Fuck off already…
I have, on occasion mentioned my difficulties with an enlarged prostate. Indeed, the symptoms started in my mid forties, so at a fairly young age. I’ve been living with these symptoms for just over twenty years now. I first went to my GP and was referred to a consultant at around 2004. Since then, I’ve been misdiagnosed, treated with useless medication, been lost off the list, suffered two cystoscopies and a flow test all that told me what I already knew – I have an enlarged prostate and overactive bladder. The latter likely caused by the former in that I cannot void the bladder properly.
This summer I finally managed to get the consultant to agree to proper treatment. There are two possibly treatments that are minimally invasive – the UroLift or arterial embolism. Both are outpatient treatments carried out under a local anaesthetic.
That it has taken so many years to get this far is bad enough. However, much of the delay isn’t down to waiting lists. Back in 2017 I had the flow analysis and then heard no more. Upon chasing this year, I discovered that I’d dropped off the system. Having got me back on the system, it was agreed that I’d have another cystoscopy (groan, not another – Ed) and a CT scan. As the cystoscopy would be under a general anaesthetic – I simply cannot endure it otherwise and tense up too much – they sent me for a pre-op in August. I had the scan a couple of weeks back.
A pre-op is supposed to last three weeks. Here we are with November knocking on the door and we are still waiting. So I badgered my GP, having been unable to get anyone to respond to messages at the hospital.
And, guess what? I’m on a list. They have decided that as it’s non cancerous I’m not a priority, so wait. The pre-op was a complete waste of my time and their resources.
I am so heartily sick of the prevarication and incompetence that I’m now going to speak to Bupa. Having paid tens of thousands of pounds into the NHS over a working lifetime, I now find myself using part of my pension pot to pay again for treatment that has already been paid for multiple times over because the envy of the world cannot do the job for which I have paid.
And don’t even get me started on the experience I had with Mrs L and her cancer treatment…
Fucking NHS? Ditch it and start again with a system that actually provides efficient customer service.
It is a job creation scheme.
I suspect that the few competent people employed go along with it because they see no way of changing the system, and as with teaching, get out as soon as possible with a good pension.
Meanwhile the hospitals are full of overweight sub -class of employees, rushing – no, not rushing, – walking purposefully, carrying a bit of paper, pushing something, in an attempt to look indispensable.
But “The Management”, isolated up on the top floor, or maybe even in a different building, ensure that the walls are hung with fine mission statements , while staff and visitors and patients drift in and out of “clean” areas, dutifully sterilizing their hands before scratching noses, hair, whatever.
It is a fecking farce.
A new class of job called Hospital Administration has grown up over the last few decades. Costly, top heavy and self perpetuating.
Top Heavy? Whilst I was waiting for my Bone Density scan recently, I realised that I should have no worries at all about putting on weight. The NHS should look at its own employees before telling the British Public to live a healthy lifestyle.
If the NHS is really the “Envy of the World” why does no other country on Earth use the same system? It is the nearest thing, I think, to a secular religion with high priests, criticism forbidden and no questions about the Wizard behind the curtain. (I do think it has become almost akin to the Wizard of Oz),
This unfortunately, is always the outcome when unlimited demand meets limited resources. The system that was the “envy of the world” has been swamped by allowing people who have never paid into it to milk it.
I don’t even think its that. Its not as if there’s a massive waiting list but then the care once you reach the top is wonderful. The care is sh*t despite all the waiting lists.
My aged father has had to be under the tender care of the NHS for the last few years and my experiences exactly match the post above – a litany of rank incompetency, indifference and utter waste. Its not that there aren’t enough ‘resources’ to provide a decent healthcare system, its just that they are spunked to the 4 winds by a system that might as well be designed to waste them. It actually takes more resources to care for people badly than care for them well, as detailed above, multiple abandoned attempts at dealing with an issue take up more resources than one attempt followed through to its conclusion.
