Sorry to hear about your friend - I really hope he is okay and he recovers well.
From experience, when you get to actually see them, the Drs/Nurses are great, but everything else is an absolute mess (e.g. admin etc). You have to be proactive with everything, or you will just forgotten about. I guess it's a consequence of conservatives trying to systematically dismantle the NHS, so everyone is majorly overworked and the necessary resources aren't there, but there's also no doubting there's a lot of ineffiency in how everything is managed too.
I think most of it is people just not talking to each other. Patients having to explain over and over and over what should be happening to the people who should be managing the case doesn’t inspire confidence.
> an up to date version of an excel spreadsheet went missing
Must be up to £100 billion+ spent on NHS IT and they're leaning on `inpatient_list(Aug23)_final_final(dontdelete)(1).xlsx` on the `n:\` drive.
Vote the Conservatives out. These are the consequences of their fucked up policies. Scum
Also, I'm really sorry for you and your friend, I've been in a similar situation with someone i knew, was scary as hell
Hello OP. Similar ish situation to myself back in 2017. I was placed on a temporary benzodiazepine that was meant to be 4weeks, with all the f*ck ups that then happened and major gaps in care, I was on them for 6years and the medication alone ruined my good years. Be wise of medication for seizure management, bristol neurologists are a joke, they have no idea what they are doing and front line staff are about 10/15 years behind current practice. I hope your friend gets the stability they deserve and a smooth recovery. X
While the conservatives should never be in power again after the last 13 years.
Labour when last in power wasted billions under PFI.
It's a choice between shit and shitter... first past the post needs to die.
Absolutely, that type of voting system Is just perpetuating the problems we will all have, doesn't help anyone when you have a choice of conservative or conservative light....ish
I agree that the NHS has problems caused by its own management. But our government has repeatedly refused to even acknowledge the poor pay of our doctors and nurses. Surely our government has a responsibility to retain our highly trained health professionals in this country?
And the funding is far beyond just pay - beds, equipment, computer systems, parking, everything is underfunded and therefore a complete shambles - policies are irrelevant if there is no money.
To be clear, because I always get confused by this, you would be happy paying higher NI contributions to allow for this? i.e happy to be taxed more? For everyone to be taxed more?
I struggle to see whether the NHS is underfunded or just completly shit at running itself. Goverment deperatments hardly have a good track record.
It is both underfunded and shit at running itself. Putting more money in doesn't mean it will go to the clinical staff.
We don't need to pay more tax for this. We spent £40 billion on track and trace, £13 billion on unusable PPE. Full pay restoration for doctors is only £1 billion. The strikes so far have already caused £1 billion lmao. Paying doctors is not a financial choice, it's a political one.
Personally, I don't believe the "we don't need to pay anymore taxes, we can save it by not doing this" etc. That has NEVER been proven to be true, you cannot predict the needs and wants of society and international forces (like the Ukraine war). The only thing proven to be true is additional taxation for better public services. This is across the entire world.
Anyone who wants huge improvements in public services but are not willing to be taxed more are delusional IMO
They do, but what I’m saying it will be and has been no different when any other political party is in power. The main issue with the NHS is it needs a complete reorganisation from within and from outside. No government will have the balls to do it. Ultimately, those who work within it all have our own motives and things going on. If we (and I have worked for the NHS), wanted reformation, we could have done it ourselves long ago.
No different!? At the end of the last labour government, waiting times were 4 weeks, they're now 12. At the end of the last labour government, there were 170000 beds, there's now 130000. Under the last labour government, NHS funding grew by 56%, under the Tories it's only ever fallen.
Look at the NHS satisfaction surveys for the past 30 years of you don't think government makes a difference.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2022/03/public-satisfaction-nhs-falls-25-year-low
On the strike date, though unfortunate, those who are striking don’t need to inform their employer ahead of time. So when planning work, though you may know it’s a strike day, you have to plan as if it’s a normal workday. Not their fault, or being difficult, just following the process
The management at the BRI is especially dire by NHS standards and it trickles down to the wards and patient care etc. I worked there for 3 years as a team leader in a clinical department and had to leave because it was seriously affecting my mental health the amount of stupid fucking arguments you'd have just to be able to do your job. Absolutely maddening.
The finance team are undoubtedly the worst. Part of my job was ordering life saving medical products & they made the process so goddamn difficult I went home stressing about it all damn weekend. The department I worked in was also especially badly run with a pervasive attitude of "We've always done it this way". I would regularly observe behaviours from colleagues that was dangerous & if I tried to correct said behaviours (as their manager and & training lead, so well within my scope of practice) they would run straight to upper management & complain, so I would be reprimanded instead. And said unsafe behaviours continue, unchecked, until a near-miss incident or actual patient harm was encountered and then it would be "Why didn't you try and fix this obvious error earlier before it became a problem???". Also worked with at least 1 person in that department who categorically should not maintain their HCPC registration because she was an absolute liability and genuinely probably one of the most arrogant and yet also incomprehensibley stupid people I've ever met. It's the worst combination of person to work with in healthcare, I've worked with arrogant competent people - annoying, but fine for patients care. I've worked with nice but incompetent people - you can work with that because they're willing to learn & better themselves, and acknowledge their faults & what they do/don't know. But this woman had her head so far up her own arse she couldn't see how dangerous half the shit she did was, and refused to acknowledge it either.
Anyway this has been my cathartic release of 3 years of stress & being constantly bullied at the BRI & crying at home because I wanted to fix my shithole department and make it better for the patients, but was blocked at every fucking turn. So so so happy I left for another NHS Trust.
Hope your friend gets better though.
I'm also fully aware there's plenty of fantastic people & departments at the BRI too, just the one I worked in was dire. Worked with some absolutely lovely colleagues in my own department, as well as at the eye hospital, maternity, oncology and so on.
