I found the images below whilst perambulating about on Twitter and although I don’t have 100% provenance about its veracity, so much about this tale rings true for me. Those of us who have had the misfortune to having had to deal with the NHS and the experiences of others who have had to deal with the NHS and NHS staff, find this persons experience of the NHS relatable which is why I’m highlighting it.
Isn’t the behaviour of this nursing sister so typical of those who work in nationalised industries? An attitude of ‘I’m doing you a favour’, ‘take it or leave it’ and an illustration of how the NHS as with nearly all nationalised industries are run not for the benefit of the customer or in this case the patient, but for the benefit of the staff.
This man was extremely distressed over the medical condition that caused his wife to seek NHS treatment in the first place. His wife was basically not treated properly and appears to have not been treated or assessed at all. He and presumably his wife as well have probably paid in via taxation and National Insurance all their lives to a state that runs the NHS but find themselves getting zero help from a service that they’ve paid for. The state nursing employee was less concerned that the nursing staff under her management control were not doing their damned jobs properly and more concerned with the language used by the man in a justifiable complaint.
I’m old enough to remember how bad nationalised industries were in the UK. I remember how people had long waits for telephones to be installed and how the infrastructure was so creaky that neighbours had to share telephone lines. I recall how you could only buy gas appliances in state run gas board showrooms and where one dreaded buying a ‘Friday car’ with multiple faults caused by lacklustre workers and management built in one of Britain’s state run car plants like British Leyland. I remember how Britain’s steel was overpriced because of bad management and union intransigence and how Britain’s coal was mined by a state run monopoly and transported on a state run monopoly railway system to state run power stations. All those nationalised horrors are gone now. We can get phones connected quickly, we have choice in where to shop for gas and electrical appliances and Britain’s car industry is more efficient and higher quality than it was before. The problem is we are still left with one nationalised horror of the sort that we saw back in the 1970’s and that is the National Health Service. All the problems that beset nationalised industry, the waste, the inefficiency, the over mighty trade unions and the problem of these businesses being run for the benefit of the staff are present in the NHS.
A civilised and advanced nation should provide healthcare for all its citizens without making that citizen worry about whether medical care will end up in them becoming bankrupt as is the case in the United States. However there are much better ways to provide that service to the public than Britain’s creaking, inefficient, uncaring and sometimes cruel National Health Service.
Well no, I do take your point that you’re highly critical of the NHS but quoting one alleged anectodal negative experience does not prove anything. You could equally have produced a cohort of answers from people appreciative of their NHS treatment.
Not being unduly trolly but if there’s a political agenda it’s so easy to select with conformation bias?
The best indication of critiques of the NHS is probably to do social attitude surveys over time. Over time because in the short tsrm there are disparate results but longer term more prevailing concerns emerge?
I selected that particular quote as it chimed in very well with my experience of the NHS, that of my family and of my friends and acquaintances, including those whom I do not share much in the way of political views. I agree that things may pan out in the NHS’s favour in the long term with regards quality of treatment but that doesn’t mean that things could not be better. I would suggest that some of the positivity that the NHS gets is when people compare the NHS which is free at the point of use with the stories they hear about the US system that is not. People appreciate not having to go bankrupt to pay medical bills and they like the NHS because of that but that doesn’t mean that the NHS is holding its own against other comprehensive healthcare systems.
You are not being at all trolly here, bias does affect viewpoints but sometimes what some people call bias others may call evidence. My mum was killed by the NHS because a doctor refused to listen to family members who said that the antibiotic they were prescribing didn’t work for her, by the time the medics had realised their mistake the infection had set in so heavily that she could not be saved. She might had lived a bit longer and seen more of her grandchild had the NHS doctor been arsed to check whether what the family were saying was reflected in the notes which it was. Or there’s my Dad who had a nurse draw the site for an operation on the wrong leg. The poorly and incompetently administered epidural that nearly confined the mother of my child to a wheelchair or the uncle who whilst being treated for cancer was put in a room full of soiled linen. Then there’s the friend who was wrongly diagnosed and put on the wrong medication for half a decade or the incompetent GP who failed to note that we were expecting a baby because due to medical issues that I won’t go into here was a pregnancy tht was being supervised by a hospital outside the area we live in which meant that we were less than properly served by post partum midwifery or health visitor services than we should have been.
I could also talk about the ex scaffolder I knew who lost his bottle going up ladders and because the wait to see a decent mental health professional to get help for this sudden shift in what he feared and didn’t fear was so exceedingly long, took to self medicating with alcohol and screwing up both his body and his mind. I could and will add the story of the ex GF who had a gynae problem that was causing her immense pain and distress but which was downplayed by the NHS to such an extent that in the end she had to go private. Even when my son had a intestinal complaint we were told that we had to wait months for a consultant appointment as the consultants ‘didn’t work in August’. Then of course no list of NHS failures would be complete without mention of the North Staffs scandal, the Morecombe Bay hospitals scandal, Gosport War Memorial hospital and the Bristol heart deaths scandal. See https://www.bbc.com/news/health-44550913
My dislike of the NHS is not down to any political bias, it is down to a consistent bad experience with it. I do believe that there should be a comprehensive healthcare system but the NHS model is a failed one.
*term*
I’ve probably mentioned this before but one of the reasons that the sheer awfulness of the NHS isn’t obvious to absolutely everyone is that it isn’t always this bad. I get good treatment for my T2 diabetes from my local surgery. My local surgery is very good in other areas too and very efficient.
I also had a problem with sudden drops in blood pressure while exercising. For this I had to have numerous tests which never did get to the bottom of the problem which gradually cleared up on its own. The staff doing the various tests were excellent and my appointments were dealt with pretty much on time. My gripe is that these tests took place over a period of about nine months. Well, I suppose it was only a suspected heart condition, it’s not as if it could have been life threatening.
I think that I’m probably fortunate to live in an area where the healthcare is at least reasonable. Not quite as good as the healthcare our cats enjoy but not too bad.
It’s a curates egg, good in parts, that people tolerate because it is free at the point of use. If you live in a good area with good healthcare then your experience of the NHS is probably more positive but for those of us who have had the misfortune to live in shithole areas with shitty NHS facilities the situation is less than adequate.