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Post by markhoopy on Jul 18, 2021 16:24:29 GMT 1
I've just spent the last four days in the spinal injuries unit at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield. The old hospital that used to be there was demolishid in 2008, with a brand new 'state of the art' hospital built on the site by Balfour Beatty under the Private Finance Initiative, leasing it back to Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust for 35 years. There are 32 beds on the unit and not one of the over-bed televisions was working. Thursday when I got back from theatre I just wanted to sleep, but the next three days I only managed to get a couple of hours out of bed in total, the rest spent staring at the ceiling with nothing to do. Anyone newly-injured will typically spend the first six weeks in bed. Pressure sores can mean six months or more, and each patient can only have one visitor for one hour each day. The bloke in the bed at one side of me was from Hull, bloke opposite from Grimsby, so about an hour each way for visitors to travel. Way back in '88 when I had my first stint on the spinal injuries unit I thought the NHS was absolutely brilliant. How we have ended up with it in the state it is in now is just beyond me
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Post by kirkhd on Jul 18, 2021 17:45:05 GMT 1
Try working for them and you see it get worse and worse each year. The hospital where i work is also mainly PFI and the cost to do even the smallest jobs are scary, Fit new door handle £800+. With the way they are built the building won't be fit for much by the end of the lease either.
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Post by steve h on Jul 18, 2021 19:18:55 GMT 1
Sounds similar to a ward I was in. No nurse calls worked (well in the 3 days none answered it) No TVs worked, black soot on the wall around one TV power point!!. And to get a nurse for 2 chaps who were both terminal, I had to stagger and find a nurse....found 6 in a room swilling coffee... Doing that once would of been errrmm unusual. And the least said about the agency staff night shift cover the better. How you can trap and flatten a bladder catheter in a bed with an up and down body retainer thingy is beyond me! Good job I was conscious, that could of been interesting.. That private finance initiative is another spelling of "racket"
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Post by donkeychomp on Jul 18, 2021 22:13:36 GMT 1
The NHS these days does worry me. I suffer from polycythemia, and that's too many red blood cells. They can cause blood clots and that could kill me. I need a blood test every 3 months and if the levels are too high I have to have a venesection, and that involves draining off a pint of blood with a needle the size of a biro. It's now been 2 years since my last test and finally I got an email from my GP saying I can pick up a test form and go to the hospital. On arrival the rather surly nurse said I needed to make an appointment. I was the only person there. No other patients at all. Unreal. I go back on Tuesday.
Alex
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Post by steve h on Jul 18, 2021 22:28:14 GMT 1
The NHS these days does worry me. I suffer from polycythemia, and that's too many red blood cells. They can cause blood clots and that could kill me. I need a blood test every 3 months and if the levels are too high I have to have a venesection, and that involves draining off a pint of blood with a needle the size of a biro. It's now been 2 years since my last test and finally I got an email from my GP saying I can pick up a test form and go to the hospital. On arrival the rather surly nurse said I needed to make an appointment. I was the only person there. No other patients at all. Unreal. I go back on Tuesday. Alex So they left you out of the routine blood tests as well?.... protecting the nhs at the cost of xxx amount of lives (we will never ever be told the truth) You could not organise a bigger *k up if you tried. Many have been thrown to the dogs.... And yes you have to ring a book an appointment with phlebotomy.... it works well, just straight in, instead of the long ques. Thankfully your ok? Hope the test in negative
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Post by donkeychomp on Jul 18, 2021 23:01:27 GMT 1
Steve I'm OK but won't know the truth until Tuesday. Just hope I don't keel over before then lol.
Alex
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Post by kirkhd on Jul 19, 2021 21:43:47 GMT 1
There are a lot of good people who work for the NHS but it's very poorly run by the management who seems to have no concern about anything other than their pockets. I'm not on the nursing side of things but there are a lot of good Nurses and a lot of "i'm more interested in myself ones", it's also very surprising how many newly qualified Nurses seem to move up the ladder very very quickly. It used to be when you started work you were an apprentice for 4,5,6 years then you qualified but were still a minion for another 5 or 6 years but these day Nurses take 3 years to qualify and within a year or two after that they are in Sister and running Wards. So potentially by their very early 20's in charge of a Ward with 20+ Patient which can't be right. Saying that they are also held responsible for medication that DR's prescribe and if a Dr get the amount wrong and the Nurse administers it guess who will lose there job? Not the Dr that's for certain. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of good Dr's/Surgeons but there are some who are so far up their own arse that they think they are Gods.