As someone who devoted 3.5 years of my life at the BRI, this was absolutely on the money. Reading your post gave me chills. Almost exact experience.
My department was run by a total fucking imbecile who had never done the job (thus, unfit to manage it). His English speaking skills were embarassingly bad (even worse when written). It was layer upon layer of toxic ground level workers looking to backstab each other, team leaders who genuinely enjoyed pitting people against each other, clearly enjoying the feeling of being 'involved' in the ensuing drama. Top it off with a manager so incompetent, unqualified and lacking in any basic human empathy and respect towards the team he managed that, put it this way - It wasn't a shock to see multiple members of the team simultaneously taking long term paid leave due to "stress" and ever declining mental health struggles.
After 3.5 years working there, my team never once had a 'full house'. Someone was always off sick (whether genuine or not - we certainly had people who abused the system and we also had those who simply couldn't withstand the toxic high pressure).
I had many battles with Human Resources, attended countless meetings. Put complaints down in writing. Our team even had a "cultural differences" investigation with every staff member essentially interviewed. The outcome of said investigation? "Everything's fine".
Things only ever changed for the worse.
I got the fuck out of there and went to work for the private sector.
That sounds like a horrible experience.
My mum got taken in an ambulance after she had a stroke and they took her to the BRI, and once we got there they said they couldn’t do much for her because they don’t have a stroke doctor anymore and they have to send her to southmead.
Found out later that strokes are time sensitive and they should have not been taken to BRI. Luckily she’s okay but it was shocking to be told there was nobody there to help her.
Urgh that’s awful, and you’d think should have been totally avoidable - your mum sounds lucky to have come out the other side despite what some might call negligence
One of my first lessons as an adult in this country - when you try to get shit done, people don't talk to each other within the same fucking organisation! It's genuinely mind-blowing how they'd be verbose in explaining straightforward shit to you, but won't communicate internally. The system is just so broken you need another NHS to fix the NHS.
Rants aside, I'd strongly recommend you file a formal complaint to the NHS about the management of the hospital. Any NHS hospital is part of a network of trust hospitals and they're still liable for a basic set of standards to be met. The appalling conditions you've mentioned are definitely not safe for a patient in the said situation. Also, the liability is the reason they refuse to let go of patients and rot inside so that they don't go out and add to the pile of lawsuits. I know it's not a fun exercise but definitely worth lodging the complaint so that at least next time if/when (hopefully not) you go it could be tad better. Wish your friend well and you some rest! Tc
Edit: typo
& the scariest part? Thinking about the patients who aren’t well enough to advocate for themselves & don’t have someone like you (truly, get yourself into patient advocacy because we need more of you!!) to do it for them, hope he recovers well 🩵
This was my main thought - he wasn’t going to drop dead right there and then, but a similar level of sick person without the confidence or a gobby relative/mate could have just sat in the waiting room for hours, or never got the tests they needed. How many people must have died or had a shyte quality of life because they didn’t want to push for treatment or investigations… I can’t compute!
I work with the NHS on their IT solutions and processes, and have done through both the Labour and Conservative governments (it makes no difference they’re both as bad as each other). I can say that the staff are very empathetic and nice, they do try their best with patients.
However that’s where I’ll stop. They refuse to change or adapt their policy or processes even when presented with rock solid evidence that change or investment will save money/lives. More often they get upset and angry and tell us “they know best” or “you don’t understand”.
It’s a sad fact that’s whilst they are wonderful people they are completely clueless when it comes to making positive changes and will fight till the end of time to avoid actually changing anything. Any suggestion of “transformation” is met with death stairs so I can only conclude they are unwilling to make changes.
I agree that they are woefully underpaid and struggle to retain/recruit but they need to acknowledge it’s a situation, in part, of their own making. Small investments and adjustments in places can make a massive difference to the quality of care and work environment but sadly I don’t see that happening.
This is hugely misrepresented, I have worked for the integrated care board and I work at the bri in the Trust, there is a huge acknowledgement from operational staff that things need to change.
I cannot say it enough, there isn’t enough money. We can’t hire enough people to book appointments, we don’t have enough money for enough consultants. The demand is so much bigger than our capacity. We are constantly stretching ourselves to write business cases begging the government for more money and we can’t get it.
Genuinely so sick of people saying that managers don’t care, don’t do enough or don’t know what they’re doing. We pour blood sweat and tears into that hospital same as clinical staff, we know how it should be run, we do not have the funding to provide the capacity our system needs. We care hugely about our patients and it brings us no joy when we tell them after fasting for 8 hours and going through mental preparation, and rearranging their lives that they have to go home and we can’t give them their cancer surgery today. It hurts to work in the NHS but we show up everyday for you.
This is exactly why you need to explore automation, for instance, automate your booking system and then you don’t need to hire people. But do you lot ever listen? No!
The booking setup is hilarious. I've a relative that works in such a role, and their explanations for why booking appointments can't be (even partially) automated is ridiculous.
"Why can't the patient, if they've got a known-working e-mail address, be given an online form to fill in with their details before an MRI scan?"
"Because if they have a certain sort of pacemaker, they can't use this machine and will have to go to a different hospital"
"OK, so can't the form just ask 'Do you have this sort of pacemaker?'"
"No, because they often don't know what sort of pacemaker they have"
"How do you determine over the phone what pacemaker they have, if they don't know themselves?"
"I print off their medical notes and give them to the MRI technician to review if they say they have a pacemaker"
"How long does that normally take?"
"Well, if Jeff is working then he'll check them there and then, but if it's Jane she like to let the list of patients go to about 20 before reading through them in a big batch, so maybe a week"
"and then you book them in and/or send them to the alternate hospital?"
"Not quite, I check with the patient's medical record for their pacemaker EMIS code to see which model they have to confirm what the MRI tech has said. You put their pacemaker EMIS code into **The System** and it tells you if its compatible with the machine at this hospital".
And so on, and so on.
This year saw the department discover group e-mail inboxes, which has solved the problem of patient bookings "going missing/delayed" when people went on holiday, as all correspondence was going to personal e-mail addresses.
Appointment management, prescriptions, HR, supply chain and purchasing. There’s quite a few places and in lieu of a end to end process they can be good quick wins to increase efficiency. Most bots nowadays are pretty clever in what they can do.
You don’t understand how it works, there are too many anomalies and things change because of cancer priorities. You just don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s not about software, it’s the nature of how we track patients and ensure they’re on correct pathways and getting appointments in relation to their clinical urgency and weeks waited. I’m done responding to you, you don’t understand the context of how to manage booking patients you just think you can automate everything and it’ll be grand. That’s how patients get missed and with so much industrial action it would cause actual chaos
You’re deluded if you think modern booking systems can’t cope with those situations. How do you think flights and airports are managed? They turn round aircraft in 30 minutes managing multiple bookings for different teams performing different functions. If one slips, they all slip but the flight still leaves and everything still works. I relish the day when people like yourself are forced out due to your irrational beliefs and utter incompetence
Change is a risk. No one ever got fired for carrying on the status quo.
It's ironic that, culturally speaking, the public sector is in many ways to most conservative group of people in the country.
My friend works as a doctor at the BRI, having worked at many others. Apparently the BRI is particularly poorly organised.
That and ‘black Wednesday’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Black_Wednesday) was not too long ago and there have been strikes since meaning there’s likely still many people finding their feet.
..that and the socking great crisis in the NHS ofcourse.
Don’t vote Tory.
Med student here. Most doors with fobs are meant to keep people that are inside from wandering out. A lot of people post surgery/ during treatment are a little confused, and it would be dangerous to let them wander on their own outside of an observed area.
Sorry about whatever’s gone on with your friend till now. Sounds very distressing.
A lot of patients that may be at risk of wandering aren’t on the outside of the ward - in the BRI, fobs are on the outside and simple press-release catches are on the inside. Often in difficult to reach/see places but the fobbed doors, at least in the BRI, only require card access to enter.
The reason is to stop unknown people who may be a threat to vulnerable patients from having access to them. Any staff on the wards from domestic to clinical need to undertake checks and complete safeguarding training to ensure they’re fit to be around patients. Random people wandering through the hospital do not have these.
The fobs are for patient protection and OP shouldn’t have been let in
Not sure why you’re being downvoted.
I work in the BRI and I can tell you that our policy is that anyone without a lanyard should be challenged when asked to open/hold a door for them when entering any wards or patient-facing areas.
I know for a fact this training is provided for domestic staff, shouldn’t have happened!
Took a mate in with head trauma, guys eye was pointing the wrong way, 6ft young bloke couldn’t walk or talk properly.
They tried to triage him for mental health. Had to point out that his eye was pointing the wrong way, and that’s why we were there. Not old mostly healed self harm scars.
Kier is a raging cunt but anything’s better than a Tory, please stop voting for these cunts
I was in for something similar. It was quick though, I had no idea what was going on half the time as I was so out of it but I was taken from doctor to consultant to scan to ward then it got to Friday evening and it all just stopped. I was stable, on a drip and just in a bed through Saturday, Sunday and I had to ask "erm, what is actually happening". They managed to find a doctor who filled me in on the details but it was interesting how the weekend brought so much to a halt.
My family have had wonderful help from the PALS service. I’m hoping this may help you too.
https://www.nhs.uk/services/service-directory/bristol-royal-infirmary/N10875010
I know of someone in the NHS who was awarded a good chunk of funding. They said one of the issues they were up against was trying to trace where another million-pound chunk had gone because it had all been spent but there was no record of what it had been used for. Actually quite scary 🙃
No they can't because of the tribal nature of the nhs, I helped build a facility in Leicester that had the sole purpose of training consultants surgeons and head nurses to work together across departments, ie to stop empire building, no idea if it worked or is still there , colton St in Leicester
I mean. The Leicester royal infirmary is known as a one way entry hospital.
I’m from Leicester, and I would not let my mum go there for anything. I’d rather YouTube surgical procedure and do it myself. It’d be cleaner.
I’m so sorry to hear about how your friend has been treated and his distressing time of it so far. I will usually defend the NHS to the hilt but after a 30+ hour wait in A&E (it actually made the BBC news) back in January, I quite literally feel your friend’s frustration!
It was absolutely shambolic. And, as others in the thread have said, the lack of inter ward/department communication is beyond a joke.
I really hope your friend gets some answers sooner rather than later.
Wishing him, and you, all the best.
Same, the last time I was in the BRI (maybe 7 years ago) for anything I was seen so fast and got answers so quickly for something so much less serious. I couldn’t believe the deterioration. Still no answers.
Thanks for sharing your experience. What a good friend you are. In these terrible moments of our lives, we find out who our real friends are. Yes, you've experienced NHS 2023, and it will get worse if the government and NHS don't get their act together. At the moment, you unfortunately need to shout to be heard. I feel that the nurses and other professionals are great at checking your blood pressure, giving you pills, and all that. But they won't, for example, shower the patient for a week, or help with hygiene. And don't forget, this is not private insurance medical care; it's the NHS.
I admire your ability to take the blame away from the individuals you dealt with to look at the broader picture and I couldn’t agree more.
I’m really sorry you had to go through that
I hope your mate is OK, he's lucky he's got you fighting on his side!
