The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

silvercar

GDB2222 wrote: »

To stay unpolitical, can I just remark about yesterday’s wonderfully parochial headline in the Times. It was about the volcano eruption in which 13 people of various nationalities are believed to have died rather horribly. The Times front page reported 'Two British Tourists Injured in Volcano Eruption'.

Luckily the first I heard about this was waking up to find a text from DS1 to tell me that if the volcano reaches international news he is safe and at least 50 miles away.

Doozergirl

We've been let down by the NHS a few times in the last couple of years.

If we hadn't have had the professional physios from a premiership rugby club insisting on an MRI that the NHS refused, our son would be carrying an injury for life. We had to pay for the MRI privately because the first GP disagreed with the assessment. Once we were back in the system, the NHS were great and he was in theatre within days, but the conversation with the GP around the reason for that refused MRI did involve money.

Another occasion, DD was called back to A&E at midnight after having been discharged earlier in the day. I won't even go into the length of the initial farce that occurred while we there, as there's not enough time in the day, but the doctor suggesting that she'd fallen off a ladder when she was dressed in rugby kit and covered in mud wasn't the best start and it didn't get better.

I was woken in the night to a new doctor asking us to call 999 and have her brought in on a spinal board for a CT scan. I totally appreciate the concern shown at that point, but it would have been nice, and saved £400 on an emergency ambulance (that's what a simple call out costs!) and our/her tears and worry if she had a competent doctor to start with.

All four A&E consultants had previously resigned at the same time. It's not the best advert for subsequent recruitment.

A man died on the back of an ambulance last week of our county local hospital last week, after having waited for an hour outside A&E.

It's not on. My own previous experiences of the NHS so far, into my middle age, have been great. It's the last couple of years that the cracks are really showing and staff have done well to hold it together this long, frankly.

GDB2222

Girls didn’t play rugby when I were a lad. And they wouldn’t wear their best clothes for climbing a ladder. So, the doctor’s incorrect assumption is probably one that I would have made too!

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

To stay unpolitical, can I just remark about yesterday’s wonderfully parochial headline in the Times. It was about the volcano eruption in which 13 people of various nationalities are believed to have died rather horribly. The Times front page reported 'Two British Tourists Injured in Volcano Eruption'.

To be fair, we are a tiny island, the world is huge. While it's a major event we're only really "interested" in whether any Brits were present.

We can catch up with the whole story if our interest is of the wider world.... or if we're just interested in volcanoes blowing.

michaels

Doozergirl wrote: »

We've been let down by the NHS a few times in the last couple of years.

If we hadn't have had the professional physios from a premiership rugby club insisting on an MRI that the NHS refused, our son would be carrying an injury for life. We had to pay for the MRI privately because the first GP disagreed with the assessment. Once we were back in the system, the NHS were great and he was in theatre within days, but the conversation with the GP around the reason for that refused MRI did involve money.

Another occasion, DD was called back to A&E at midnight after having been discharged earlier in the day. I won't even go into the length of the initial farce that occurred while we there, as there's not enough time in the day, but the doctor suggesting that she'd fallen off a ladder when she was dressed in rugby kit and covered in mud wasn't the best start and it didn't get better.

I was woken in the night to a new doctor asking us to call 999 and have her brought in on a spinal board for a CT scan. I totally appreciate the concern shown at that point, but it would have been nice, and saved £400 on an emergency ambulance (that's what a simple call out costs!) and our/her tears and worry if she had a competent doctor to start with.

All four A&E consultants had previously resigned at the same time. It's not the best advert for subsequent recruitment.

A man died on the back of an ambulance last week of our county local hospital last week, after having waited for an hour outside A&E.

It's not on. My own previous experiences of the NHS so far, into my middle age, have been great. It's the last couple of years that the cracks are really showing and staff have done well to hold it together this long, frankly.

A lot of experienced doctors decide to retire early because the amount of taxes they have to pay, especially on their pensions, means that they decide it is not worth carrying on. All the Labour plans to spend more will result specifically in higher taxes on people like this - hardly likely to increase the number of doctors at least in the short term - I am the first to admit that I don't know what the answer is.

SingleSue

My recent brush with the NHS was good and bad to be honest.

The good - The ambulance arrived in less than 5 minutes

The bad - One of the paramedics made an instant ( and completely wrong) assumption/judgement that I was having an anxiety attack before taking any history or doing any kind of check/readings...it was quite literally the first thing he said as he walked into the house. He then pushed this narrative even on his handover at the hospital which had an impact on my treatment (well until a nurse did my obs and found my O2 sats was dangerously low, something which completely contradicts a diagnosis of an anxiety attack).

The good - Once it was discovered that I wasn't hyperventilating and in fact couldn't actually breath that well which we later found out was due to having what is known as a silent asthma attack or episode plus pneumonia, x rays, blood tests, nebs, steroids, antibiotics etc were all administered very quickly.

Also good - The other paramedic didn't agree with her colleague and was supportive but unfortunately as she was the junior, she couldn't sway his opinion nor do the handover. She kept me calm, gave me some brilliant advice and even came back to the hospital at the end of her shift to check up on me and make sure I was on the road to recovery (plus I think she wanted to do the old "Told you so" to her colleague).

The bad - Due to the first paramedic's judgement, instead of being taken straight through to resus (where I should have gone), I was taken to the corridor (albeit on a bed) with no sense of urgency whilst he waited his turn at the computer for handover. I couldn't speak (shout,scream etc), could barely breath, kept passing out due to lack of oxygen and was petrified.

The hospital staff were great, it was hellishly busy in the department that night with ambulances queuing up and a full waiting room but once the seriousness of my predicament was discovered, everything moved very swiftly. Even before then, everyone was treated with respect even if they did have to be on a bed in the corridor, checks were done (blooming good thing otherwise I could quite possibly not be here today if they hadn't been) and no-one was abandoned.

Doozergirl

michaels wrote: »

A lot of experienced doctors decide to retire early because the amount of taxes they have to pay, especially on their pensions, means that they decide it is not worth carrying on. All the Labour plans to spend more will result specifically in higher taxes on people like this - hardly likely to increase the number of doctors at least in the short term - I am the first to admit that I don't know what the answer is.

It wasn't a pension issue in this case. All of them were offered jobs elsewhere.

Doozergirl

GDB2222 wrote: »

Girls didn’t play rugby when I were a lad. And they wouldn’t wear their best clothes for climbing a ladder. So, the doctor’s incorrect assumption is probably one that I would have made too!

I can appreciate that, but assumptions of any kind aren't great when you've already been handed the triage sheet with the patients details on . How he got from calling her name off the sheet to having one with someone else's details on by the time we got to cubicles is beyond me!

GDB2222

We are having heated arguments about politics in our house. We seem to agree about nothing, except we all think lowly of our MP. (Whatever the opposite is of thinking highly of him.)

He is just like Gilbert and Sullivan wrote:-

I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me ....

SingleSue

I still don't know which way to jump....youngest had even less time to make his mind up as he had to post his postal vote off last week and he struggled too despite being a member of one of the main parties, James appears to be going against his normal party but that may change when he reaches the booth and Josh who has no normal political affiliation, is just as confused as the rest of us.