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Post by markhoopy on Jul 20, 2021 22:24:16 GMT 1
The NHS these days does worry me. I suffer from polycythemia, and that's too many red blood cells. They can cause blood clots and that could kill me. I need a blood test every 3 months and if the levels are too high I have to have a venesection, and that involves draining off a pint of blood with a needle the size of a biro. It's now been 2 years since my last test and finally I got an email from my GP saying I can pick up a test form and go to the hospital. On arrival the rather surly nurse said I needed to make an appointment. I was the only person there. No other patients at all. Unreal. I go back on Tuesday. Alex So they left you out of the routine blood tests as well?.... protecting the nhs at the cost of xxx amount of lives (we will never ever be told the truth) You could not organise a bigger *k up if you tried. Many have been thrown to the dogs.... And yes you have to ring a book an appointment with phlebotomy.... it works well, just straight in, instead of the long ques. Thankfully your ok? Hope the test in negative My step-son runs a clinic four days a week, each at a different NHS hospital, taking a blood sample from people who have appointments just like this. The clinics operate for eight hours each day if you don't include breaks for lunch, setting up, admin at the end of the day etc. He typically sees 90 people each day and with each one he has to check their name, address, DOB, previous test results history, take a blood sample, perform whichever test they are there for, give the result to them, change their medication if required, then wipe anything they might have touched as soon as they leave due to Covid rules. That's a little over five minutes per patient and the judgement he makes on the medication they are currently receiving and whether it needs changing can in many cases be life-threatening. They really need to run more clinics but, as always, it's all down to costs.
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Post by donkeychomp on Jul 20, 2021 22:36:35 GMT 1
Today was the day. I rocked up a bit early hoping to get in and out quicker but no, I had to sit and wait for 30 minutes until my correct appt time. A nurse told me everyone was on a break. Fair enough. Finally I get called in, the nurse taking my bloods was kind, funny and very chipper. She said she'd been at work since 7am (this was 5.10pm) and didn't finish until 7pm. I was a bit surprised by this. After she'd done I asked where should I wait for the polycythemia results (if it's high they have to do a venesection straight away). She said that's it, your GP will notify you about the results. Marvellous. Now I have to wait until August 5th for a phone call from a random doctor.
Now don't get me wrong. These nurses are underpaid and overworked and I'm amazed at how good they are at the jobs they do but why has the NHS come to this? Impossible to actually see a GP, and a phone call weeks away from any old doctor just isn't good enough I think. Maybe I'm ranting a bit much. It is free. And she was a cutie!
Alex
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Post by arrow on Jul 20, 2021 22:41:38 GMT 1
Few years ago now I had a fall accident in work and broke a few ribs. Got to the hospital with the works first aider (he was brilliant) at midnight. It was 6am before I was seen. The Doctors were great, just not enough of them.
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Post by markhoopy on Jul 20, 2021 23:15:32 GMT 1
And the least said about the agency staff night shift cover the better. How you can trap and flatten a bladder catheter in a bed with an up and down body retainer thingy is beyond me! I broke my neck in '88 and for anyone with a high-level spinal injury any discomfort whatsoever can be life-threatening - it causes autonomic dysreflexia due to the brain knowing something is wrong but having no idea exactly what it is or what to do, and reacts to that by increasing the blood pressure. If the discomfort continues the blood pressure keeps rising. My normal, resting blood pressure is about 100/55 and heart rate 55, and a blocked catheter will always cause my blood pressure to rise and heart rate to fall. I have a permanent catheter that goes through a hole in my abdomen and into my bladder and because my bladder never has to hold urine it is now tiny - golf-ball tiny when full. My operation last Thursday showed four 30mm diameter stones in my bladder and they couldn't get them out so I have to go back for more surgery in three weeks. To look inside my bladder the surgeon pushed an endoscope down my Jap's eye and urethra, and because of the catheter in my abdomen he found that the tube from my eye to bladder had constricted over the years due to never having to naturally pass urine, and performing the operation damaged my urethra along its entire length. When I came round he told me I was bleeding slightly from my eye. I genuinely had no idea that 'bleeding slightly' meant 200ml every 24 hours, about a third of a pint of blood/urine mix that looks awful when it drips out. Late evening on Friday I was out of bed for ninety minutes but couldn't stay up because the blood loss got worse. Back to bed and I drank 1500cc of water in five minutes - might seem a lot, but I always drink huge amounts and the surgeon had suggested ten litres of fluids per day if I could do that. Thirty minutes later my head was pounding but I thought it was the damaged urethra causing the high blood pressure and headache so waited a while hoping it would improve. It just got steadily worse and I honestly thought I was dying. No staff to be seen so I asked the guy in the bed next to me to call a nurse for me. Straight off she could see I wasn't well so took my blood pressure - 287/190, so nearly three times my normal reading, and heart rate 28 beats per minute. Turned out the staff who had put me to bed had connected a two-litre urine bag up to me but forgot to open the tap which meant my bladder wasn't emptying, and once this was noticed and the tap opened 640ml of urine came out of me in less than a minute which meant my golf-ball sized bladder was holding over a pint. All the staff on the 'old' spinal injuries unit used to be brilliant and something like this would never have happened. I'm far from well at the moment but just so much happier to be back at home rather than still in hospital.
