Disgusted at the NHS

Mojisola

Some people do have horrible experiences in NHS hospitals - as described by posters on here - but don't condemn the whole of the NHS because of those experiences.

Our local hospitals are very good.

Katie-Kat-Kins

patchwork_cat wrote: »

Nurses are not semi- skilled. In the past nurses did have a caring role and were a lot less skilled than today, but as I say increasingly nurses are being treated as clinicians. However I do agree in a way that nurses and teachers are not the only low paid graduates. I would argue that a lot of graduates in the public sector are low paid.

When I see the pay young people on the debt free wanabee board for example receive, it makes me cross. The public sector is low paid. A comparable job in the private sector receives a lot more. However it does depend on your degree I am sure there are a lot of 'Mickey mouse' degrees in the private sector that don't earn very much, but when you can get a degree in circus skills!!!

Must be honest though my experience of Health visitors certainly didn't warrant pay in the £30K range, (they are band and up)! Although I would argue nurses are not usually paid £30K upwards without a speciality or promotion, perhaps nurses could comment - band 5 is not £30K up.

I have commented above though that IMO one of the problems with the NHS is that there is no one to take on the caring perhaps more menial role that was the nurses domain. Tandraig I agree and also agree from what I see about management and too many chiefs!

However I also have concerns over shift patterns, one of my best friends is a nurse and she will be given a late and then an early - how is she supposed to have a family life with shifts like that? Also suddenly a week of nights will be put in .

Whilst I agree that nursing is a skilled role and should be paid accordingly, I disagree entirely that pay in the public sector does not match private sector earnings.

I used to work with a solicitors who had retrained as an adult having previously worked as a nurse and a midwife. After doing a law degree, a post graduate diploma and two years on the job training she was still being paid less than she could have earned in a straightforward hospital nursing job and about 60% of what she would have been earning as a midwife.

She stuck it out for a couple of years in the hope that her pay would improve with experience but eventually went back to nursing as the pay was better! :eek:

Caroline73_2

fly_dragon_fly wrote: »

if you can afford it i would defo do private.

Depends on what you are having done...routine procedures are fine but if you suffer post operative complications overnight, there is often only one junior doctor on call. I know of junior house officers who work as the RMO at private hospitals overnight.

You pay for consultant level care during the original op, but overnight your consultant will probably be asleep at home miles away. In an NHS hospital you will have an anaesthetist, theatre team and at least a registrar level surgeon on site.

MrsE_2

KittyKate wrote: »

I live in a normal home which at any one time probably needs a bit of dusting and the floor mopping. I certainly don't have OCD but I expect better of a hospital - the waiting room had magazines from 2001 which were filthy (throw them away!!), a fire door which had to be locked with a key as it 'kept going off and it's annoying', a TV which was actually sparking ('the cables a bit broken dont touch it') and a mouse trap on the (filthy) floor. The loo had a broken door and was used as a storage place for vomit pans, and there was no segragation so women would be stripping naked for breast surgery marking separated only by a thin knee length curtain by a man stripping for bladder surgery (for example).

My mum needs the surgery but had it been non essential I'd have taken her home. As a former nurse she knows better than most about how hard it is, but as a former nurse of Pinderfields she can also tell me that it used to be clean, well run and with on the whole, staff who aren't jaded and who understand that a patient has a right to dignity and hygiene. Blood soaked bandages and gowns are not hygenic surely.

But even if the place is crumbling & old, you would expect the medical staff to still offer a standard of care & the cleaners to clean:(:confused:

patchwork_cat

KatP wrote: »

Whilst I agree that nursing is a skilled role and should be paid accordingly, I disagree entirely that pay in the public sector does not match private sector earnings.

I used to work with a solicitors who had retrained as an adult having previously worked as a nurse and a midwife. After doing a law degree, a post graduate diploma and two years on the job training she was still being paid less than she could have earned in a straightforward hospital nursing job and about 60% of what she would have been earning as a midwife.

She stuck it out for a couple of years in the hope that her pay would improve with experience but eventually went back to nursing as the pay was better! :eek:

Would some one with 2 years post grad be a qualified solicitor? The thing is that a solicitor with 10 - 15 years experience and a large client base can expect to earn a LOT of money. Upwards of £100K for a partner is quite usual I believe. In nursing and midwifery once you reach the top of the grade where is there to go?

babymoo

Don't get me started on the NHS. May 2008 I went in for what was supposed to be a routine operation to have my ovaries removed, as I was only 21 my mum came with me for moral support and my consultant who I have a good relationship had OK'd this with the ward before my arrival.

I rang the ward at 6am to ensure a bed would be available and to make sure mum could come with me and all was ok. We got to the ward at 7am for my mum to be told she would have to leave as it may upset other patients on the ward, when I got into my bed I was in a room with 3 other beds and all empty. I then complained and said they were doing nothing further to me until mum was back with me I was terrified and heartbroken at what I was facing, I needed her! The ward clerk was snotty and very rude but eventually listened to me as I got quite hysterical.