The whole NHS needs razing to the ground and start again from scratch, incorporating the discipline of the marketplace – if you f*ck up people take their money elsewhere, and eventually you lose your job.
As I might have mentioned before, our cat gets excellent health care because the vet knows that we can take our custom elsewhere.
Precisely.
A colleague’s daughter has had similar experiences while needing an operation on her back. She had to have various scans on it and the scans and visits to the consultant were so badly organised that the results were out of date by the time that the consultant saw them or the consultations were scheduled before the scan. The whole process dragged on for months.
Last year I had a suspected heart problem and had a series of tests to try to find out what it was. The staff that carried out the tests were highly efficient and professional but the whole process took about seven months. We never did find out what the problem was and it seems to have cleared up on it’s own.
I have regular check ups due to having type two diabetes and the service that I get from my local surgery is very good. I know from following the Diabetes UK Support Forum that others are not so fortunate.
Sorry to have to say this but I live in a pretty remote part of the French countryside. I have been treated for several things very efficiently. Ambulance response, which fortunately I have not needed, is amazing. Actually my life was saved by a vigilant GP here in a rural practice although he said it was my regular exercise not him that saved me. Health care is not free here. Everyone is encouraged to take out insurance. The state picks up part of the cost as well. So the cost is shared and it works. My experience with UK health insurance, quite apart from the NHS, was less than satisfactory.
I have experience of the French system having lived there. There’s no comparison, frankly.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the NHS is the perfect proof of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
When the NHS is so obviously rotten and unfit for purpose, I cannot understand why so many people treat it like a religion and it’s staff like saints
The term ‘Our NHS’ really grips my shit. It’s not ours, it’s imposed on us, with no other options
One reason is that it is always compared to what I assume is a gross caricature of the US system. It is curiously never compared to any of the health services of e.g. the Scandinavian countries which the BBC/Guardian types usually love so much.
Also every time that anyone criticizes the NHS they are treated as if they are making a direct personal attack on the trade-marked “hard-working nurses and dedicated doctors” even if they are at pains to make it clear that they are criticizing the system rather than the people.
Rather like the “Auntie BBC” image of old it makes any critic look like a callous monster. It’s a crude but effective propaganda tool as most people don’t want to look like a callous monster and either self-censor or are easily attacked if they are brave enough to speak out.
I’d quite happily attack the ‘hard working nurses and dedicated doctors’ personally, in my experience many of them are nothing of the sort. Lazy, incompetent, lacking any empathy and self serving spring to mind…….what must always be remembered is that the NHS is as close as anything gets to pure socialism, and as such everyone in it becomes corrupted, as people always are by socialism. Socialism is riddled with perverse incentives, and it would take people with a saintlike lack of personal self interest to not be corrupted when working in such a system for any period of time.
“When the NHS is so obviously rotten and unfit for purpose, I cannot understand why so many people treat it like a religion and it’s staff like saints”
I have this theory that support for the NHS is entirely built on sand. It comprises the political classes (mainly on the Left), the unions (because the NHS provides 1.5m unionised jobs) and the left leaning media, ie everyone who decides what is or is not important in political discourse.
The actual public I suspect are increasingly anti-NHS, as shown by this thread, as they are increasingly experiencing the reality of the NHS, rather than the PR version we get from the politicians and media. But as we know from Brexit, what the voting public think can be safely ignored for decades, just as long as no-one in the political sphere allows them to have a way of making their feelings heard. If all the major parties are pro-NHS they can safely ignore anyone who isn’t, as they have nowhere to go.
But at some point the dam will burst. And just like Brexit came as such a shock to the political classes, the depth of anti-NHS feeling will be an even bigger shock. We’ve only been in the EU/EEC for 45 years, the NHS has existed for over 70. When some politician/party has the bravery to come out in favour of reforming the NHS into something more akin to what every other European nation does, they will be shocked by the amount of people who will vote for them because of it.
