The whole system now is so broken I can’t look at it, like the sun.
In Leeds, there are 9 care coordinators in community camhs with a waiting list of 420 children and young people.
Cat A ambulances in YAS are routinely taking double the response time, and an elderly person with a fall can wait 4-6 hours on the ground (‘cover them with a blanket and stay with them’ deviates from the NICE guidance for fractured neck of femur when time to theatre crucially effects survival).
I would no longer call an emergency ambulance for myself. When my femoral artery ruptured post endovascular neurosurgery I got my kids to drag me to the car. My MiL with a spinal infarct presenting with cauda equina syndrome, incontinent, and paralysed legs waited two hours until her elderly husband and an Uber driver lifted her into a cab.
The Emergency Department at Jimmies is functioning like a third world triage centre, patients on trolleys in the corridors, calling out from cubicles for help, people trying to sleep on the floor of the waiting room, waiting all night or all day often with no pain relief.
And Primary Care has ceased to function. To get an appointment now at my practice you have to call in a 10 min window at the start of the day, if you miss it tough shit, you can’t even sit and wait anymore. When my son was ill this summer I got fobbed off for five days. Eventually I walked in (crying) and refused to leave until I had a same day face to face appointment. But I give no shits, I won’t take no for an answer, I have no mental health problems, money on my phone, I’m not elderly, and I work in the NHS.
Specialist referrals- my mates kid got referred to an urgent respiratory clinic at Leeds General Infirmary. After 8 weeks she rang up Choose & Book (choose & book hahaha fuck off you cunts) and got told yes her daughter was fifth on the list. Rang back a month later, guess what she’s still fifth. The phone operator looked into it. The list was for urgent patients who required face to face appointment, but that clinic wasn’t running currently only the non-urgent phone clinic. You couldn’t make it up could you. Obviously my friend then had to go back to the GP (hello endless phone cycle, your number 19 in the queue, omg are there even 19 appointments left?!) to amend the referral.
2ww referrals now routinely handled by private outpatient clinics, staffed by NHS consultants acting in addition to their 6 NHS PAs, all paid double by the NHS.
The NHS is not even consistently delivering basic care now. It’s more dangerous existing in this fucked up state than not existing at all. It’s an illusion of a healthcare system. There is no amount of protesting or placard waving or striking or even money that can fix this. I feel utterly powerless and the only way I can deal with it is to basically not think about it and do my job, on a beach full of stranded jellyfish picking up and throwing them one at a time back into the sea.
In Leeds, there are 9 care coordinators in community camhs with a waiting list of 420 children and young people.
Cat A ambulances in YAS are routinely taking double the response time, and an elderly person with a fall can wait 4-6 hours on the ground (‘cover them with a blanket and stay with them’ deviates from the NICE guidance for fractured neck of femur when time to theatre crucially effects survival).
I would no longer call an emergency ambulance for myself. When my femoral artery ruptured post endovascular neurosurgery I got my kids to drag me to the car. My MiL with a spinal infarct presenting with cauda equina syndrome, incontinent, and paralysed legs waited two hours until her elderly husband and an Uber driver lifted her into a cab.
The Emergency Department at Jimmies is functioning like a third world triage centre, patients on trolleys in the corridors, calling out from cubicles for help, people trying to sleep on the floor of the waiting room, waiting all night or all day often with no pain relief.
And Primary Care has ceased to function. To get an appointment now at my practice you have to call in a 10 min window at the start of the day, if you miss it tough shit, you can’t even sit and wait anymore. When my son was ill this summer I got fobbed off for five days. Eventually I walked in (crying) and refused to leave until I had a same day face to face appointment. But I give no shits, I won’t take no for an answer, I have no mental health problems, money on my phone, I’m not elderly, and I work in the NHS.
Specialist referrals- my mates kid got referred to an urgent respiratory clinic at Leeds General Infirmary. After 8 weeks she rang up Choose & Book (choose & book hahaha fuck off you cunts) and got told yes her daughter was fifth on the list. Rang back a month later, guess what she’s still fifth. The phone operator looked into it. The list was for urgent patients who required face to face appointment, but that clinic wasn’t running currently only the non-urgent phone clinic. You couldn’t make it up could you. Obviously my friend then had to go back to the GP (hello endless phone cycle, your number 19 in the queue, omg are there even 19 appointments left?!) to amend the referral.
2ww referrals now routinely handled by private outpatient clinics, staffed by NHS consultants acting in addition to their 6 NHS PAs, all paid double by the NHS.
The NHS is not even consistently delivering basic care now. It’s more dangerous existing in this fucked up state than not existing at all. It’s an illusion of a healthcare system. There is no amount of protesting or placard waving or striking or even money that can fix this. I feel utterly powerless and the only way I can deal with it is to basically not think about it and do my job, on a beach full of stranded jellyfish picking up and throwing them one at a time back into the sea.
