Back to Work

The past six months have been somewhat of a roller-coaster for me, not to mention for my family.  In October I was taken ill very suddenly and admitted to an NHS hospital, not an experience that I would want to repeat.

To cut a very long story short, the Accident and Emergency staff neglected to notice that I had perforated my bowel and it was only thanks to the quick thinking of my husband and the care of the private sector that I am here today.  I had my final operation a month ago and I am now fully recovered.

One very sobering thought is that while I was in hospital last October there was another lady in the Intensive Care Unit (ITU) with a similar problem to me.  She was not fortunate enough to have private medical insurance so was left at the mercy of the NHS.  My husband last saw her daughter one evening who reported that her mother had been so badly neglected following transfer to the ward that she suffered multiple organ failure and had been readmitted to ITU.  We don’t know how she got on but that 15 year old girl had been told that her mother had very little chance of surviving the night.

One thing that my experience has taught me is that the work of NFR and its supporters is so important.  I don’t want anyone to go through the experience that I had.  I know from painful experience that the NHS does not live up to the promises of 1948 and that the time has come for major reform of health care in the UK.

Nobody should be dying of neglect on the wards of one of London’s leading teaching hospitals.

 

Choose and Book

It seems that Government sources are using Nurses for Reform to defend some of their policies.  In responding to an attack on choose and book by some in the medical profession they cited a blog entry of mine to demonstrate that NFR are in support of the system.

 

Lessons Obama needs to learn from NICE

Today I have had this paper published by the Heritage Foundation.  It is part of their briefing paper series and details the history of Health Technology Assessment, the mistakes made by the UK with NICE and some of the systems used in other European countries.

 

More NHS Rationing by waiting…

My mother needs an operation on her knee and is, unfortunately, at the mercy of the NHS.  After quite a bit of waiting, lots of letters and so many telephone calls that she has lost count, she managed to get an appointment with an Orthopaedic Consultant, an MRI scan and another consultation.

Although the consultant confirmed that she will more than likely require surgery, he wanted her to have some physiotherapy first.  That is when the entire situation turned in to a farce!  Again, numerous letters and telephone calls have been required and she is at last on the, wait for it…,  waiting list for physiotherapy.  The real joke is that the waiting list for physiotherapy is so long that her appointment to see the consultant to assess its value is scheduled for early March, before she is actually due to start the physio!

You really couldn’t make it up could you?

 

More joined up thinking from the NHS!

This report on some suggestions for the NHS to combat “climate change” (let’s leave arguments about that for another day!) beggars belief.

To pick up on just two points.   When we know that, according to the Malnutrition Advisory Council, between 40 and 60% of patients in NHS hospitals are suffering from some degree of malnutrition, why on earth are the Government proposing to remove meat from NHS menus?

Secondly, as many clinicians will know, vast amounts of time and money have been spent by NHS Trusts and PCTs in recent years implementing new decontamination guidance and the promotion of single use equipment to reduce the incidence of Healthcare Acquired Infection (HAI).  Now in the interests of “saving the planet” we are supposed to put lives at risk by going back to sterilising re-usables.

This is just another example of inconsistent nonsense from the Government.

 

Nurses for Reform Success

This is the link to my latest success.

My husband Dr. Tim Evans and I have co-edited the latest edition of Economic Affairs, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

This journal is circulated to many of the world’s leading economists and contains a number of scholarly articles.

A very good read, even if I do say so myself!

 

Why we must choose Choose and Book

This is an interesting comment from a Consultant Surgeon on the subject of the NHS system Choose and Book.

While readers of this blog will know that I am a fierce critic of the NHS, I do think that Choose and Book is a system that is great for the patient and their families.  The importance of Choose and Book is twofold, not only does it it begin to make the patient feel and act like a customer, it also makes doctors pull their socks up!  No longer will they get patients referred to them just because they are there at the local hospital, they will have to demonstrate for example, how good they are and how low their infection rate is. However, I am sure that Consultants who do not like the system will go out of their way to sabotage it.

As in the BBC article some NHS Consultants do not like this and tend to use patronising phrases, such as;

How many patients know enough about the health service to make a really informed choice?

Not many, is the answer.  However, not many of us know about the workings of the internal combustion engine, but that does not stop us from doing our research, talking to our friends and reading magazines such as Which to enable us to make an informed choice about buying a car.

This will happen with healthcare too.  There is already information out there such as the work done by Dr Foster and people will still be discussing their referrals with their GPs.

So Nurses for Reform says embrace Chose and Book and remember that your choice of hospital is not restricted to the NHS, you can go to the independent sector too with your NHS funding.

 

A good start to the NHS funding revolution

This is an encouraging story about the new health bill legislation due to be announced today by the Department of Health.

It states that following the success of the scheme where patients receiving social care have their own budgets, where they can chose how and where to spend money on their care, the Government will be introducing the same system to the NHS.  Patients will be allocated a pot of money/voucher and then they can decide where they would like to receive their NHS care.

For NFR however, this does not go far enough.  Why should patients be restricted to choosing from NHS providers.  If this scheme is to work then patients must be allowed to purchase their care from NHS or independent sector institutions.  Therefore giving them real freedom of choice.

 

Re-inventing the Wheel

It really makes me wonder how low standards of NHS care have dropped when I see reports like this.  I was an operating theatre sister at a large London teaching hospital in the 1990’s and it was part of my job to make sure that these checks like theses were undertake and that the patient journey through our department went smoothly and safely.

What has happened to clinical care if this has to be introduced by the Government and the WHO as some wonderful new practice?

 

Shameful

This very sad report in today’s Daily Mail speaks for itself.  Sadly, it is one of an ever increasing number of stories about the failures of the NHS.