When opinion polls ask things like: ‘how important is the NHS as an election issue’. There is an implicit assumption that ‘important’ means ‘spend more on it’. I may think the state of the NHS and its value is important that doesn’t mean I want more of it.
I had the same problem with a blocked Eustachian tube stopping me hearing properly in my left ear. NHS completely useless. In the end i paid a couple of grand and had it done privately straightaway. Like you it was after 40 years paying into the system.Be ok if i was a pregnant Nigerian though.
My wife worked in an NHS Hospital, in the Children’s Day Surgery. There was an overworked staff of six Nurses, including one Sister. They had the reputation of being one of the finest such establishments in England. The ‘management’ decided to ‘improve’ the Day Surgery. A tier of four separate ‘managers’ was appointed, each earning more than any of those they were supposed to manage. Their rules, procedures and quotas effectively ruined the once-envied establishment. Nurses were replaced with Health Care Assistants, two of whom were not fluent in English. This was to save money. My wife left in disgust, as did all of the other long term staff. They are all of the opinion that the NHS should be broken up into much smaller, semi-autonomous units, each able to manage itself. They all believe that the growth of managerial staff must be halted. When a non-British patient was brought in the nursing staff had to answer to THREE different ‘Diversity Managers’ as to how the staff dealt with foreigners.
Slightly off topic, could your prostate problem be linked to the vibrations caused by riding motor cycles? A number of ex colleagues, who rode motor cycles in my County Police force traffic division, have had prostate trouble. A consultant apparently told one that there may be a link, and some form of investigation into this is being carried out.
I’m 74, although worked on traffic for a while, have never been on a motor cycle, and my prostate is fine (for now).
Just a thought.
Unlikely. All men have an enlarged prostate caused by hormonal changes as we grow older. Some of us more than others. That one has the flavour of urban myth about it – modern motorcycles don’t vibrate like the old British iron. Indeed, there’s no more from a bike than you would expect in a car. So I don’t think so.
Out of the last dozen blood tests Mrs Nerd and I have had, four had to be redone because the self-adhesive labels detached from the sample phials.
We have a system where the GPs don’t like to refer you to hospital consultants because the cost of sending you to one comes out of their budget. This means the first hurdle you have to get over is your GP. I had several years where I was ignored, told my problems were the menopause, good let out for any woman of a certain age, eventually spent two years taking tablets that had been withdrawn and had horrid side effects. Only got something done when I cried in front of a young locum. He referred me to a physio who said I should have been referred to her when the symptoms started, 6 years previously. The tablets had to stop being taken and I ended up with an operation. Once I got into the system it went smoothly but trying to get into the system is hard.
Two years ago I hurt my foot, despite the pain and physio, eventually they decided to x Ray. Decided I could try injections. Got an appointment but it was cancelled. Then got a letter to go to the hospital only to find it was the follow up of the injections that were cancelled!!!! By going to that I had fallen off the records so now have to be put back with a four month wait.
One thing they should think about is they expect us to work longer , surely speeding up these minor treatments should be a priority to keep the work force going.
Second is they text you before an appointment to tell you that missing the appointment will cost the NHS £160. What I want to know is why I can’t text them back and saying that they cost me a day where I could have gone to work and taken home £70!
As someone who is constantly infuriated by radio ads that constantly hector me about sugar, salt, beer, fat and on and on, an idea just occurred to me. Maybe the ads should say something like eat a sensible diet, moderation is the key. Exercise regularly, find something that you enjoy doing. Never forget that, should you become ill, the health care in this country is fucking shit.
I propose that all Public Health ‘advice’ should be imposed on the NHS first, in order to provide a shining example for the rest of us recalcitrant backsliders. All NHS staff should have to have BMIs under 25, be subject to regular checks on their drinking, smoking and eating habits, and have regular fitness tests, which they must pass, on pain of losing their jobs. They will then be in a perfect position of moral authority to lecture the rest of us about our gluttony, laziness and drugs of choice. If they can’t achieve that then they should shut the f*ck up.
Good idea but we should start with the politicians.