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Post by markhoopy on Jul 20, 2021 23:52:53 GMT 1
Now don't get me wrong. These nurses are underpaid and overworked and I'm amazed at how good they are at the jobs they do but why has the NHS come to this? Impossible to actually see a GP, and a phone call weeks away from any old doctor just isn't good enough I think. Maybe I'm ranting a bit much. It is free. And she was a cutie! Alex Spinal units aren't like any other wards - I was there eight months from 88 to 89, six of those rehab but obviously still needing care too due to my injury. Back then we were encouraged to try get used to our new lives and every Thursday evening a dozen or so of us would go to the pub down the road from the hospital. Nurses would go too, finishing the early shift mid-afternoon then going home to get changed ready to go out and meet us. The ward rule was fairly simple - don't abuse the relaxed rules and when you return be nice to the staff and under no circumstances throw up. I was about five months after my injury when one Thursday night we left the pub at 11pm and I saw five staff getting into cars. They were going to Rooftop Gardens, a nightclub in Wakefield, and I asked them if they'd take me. One guy helped me into a car and we all went clubbing, then at kicking-out time two nurses pushed me back to the hospital and put me to bed. It was 4.10am when we got there, quietly does it so not to wake any other patients. Next day I had a hangover but it was just a normal day and the only comments from the staff were asking if I had enjoyed myself. I had lots of fun with the staff who worked on the unit - one a student who was 19, one a physio, one who was gorgeous but married, and one that became a serious relationship that lasted three years. My brother married a nurse who worked on the unit and they have two sons in their early 20s. She still works there on the spinal unit. Mid-90s I dated a district nurse for about six months but she moved to Australia and I wouldn't go with her. My step-son is a nurse, my step-daughter is a nurse and worked in intensive paediatric care but recently moved to work with terminally ill children. Late 80s to mid 90s district nurses typically had five or six visits to do per day - they now have between twenty and twenty-five. You aren't ranting - the UK health service is nothing like it used to be unfortunately and that is a real shame.
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Post by steve h on Jul 21, 2021 0:04:27 GMT 1
Bloody hell Mark!! You've got enough to put up with, never mind this latest episode. Jeez I'm on meds for BP, have only hit 178/98 to date. Reading was taken in hospital and they refused to go ahead with a procedure because the lack off ICU facilities. Told me to go to the doctors immediately....did ..and reception ****ed me off and said no appointment go away..... and the best one.. "that's normal BP"!!!
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Post by veg on Jul 21, 2021 8:06:45 GMT 1
I’m reading this and realising just how lucky I am yes I have a variety of ailments and injuries but thankfully no long term health concerns. I spent 3 years in and out of hospital in my late teens, compound fractures that didn’t heal and the staff were always amazing, my lad when he was born was in intensive care for months at Birmingham children’s hospital it was touch and go but he is perfectly fine now, the staff were amazing. Throughout my working life I’ve worked with doctors nurses and ambo crews all were passionate about their jobs all cared. I’m actually working with Nhs Blood and transplants lead nurses and doctors today and yesterday all are brilliant people. The NHS are one of my biggest clients and I love working with them. The nhs is one of the greatest organisations that this country has staffed by hard working dedicated front line staff that keep it going, unfortunately successive governments have taken the piss out of front line services and I find it heartbreaking that what was once a leading light in world healthcare has been ran so incompetently and been so under funded. £350 million a week my arse. The three of you take care of yourselves 👍.
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Post by donkeychomp on Jul 21, 2021 21:36:14 GMT 1
Mark...your ailments make mine look like a mild case of the sniffles. I'm glad you're back home and I hope you can stay there! Get well mate, and soon.
Alex
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Post by kirkhd on Jul 21, 2021 21:37:46 GMT 1
Today was the day. I rocked up a bit early hoping to get in and out quicker but no, I had to sit and wait for 30 minutes until my correct appt time. A nurse told me everyone was on a break. Fair enough. Finally I get called in, the nurse taking my bloods was kind, funny and very chipper. She said she'd been at work since 7am (this was 5.10pm) and didn't finish until 7pm. I was a bit surprised by this. After she'd done I asked where should I wait for the polycythemia results (if it's high they have to do a venesection straight away). She said that's it, your GP will notify you about the results. Marvellous. Now I have to wait until August 5th for a phone call from a random doctor. Now don't get me wrong. These nurses are underpaid and overworked and I'm amazed at how good they are at the jobs they do but why has the NHS come to this? Impossible to actually see a GP, and a phone call weeks away from any old doctor just isn't good enough I think. Maybe I'm ranting a bit much. It is free. And she was a cutie! Alex Most folk that take blood these days are Support Workers not actual Nurses or Phlebotomists so paid very low on the pay scale indeed.
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