Question:

Is anyone else finding the NHS is worse the last 2 years?

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I went into hospital and I was in a ward full of people who had been diagnosed with something, gallstones, breast cancer, amongst other things and I was finding every one of us was sent away to be put on a waiting list.

I've had a problem with my shoulder for 18 months. I keep getting diagnosed without anyone looking at it, frozen shoulder, muscle problems. Now after nearly 2 years someone looked at it and said it's likely to be a tear and my shoulder is unstable, so now I'm getting an MRI but origianally I was told it was too expensive.

I've known people with Breast Cancer who were on a 2 year waiting list, but there were people with breast augmentations going in within a month or two. My dad had heart surgery (his main artery was blocked) and he was told it was likely if he hadn't have gone private he would have died.

Is anyone else finding the same, or am i just meeting unlucky people

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4 ANSWERS


  1. Yes the NHS has become very difficult do deal with ,with their budgets and targets ,its easier to go private but why should we when when we all pay into the national insurance


  2. Too many new foreigners clogging it up Polish, Rumanian's and all the others looking for a free op, it is all very well some politician saying they are her to work, but what about all the relative they bring with them, some one has to get it into the governments head that there is not any more room in the inn. I red some where that the Nation Health system had 100.000 more Polish patients in 2007 which to me means that 1 in 5 of them are ill.

  3. I'm a little torn with this question, as whilst I agree the NHS has gotten worse over the last few years, it isn't for the reasons you describe. With regards to life threatening conditions such as cancer heart disease, things have improved, and your story of someone with breast cancer waiting 2 years is exceptionally uncommon.

    What people have to remember is that the NHS is a "free" service, paid for with tax payers money. In that respect, there is unfortunately a cap on the service it can provide. This means non-life threatening conditions like your own are pushed aside, as they do not fall under set targets. Moreover, due to government demands, the NHS has gone through an unprecedented amount of change over 5 years. This means a lot of resources have been diverted from patient care and into management services and salaries, as well as changing the training structure of doctors. This is the main reason the NHS is currently failing, as disillusioned staff are no longer willing to go that extra mile, instead working to rule. Ultimately the caring atmosphere has gone, and general patient care has been sacrificed for a target driven approach. Sadly, good staff are leaving the service, and this is reflected in the horrendous retention rates of staff across all the medical disciplines.

  4. The NHS is awful. My friend at work has a bad skin condition (docs dont know what it is..). She's on so much medication, yesterday she rang for an emergency appointment because she had a bad reactiion to capsules she's taking...they couldn't give her an emergency appointment! It is awful.

    Also in hosptials its bad. My grandad went in last year on a sunday night complaining of chest pains. He had to stay in overnight (they said he'd had a slight heart attack) and they booked him in for an angiogram. When the appointment came, he was lying on the table waiting for it to be done and an emergency came in needing an angiogram so he had to wait longer to get the treatment (this place had only ONE piece of equipment to perform angiograms..awful)

    A few days later roughly my grandad had a bad heart attack and was rushed to Harefield as an emergency for them to do an angiogram. He nearly died, luckily this place had the equipment to hand.

    Hospitals need to shift their weight a bit. They give such long appointment dates that your illness/condition could have worsened and put you at more risk. I think its bad. We are all unlucky when it comes down to national health.

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