Everything seemed OK then until I woke up on a different ward, in a lot of pain with tubes everywhere, with my parents crying and looking at me. Turns out while they were in there they had found that I had a twisted bowel and had to do an emergency resection. a few days later I was told I was healing well and could go home the day after providing everything looked as good as it did. Next morning I got up and went to bathroom quite happy at the thought of going home to find that I was bleeding very heavily from back passage, I told the nurse about 10 mins before they swapped shifts and she assured me she would leave a note for my consultant as I was obviously worried. My consultant came round and discharged me a few hours later and hadn't been told that I was bleeding heavily. I mentioned this to him and he was disgusted that the nurse had not paged him straight away. I lost 7 pints of blood in less than 24 hours and no one new how or why, I was given 4 units of blood and the bleeding seemed to stop after 3 days so I was told I could go home 4 days after the blood transfusion depsite me saying I didn't feel well enough.

Less than 48 hours later my mum checked on me in my bed and I was bright yellow, I got rushed straight back to hospital where I was found to have a blood count of 2.5, my stomach had shut down, I couldn't hold my own head up. I was re-admitted back to the same ward as there were no beds on Intensive Care they had to get another nurse on to give me one to one care. It took them nearly 24 hours to realise that they hadn't read my notes properly when giving me the blood transfusions, I have a very rare anti-body and they had given me blood without it. They acknowleged that they were in the wrong straight away and when I got home I called the PALS service but that is 12 months ago and I am still waiting for answers on how this could have possibly happened. To this day I am still having problems with my liver and gall bladder following this incident aswell.

bumpoowee

loftus wrote: »

I have to say that I have read a lot of rubbish on these boards over the years but this has to be right up there.

My ex is a nurse working on a cancer ward. I have no reason to have any particularly good feeling towards her but I would never deny the importance of her job, the skills she needs to do it properly or the continuing training and education she has to undergo to keep up with the constant changes and advancement in medicine.

I'm afraid it isn't rubbish, the fact is the reason you have nurses is because the skilled work is done by the doctors, and nurses are employed because they are cheaper and can complete the more mundane tasks more cost effectively. If nurses were paid £100k like people like you seem to suggest then they wouldn't exist as they would just be replaced by doctors who would do a better job. Every time I have been into hospital recently it always comes down to the nurses calling a doctor to do the technical part, and themselves just doing the mundane tasks around it.

That's not to say it isn't an important job, and does require some skills, but so do many semi-professional jobs. Personally I place more value on biologist researching the cure for cancer than the front line staff holding the patients hand, because quite simply the biologist is a very skilled worker, whereas nurses in general sit in that category along with teachers of lower end college/univesity students who see it as a job where there is a demand, decent pay and something they will be able to do, rather than take a risk in more skilled sectors where they may not cut it. I know many people in both professions and they all fit this classification.

Cue more abuse but that's the reality of it.

loftus

I haven't abused you so no need to be touchy.

The definition of a skilled worker is someone who needs specific qualifications to do their job. I think nurses - and teachers - fall into that category. I'm not saying that there aren't more skilled workers or more highly qualified workers than nurses but to dismiss them as semi-skilled is, in my opinion, wrong.

You also ignore the degree of specialisation the role can entail. You can't generalise about such a wide field of employment.

funguy

I read this case with great sadness....however, im sure it happens in lots of hospitals every day. The government have squeezed NHS services so much that they cannot cope with the volume of patients and cases it has to deal with. There is so much red tape and paperwork that the number of managers and auditors etc have muliplied and soaked up much of the money that was put into the NHS. Also more and more doctors are getting fed-up with not being able to do actual medicine instead of filling in paperwork, that they are leaving this country in droves. The Government's response to this is to get nurses to take on more and more clinical roles (as mentioned above)....this has resulted in other people such as Auxillaries and assistants to do some of the old "caring roles" that nurses used to do.

The people that do the clinical and admin work in the NHS are excellent and usually want the best for their patients. Unfortunately, numbers of staff and facilities have not kept up pace with demand!

The only way forward is to force the government to stop all this red tape, multiple auditing, management consultants, silly targets and sack the hoardes of managers they have taken on in the last 5-10years! Lets make the NHS a slimline clinically led service again where the doctors and nurses get to make the decisions and not a manager in an office miles away!

cheapscate

loftus wrote: »

The OP, and others on this thread have had terrible experiences but the vast majority of people receive excellent care from the NHS and the people who work for it.

is this really true? everyone I know is either related to someone who has had a bad experience of NHS service or has suffered themselves.
I also worked for a charity dealing with Carers and the tales they told of the NHS were enough to turn your hair white :eek: