds are few and far between.

We'e a lot to be thankful for with the NHS, I'm not trying to say we don't, but it's a long way from perfect and going downhill all the time. The public don't help either, perhaps the drunks and fighters should have to pay for treatment - they might have to curtail their excesses to the benefit of all! We all pay into the NHS and few can afford private health insurance, those who get insurance as part of their job are very lucky.

I've posted some of my views on the NHS before in this blog and I shall no doubt do so again in the future, as well as posting my comments on the government website. I shall continue to do so but it's very frustrating. It seems that every time there's cause for hope, within a few months something happens to make it worse or show we've been taken for a ride again.

To finish on a positive note, Dad's GP called while I was typing this post. We hadn't asked for a visit, he just wanted to check on Dad himself having received the discharge notice from the hospital. As I said, the individuals in the health service are wonderful.