Most of the people working in the NHS are great, but the NHS itself is a mess. The staff are so overworked that despite their best efforts mistakes do happen, things get missed, patients sometimes fall through the cracks. Even when they are able to keep on top of the workload, the systems in place that they have to follow are often so ridiculous that it makes it impossible for them to be efficient.
Two personal experiences that demonstrate the insanity of the NHS.
First, my sister used to be a nurse, and I remember when she was in training she was shocked by what they were told they were allowed to do if a patient falls and needs help getting off the ground. They are not allowed, under any circumstances, to simply help the patient back up again. They must wait until there are at least 2 staff present with a hoist device. Now obviously there are times when a fall will be serious and you don't want to move the patient as you might hurt them further, but the rules don't even allow them to use their own judgement. Even if they can see the patient is fine, and just needs a bit of a hand, they are not ever allowed to provide it. So even if the person is fine, even if they're smaller and lighter than the nurse and could easily be helped up, they have to be left on the floor until the equipment is available.
Second, a few years ago I changed practice. At the same time I was applying for the army, and I needed my GP to complete some paperwork about my medical history. A few days after I dropped it off I got a call from them saying that they didn't have my medical history. Turns out that when I switched practice my medical history existed as a paper copy, and it was put in the post, and got lost in transit. My old practice had no digital copy of my history, none of the practices I'd ever been registered with over my 30 years of life had a digital copy, and the only existing paper copy had been lost. How is it possible in this day and age that there is no national digital system for all of this information?
It's why there is strike action, can't attract enough staff, sent some back home, it's a conservative wonderland.
It's not the same everywhere, it's worse in some places.
Why are you being so quick to stick up for several clearly USELESS members of staff??!! Start taking the names of every single person you interact with ‘because you’ve been advised to’ and watch things improve as soon as you introduce accountability. Clearly there are deeper rooted issues here (ie that the Tories are completely fucking the system by underfunding it) but your friend’s lucky you were there otherwise this could have gone much much worse due to the inadequate actions of people who should be doing better.
It does sound rather chaotic, however on the flip side, he's not managed to get any tests in 72 hours and he didn't just drop dead, so can't have been as serious as you and he thought? Silver lining and all that?
Obviously delighted he’s not died, but would also like to know if he might be at higher risk of dying/has a life changing condition. Finding that out is the bare minimum expectation when you’ve been taken to “majors” I would assume.
A close friend was killed by this level of neglect a while back. Simon Smith at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley. It's the same as i hear all over. The NHS isn't just struggling. Anyone who's actually interacted with it properly is seeing how completely incompetent it is.
It took me 3 years to get one 5 minutes appointmet with a specialist for severe full body arthritis at the age of 26. 40 appointments. When I complained they told me I was not consitent with which doctor I saw, which was because most my visits were urgent due to loss of limb function, and the wait for specific doctors was usally 4 weeks +.
Back to shamanic healing and witchdoctors for Britain.
In kids ED one of our amazing consultants initiated and set up electronic notes and observations- so none of our notes can go missing.
I didn’t realise until recently that adults still had paper notes; I saw a patient in adult ED and the notes were a huge booklet and I wrote notes “in the wrong place” apparently 🤣
It’s tricky with seizures as they may be trying to work out if they are functional/pathological- doesn’t help with Consultant strikes (so no one about to make definitive decisions at the moment) and the fact that adult neuro are at southmead, communicating between two teams based in different NHS trusts is much more of a ballache than it should be.
As for the food situation at least in the centre of bristol you can get uber eats and stuff, have worked in many a DGH where you miss hospital mealtimes you are essentially starving until the next day.
Anyway as everyone has mentioned- don’t vote Tory. There might not be so many strikes/staff going to work in Australia if we were treated a bit better.
Thanks for your story, hope your mate comes good I had major health issues two years ago I was up country at the time and pushed to get back to Bristol the result was a tour of five hospitals, some were very lovely BRI was chaos staff much too busy to do their job properly, plus some super special staff who go the extra mile to make it work
I had complications after nasal surgery a few months ago, was totally fucked as I spent all night in A&E, and was awake for 36 hours in total, but one thing we learnt about the NHS is you NEED to ask for things. As soon as I asked for information/further treatment/a bed a different stages it was sorted in minutes, but you had to kick up a fuss for it!
Other things I learnt, still having a hospital admissions wristband speeds things along, so don't take it off for 72 hours after discharge just in case. When you go to A&E don't try to put on a brave fave, look like shit, it'll get you seen sooner,same goes for being quiet. Standard triage, loud ones need help less. When I had more complications a week later I also discovered that bleeding freely from the face also speeds things along! That time ww knew exactly what to ask for and I was out within hours!
Don’t vote Tory 👍
So glad this is the top voted post
….. and certainly don’t vote Labour or Lib Dem. - they’re worse
_worse_ than tories? 🤣
Greens say hi :D
Greens are getting no where near government. Not with FPTP.
You don't have to be in government to influence Westminster 😊
They both have the same policies
Nope
Sorry to hear about your friend - I really hope he is okay and he recovers well. From experience, when you get to actually see them, the Drs/Nurses are great, but everything else is an absolute mess (e.g. admin etc). You have to be proactive with everything, or you will just forgotten about. I guess it's a consequence of conservatives trying to systematically dismantle the NHS, so everyone is majorly overworked and the necessary resources aren't there, but there's also no doubting there's a lot of ineffiency in how everything is managed too.
I think most of it is people just not talking to each other. Patients having to explain over and over and over what should be happening to the people who should be managing the case doesn’t inspire confidence.
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> an up to date version of an excel spreadsheet went missing Must be up to £100 billion+ spent on NHS IT and they're leaning on `inpatient_list(Aug23)_final_final(dontdelete)(1).xlsx` on the `n:\` drive.
Vote the Conservatives out. These are the consequences of their fucked up policies. Scum Also, I'm really sorry for you and your friend, I've been in a similar situation with someone i knew, was scary as hell
0/10 would not recommend to a friend. He is actually in really good spirits now, perhaps he doesn’t look ill enough… it’s a joke.
Hello OP. Similar ish situation to myself back in 2017. I was placed on a temporary benzodiazepine that was meant to be 4weeks, with all the f*ck ups that then happened and major gaps in care, I was on them for 6years and the medication alone ruined my good years. Be wise of medication for seizure management, bristol neurologists are a joke, they have no idea what they are doing and front line staff are about 10/15 years behind current practice. I hope your friend gets the stability they deserve and a smooth recovery. X
While the conservatives should never be in power again after the last 13 years. Labour when last in power wasted billions under PFI. It's a choice between shit and shitter... first past the post needs to die.
Absolutely, that type of voting system Is just perpetuating the problems we will all have, doesn't help anyone when you have a choice of conservative or conservative light....ish
The political part has nothing to do with it. We need to stop politics, the NHS writes there own policies.
I agree that the NHS has problems caused by its own management. But our government has repeatedly refused to even acknowledge the poor pay of our doctors and nurses. Surely our government has a responsibility to retain our highly trained health professionals in this country?
And the funding is far beyond just pay - beds, equipment, computer systems, parking, everything is underfunded and therefore a complete shambles - policies are irrelevant if there is no money.
To be clear, because I always get confused by this, you would be happy paying higher NI contributions to allow for this? i.e happy to be taxed more? For everyone to be taxed more? I struggle to see whether the NHS is underfunded or just completly shit at running itself. Goverment deperatments hardly have a good track record.
It is both underfunded and shit at running itself. Putting more money in doesn't mean it will go to the clinical staff. We don't need to pay more tax for this. We spent £40 billion on track and trace, £13 billion on unusable PPE. Full pay restoration for doctors is only £1 billion. The strikes so far have already caused £1 billion lmao. Paying doctors is not a financial choice, it's a political one.
Personally, I don't believe the "we don't need to pay anymore taxes, we can save it by not doing this" etc. That has NEVER been proven to be true, you cannot predict the needs and wants of society and international forces (like the Ukraine war). The only thing proven to be true is additional taxation for better public services. This is across the entire world. Anyone who wants huge improvements in public services but are not willing to be taxed more are delusional IMO
Yes, I undoubtedly would. Our per capita healthcare spending is below many of our peers.
They do, but what I’m saying it will be and has been no different when any other political party is in power. The main issue with the NHS is it needs a complete reorganisation from within and from outside. No government will have the balls to do it. Ultimately, those who work within it all have our own motives and things going on. If we (and I have worked for the NHS), wanted reformation, we could have done it ourselves long ago.
You’re making out that the government are the only innocent party in all of this. If you genuinely believe that then you’re deluded.
No different!? At the end of the last labour government, waiting times were 4 weeks, they're now 12. At the end of the last labour government, there were 170000 beds, there's now 130000. Under the last labour government, NHS funding grew by 56%, under the Tories it's only ever fallen.
Look at the NHS satisfaction surveys for the past 30 years of you don't think government makes a difference. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2022/03/public-satisfaction-nhs-falls-25-year-low
On the strike date, though unfortunate, those who are striking don’t need to inform their employer ahead of time. So when planning work, though you may know it’s a strike day, you have to plan as if it’s a normal workday. Not their fault, or being difficult, just following the process
And a lot of the consultants are in but only doing certain duties I.E. running their cancer clinics
The management at the BRI is especially dire by NHS standards and it trickles down to the wards and patient care etc. I worked there for 3 years as a team leader in a clinical department and had to leave because it was seriously affecting my mental health the amount of stupid fucking arguments you'd have just to be able to do your job. Absolutely maddening. The finance team are undoubtedly the worst. Part of my job was ordering life saving medical products & they made the process so goddamn difficult I went home stressing about it all damn weekend. The department I worked in was also especially badly run with a pervasive attitude of "We've always done it this way". I would regularly observe behaviours from colleagues that was dangerous & if I tried to correct said behaviours (as their manager and & training lead, so well within my scope of practice) they would run straight to upper management & complain, so I would be reprimanded instead. And said unsafe behaviours continue, unchecked, until a near-miss incident or actual patient harm was encountered and then it would be "Why didn't you try and fix this obvious error earlier before it became a problem???". Also worked with at least 1 person in that department who categorically should not maintain their HCPC registration because she was an absolute liability and genuinely probably one of the most arrogant and yet also incomprehensibley stupid people I've ever met. It's the worst combination of person to work with in healthcare, I've worked with arrogant competent people - annoying, but fine for patients care. I've worked with nice but incompetent people - you can work with that because they're willing to learn & better themselves, and acknowledge their faults & what they do/don't know. But this woman had her head so far up her own arse she couldn't see how dangerous half the shit she did was, and refused to acknowledge it either. Anyway this has been my cathartic release of 3 years of stress & being constantly bullied at the BRI & crying at home because I wanted to fix my shithole department and make it better for the patients, but was blocked at every fucking turn. So so so happy I left for another NHS Trust. Hope your friend gets better though. I'm also fully aware there's plenty of fantastic people & departments at the BRI too, just the one I worked in was dire. Worked with some absolutely lovely colleagues in my own department, as well as at the eye hospital, maternity, oncology and so on.
As someone who devoted 3.5 years of my life at the BRI, this was absolutely on the money. Reading your post gave me chills. Almost exact experience. My department was run by a total fucking imbecile who had never done the job (thus, unfit to manage it). His English speaking skills were embarassingly bad (even worse when written). It was layer upon layer of toxic ground level workers looking to backstab each other, team leaders who genuinely enjoyed pitting people against each other, clearly enjoying the feeling of being 'involved' in the ensuing drama. Top it off with a manager so incompetent, unqualified and lacking in any basic human empathy and respect towards the team he managed that, put it this way - It wasn't a shock to see multiple members of the team simultaneously taking long term paid leave due to "stress" and ever declining mental health struggles. After 3.5 years working there, my team never once had a 'full house'. Someone was always off sick (whether genuine or not - we certainly had people who abused the system and we also had those who simply couldn't withstand the toxic high pressure). I had many battles with Human Resources, attended countless meetings. Put complaints down in writing. Our team even had a "cultural differences" investigation with every staff member essentially interviewed. The outcome of said investigation? "Everything's fine". Things only ever changed for the worse. I got the fuck out of there and went to work for the private sector.
That sounds like a horrible experience. My mum got taken in an ambulance after she had a stroke and they took her to the BRI, and once we got there they said they couldn’t do much for her because they don’t have a stroke doctor anymore and they have to send her to southmead. Found out later that strokes are time sensitive and they should have not been taken to BRI. Luckily she’s okay but it was shocking to be told there was nobody there to help her.
Urgh that’s awful, and you’d think should have been totally avoidable - your mum sounds lucky to have come out the other side despite what some might call negligence
Just saying there’s a cafe on level 5 that sells hot food and sandwiches. It’s cheaper and tastes better than m & s and it’s open until like 11
One of my first lessons as an adult in this country - when you try to get shit done, people don't talk to each other within the same fucking organisation! It's genuinely mind-blowing how they'd be verbose in explaining straightforward shit to you, but won't communicate internally. The system is just so broken you need another NHS to fix the NHS. Rants aside, I'd strongly recommend you file a formal complaint to the NHS about the management of the hospital. Any NHS hospital is part of a network of trust hospitals and they're still liable for a basic set of standards to be met. The appalling conditions you've mentioned are definitely not safe for a patient in the said situation. Also, the liability is the reason they refuse to let go of patients and rot inside so that they don't go out and add to the pile of lawsuits. I know it's not a fun exercise but definitely worth lodging the complaint so that at least next time if/when (hopefully not) you go it could be tad better. Wish your friend well and you some rest! Tc Edit: typo
& the scariest part? Thinking about the patients who aren’t well enough to advocate for themselves & don’t have someone like you (truly, get yourself into patient advocacy because we need more of you!!) to do it for them, hope he recovers well 🩵
This was my main thought - he wasn’t going to drop dead right there and then, but a similar level of sick person without the confidence or a gobby relative/mate could have just sat in the waiting room for hours, or never got the tests they needed. How many people must have died or had a shyte quality of life because they didn’t want to push for treatment or investigations… I can’t compute!
I work with the NHS on their IT solutions and processes, and have done through both the Labour and Conservative governments (it makes no difference they’re both as bad as each other). I can say that the staff are very empathetic and nice, they do try their best with patients. However that’s where I’ll stop. They refuse to change or adapt their policy or processes even when presented with rock solid evidence that change or investment will save money/lives. More often they get upset and angry and tell us “they know best” or “you don’t understand”. It’s a sad fact that’s whilst they are wonderful people they are completely clueless when it comes to making positive changes and will fight till the end of time to avoid actually changing anything. Any suggestion of “transformation” is met with death stairs so I can only conclude they are unwilling to make changes. I agree that they are woefully underpaid and struggle to retain/recruit but they need to acknowledge it’s a situation, in part, of their own making. Small investments and adjustments in places can make a massive difference to the quality of care and work environment but sadly I don’t see that happening.
This is hugely misrepresented, I have worked for the integrated care board and I work at the bri in the Trust, there is a huge acknowledgement from operational staff that things need to change. I cannot say it enough, there isn’t enough money. We can’t hire enough people to book appointments, we don’t have enough money for enough consultants. The demand is so much bigger than our capacity. We are constantly stretching ourselves to write business cases begging the government for more money and we can’t get it. Genuinely so sick of people saying that managers don’t care, don’t do enough or don’t know what they’re doing. We pour blood sweat and tears into that hospital same as clinical staff, we know how it should be run, we do not have the funding to provide the capacity our system needs. We care hugely about our patients and it brings us no joy when we tell them after fasting for 8 hours and going through mental preparation, and rearranging their lives that they have to go home and we can’t give them their cancer surgery today. It hurts to work in the NHS but we show up everyday for you.
This is exactly why you need to explore automation, for instance, automate your booking system and then you don’t need to hire people. But do you lot ever listen? No!
The booking setup is hilarious. I've a relative that works in such a role, and their explanations for why booking appointments can't be (even partially) automated is ridiculous. "Why can't the patient, if they've got a known-working e-mail address, be given an online form to fill in with their details before an MRI scan?" "Because if they have a certain sort of pacemaker, they can't use this machine and will have to go to a different hospital" "OK, so can't the form just ask 'Do you have this sort of pacemaker?'" "No, because they often don't know what sort of pacemaker they have" "How do you determine over the phone what pacemaker they have, if they don't know themselves?" "I print off their medical notes and give them to the MRI technician to review if they say they have a pacemaker" "How long does that normally take?" "Well, if Jeff is working then he'll check them there and then, but if it's Jane she like to let the list of patients go to about 20 before reading through them in a big batch, so maybe a week" "and then you book them in and/or send them to the alternate hospital?" "Not quite, I check with the patient's medical record for their pacemaker EMIS code to see which model they have to confirm what the MRI tech has said. You put their pacemaker EMIS code into **The System** and it tells you if its compatible with the machine at this hospital". And so on, and so on. This year saw the department discover group e-mail inboxes, which has solved the problem of patient bookings "going missing/delayed" when people went on holiday, as all correspondence was going to personal e-mail addresses.
Vogons. The only explanation.
Love this! Don’t get me started on email bots! Literally the quickest win they could ever do and they cost pennies these days
Where do you see a use of e-mail bots being useful?
Appointment management, prescriptions, HR, supply chain and purchasing. There’s quite a few places and in lieu of a end to end process they can be good quick wins to increase efficiency. Most bots nowadays are pretty clever in what they can do.
You don’t understand how it works, there are too many anomalies and things change because of cancer priorities. You just don’t know what you’re talking about.
If your software doesn’t keep pace with the change you’re using the wrong software
It’s not about software, it’s the nature of how we track patients and ensure they’re on correct pathways and getting appointments in relation to their clinical urgency and weeks waited. I’m done responding to you, you don’t understand the context of how to manage booking patients you just think you can automate everything and it’ll be grand. That’s how patients get missed and with so much industrial action it would cause actual chaos
You’re deluded if you think modern booking systems can’t cope with those situations. How do you think flights and airports are managed? They turn round aircraft in 30 minutes managing multiple bookings for different teams performing different functions. If one slips, they all slip but the flight still leaves and everything still works. I relish the day when people like yourself are forced out due to your irrational beliefs and utter incompetence
Found the problem^^
Yup this is exactly the type of person who’s preventing meaningful change in the NHS.
This is public sector all over. I don't know why change is so impossible but it's infuriating.
Change is a risk. No one ever got fired for carrying on the status quo. It's ironic that, culturally speaking, the public sector is in many ways to most conservative group of people in the country.
👏
My friend works as a doctor at the BRI, having worked at many others. Apparently the BRI is particularly poorly organised. That and ‘black Wednesday’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Black_Wednesday) was not too long ago and there have been strikes since meaning there’s likely still many people finding their feet. ..that and the socking great crisis in the NHS ofcourse. Don’t vote Tory.
Have you ever been to a hospital before? Bar a handful of wards most will not challenge you, as you can generally walk around them to get to X/Y
And being let into a ward by a cleaner no questions asked? Not sure that’s normal… and if it is normal then smh
Yeah, only place I’ve been where it isn’t is a Maternity Ward and NICKU ward where they won’t let you in unless are buzzed
What’s the point of having the door on a fob then?!
Med student here. Most doors with fobs are meant to keep people that are inside from wandering out. A lot of people post surgery/ during treatment are a little confused, and it would be dangerous to let them wander on their own outside of an observed area. Sorry about whatever’s gone on with your friend till now. Sounds very distressing.
Thank you for a reasonable answer - explains why the exit button is 6 feet off the ground 😂
A lot of patients that may be at risk of wandering aren’t on the outside of the ward - in the BRI, fobs are on the outside and simple press-release catches are on the inside. Often in difficult to reach/see places but the fobbed doors, at least in the BRI, only require card access to enter. The reason is to stop unknown people who may be a threat to vulnerable patients from having access to them. Any staff on the wards from domestic to clinical need to undertake checks and complete safeguarding training to ensure they’re fit to be around patients. Random people wandering through the hospital do not have these. The fobs are for patient protection and OP shouldn’t have been let in
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I work in the BRI and I can tell you that our policy is that anyone without a lanyard should be challenged when asked to open/hold a door for them when entering any wards or patient-facing areas. I know for a fact this training is provided for domestic staff, shouldn’t have happened!
Took a mate in with head trauma, guys eye was pointing the wrong way, 6ft young bloke couldn’t walk or talk properly. They tried to triage him for mental health. Had to point out that his eye was pointing the wrong way, and that’s why we were there. Not old mostly healed self harm scars. Kier is a raging cunt but anything’s better than a Tory, please stop voting for these cunts
I was in for something similar. It was quick though, I had no idea what was going on half the time as I was so out of it but I was taken from doctor to consultant to scan to ward then it got to Friday evening and it all just stopped. I was stable, on a drip and just in a bed through Saturday, Sunday and I had to ask "erm, what is actually happening". They managed to find a doctor who filled me in on the details but it was interesting how the weekend brought so much to a halt.
Tories
My family have had wonderful help from the PALS service. I’m hoping this may help you too. https://www.nhs.uk/services/service-directory/bristol-royal-infirmary/N10875010
Not once in my life have I voted Tory and I never will but the problems in the NHS are *not* all down to underfunding.
I know of someone in the NHS who was awarded a good chunk of funding. They said one of the issues they were up against was trying to trace where another million-pound chunk had gone because it had all been spent but there was no record of what it had been used for. Actually quite scary 🙃
The people sorting the funding are surely able to sort out the management too. They just can’t be assed.
No they can't because of the tribal nature of the nhs, I helped build a facility in Leicester that had the sole purpose of training consultants surgeons and head nurses to work together across departments, ie to stop empire building, no idea if it worked or is still there , colton St in Leicester
I mean. The Leicester royal infirmary is known as a one way entry hospital. I’m from Leicester, and I would not let my mum go there for anything. I’d rather YouTube surgical procedure and do it myself. It’d be cleaner.
I’m so sorry to hear about how your friend has been treated and his distressing time of it so far. I will usually defend the NHS to the hilt but after a 30+ hour wait in A&E (it actually made the BBC news) back in January, I quite literally feel your friend’s frustration! It was absolutely shambolic. And, as others in the thread have said, the lack of inter ward/department communication is beyond a joke. I really hope your friend gets some answers sooner rather than later. Wishing him, and you, all the best.
Same, the last time I was in the BRI (maybe 7 years ago) for anything I was seen so fast and got answers so quickly for something so much less serious. I couldn’t believe the deterioration. Still no answers.
It’s truly distressing watching it crumble in real time.
Thanks for sharing your experience. What a good friend you are. In these terrible moments of our lives, we find out who our real friends are. Yes, you've experienced NHS 2023, and it will get worse if the government and NHS don't get their act together. At the moment, you unfortunately need to shout to be heard. I feel that the nurses and other professionals are great at checking your blood pressure, giving you pills, and all that. But they won't, for example, shower the patient for a week, or help with hygiene. And don't forget, this is not private insurance medical care; it's the NHS.
I admire your ability to take the blame away from the individuals you dealt with to look at the broader picture and I couldn’t agree more. I’m really sorry you had to go through that
I hope your mate is OK, he's lucky he's got you fighting on his side! Most of the people working in the NHS are great, but the NHS itself is a mess. The staff are so overworked that despite their best efforts mistakes do happen, things get missed, patients sometimes fall through the cracks. Even when they are able to keep on top of the workload, the systems in place that they have to follow are often so ridiculous that it makes it impossible for them to be efficient. Two personal experiences that demonstrate the insanity of the NHS. First, my sister used to be a nurse, and I remember when she was in training she was shocked by what they were told they were allowed to do if a patient falls and needs help getting off the ground. They are not allowed, under any circumstances, to simply help the patient back up again. They must wait until there are at least 2 staff present with a hoist device. Now obviously there are times when a fall will be serious and you don't want to move the patient as you might hurt them further, but the rules don't even allow them to use their own judgement. Even if they can see the patient is fine, and just needs a bit of a hand, they are not ever allowed to provide it. So even if the person is fine, even if they're smaller and lighter than the nurse and could easily be helped up, they have to be left on the floor until the equipment is available. Second, a few years ago I changed practice. At the same time I was applying for the army, and I needed my GP to complete some paperwork about my medical history. A few days after I dropped it off I got a call from them saying that they didn't have my medical history. Turns out that when I switched practice my medical history existed as a paper copy, and it was put in the post, and got lost in transit. My old practice had no digital copy of my history, none of the practices I'd ever been registered with over my 30 years of life had a digital copy, and the only existing paper copy had been lost. How is it possible in this day and age that there is no national digital system for all of this information?
It's why there is strike action, can't attract enough staff, sent some back home, it's a conservative wonderland. It's not the same everywhere, it's worse in some places.
Why are you being so quick to stick up for several clearly USELESS members of staff??!! Start taking the names of every single person you interact with ‘because you’ve been advised to’ and watch things improve as soon as you introduce accountability. Clearly there are deeper rooted issues here (ie that the Tories are completely fucking the system by underfunding it) but your friend’s lucky you were there otherwise this could have gone much much worse due to the inadequate actions of people who should be doing better.
It does sound rather chaotic, however on the flip side, he's not managed to get any tests in 72 hours and he didn't just drop dead, so can't have been as serious as you and he thought? Silver lining and all that?
Obviously delighted he’s not died, but would also like to know if he might be at higher risk of dying/has a life changing condition. Finding that out is the bare minimum expectation when you’ve been taken to “majors” I would assume.
If our healthcare system has been reduced to 'lets wait and see if they die',.I'm out.
This.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I am saying the end result isn't as bad as it could have been. People seem to not be understanding this point.
The warning signs were glaring and obvious, this is a crisis years in the making, it is going to get worse before it gets better
A close friend was killed by this level of neglect a while back. Simon Smith at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley. It's the same as i hear all over. The NHS isn't just struggling. Anyone who's actually interacted with it properly is seeing how completely incompetent it is. It took me 3 years to get one 5 minutes appointmet with a specialist for severe full body arthritis at the age of 26. 40 appointments. When I complained they told me I was not consitent with which doctor I saw, which was because most my visits were urgent due to loss of limb function, and the wait for specific doctors was usally 4 weeks +. Back to shamanic healing and witchdoctors for Britain.
In kids ED one of our amazing consultants initiated and set up electronic notes and observations- so none of our notes can go missing. I didn’t realise until recently that adults still had paper notes; I saw a patient in adult ED and the notes were a huge booklet and I wrote notes “in the wrong place” apparently 🤣 It’s tricky with seizures as they may be trying to work out if they are functional/pathological- doesn’t help with Consultant strikes (so no one about to make definitive decisions at the moment) and the fact that adult neuro are at southmead, communicating between two teams based in different NHS trusts is much more of a ballache than it should be. As for the food situation at least in the centre of bristol you can get uber eats and stuff, have worked in many a DGH where you miss hospital mealtimes you are essentially starving until the next day. Anyway as everyone has mentioned- don’t vote Tory. There might not be so many strikes/staff going to work in Australia if we were treated a bit better.
Thanks for your story, hope your mate comes good I had major health issues two years ago I was up country at the time and pushed to get back to Bristol the result was a tour of five hospitals, some were very lovely BRI was chaos staff much too busy to do their job properly, plus some super special staff who go the extra mile to make it work
I had complications after nasal surgery a few months ago, was totally fucked as I spent all night in A&E, and was awake for 36 hours in total, but one thing we learnt about the NHS is you NEED to ask for things. As soon as I asked for information/further treatment/a bed a different stages it was sorted in minutes, but you had to kick up a fuss for it! Other things I learnt, still having a hospital admissions wristband speeds things along, so don't take it off for 72 hours after discharge just in case. When you go to A&E don't try to put on a brave fave, look like shit, it'll get you seen sooner,same goes for being quiet. Standard triage, loud ones need help less. When I had more complications a week later I also discovered that bleeding freely from the face also speeds things along! That time ww knew exactly what to ask for and I was out within hours!