Article Welcome to Soviet care: Patients neglected in NHS hospitals (UK brewing)

[C C]

The elderly patients neglected in NHS hospitals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/healt...55348.html

EXCERPTS: Elderly patients have been left languishing in their own excrement and puddles of urine for hours on end in NHS hospitals, a major charity has said.

Corridor care is a “crisis in plain sight” in A&Es (Accident & Emergency) across the country, charity Age UK warned ministers, as it described “truly shocking” incidents of poor care of elderly people waiting days on end for attention.

[...] Age UK warned that many patients are unwilling to go to A&E, even if they are in a life-threatening situation, because of their past experiences. It called on the government to “urgently” tackle corridor care as it warned that older people are disproportionately affected.

[...] “Years ago, when you went to the hospital, you felt safe. Now you don’t, you feel absolutely frightened,” she [retired NHS nurse] said.

“It was just like a third world country. The basic nursing skills that I remember being taught and would employ seem to have gone out the window. Now it’s all about ticking boxes,” she said, adding that patients are now treated as “figures on a conveyor belt” rather than as human beings.

[...] The number of people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments in England [...] stood at 44,765 in September, up from 35,909 in August.

[...] Professor Nicola Ranger, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Corridor care is a moral stain on our health service, and this report is yet more evidence of its devastating consequences. No elderly or vulnerable person should be forced to endure these conditions. It is unsafe, undignified, and unacceptable.

“Overstretched and understaffed nursing teams work hard every day to deliver the best care, but they face an impossible task. You simply cannot provide good quality care when patients are lining corridors or are pushed into any other available space.” (MORE - missing details)

https://youtu.be/vp8-trViMdg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/vp8-trViMdg

[confused2]

Back in the day the like "There's nothing more we can do" was fairly clear .. there was enough trust that most people probably wouldn't even think of asking for a second opinion. Now there are many expensive (possibly pointless) treatments available and the emphasis of treatment is now on who doesn't get it. There's a triage based on who is likely to make the least fuss. The individual tragedies are hidden in targets to be reached (or not). To show you have reached a target you need data collection - target managers - efficiency managers - cost effectiveness managers. Roughly half the NHS budget is staff .. I can't find any figure for what proportion of that budget is non-medical. The best drugs and equipment aren't much use to folks parked in a corridor lying in their own shit.
I think we need to be a bit more realistic in our expectations.
Another problem might well be that nobody dares ask anyone to do anything for fear the bullying/racism/sexist card is played and they lose their job. Back in the day the hierarchy was well established and everyone knew exactly what was expected of them. The job description of a nurse was nothing more than an unwritten agreement to do whatever the ward sister/matron/whoever told them to to do.

[C C]

[...] To show you have reached a target you need data collection - target managers - efficiency managers - cost effectiveness managers. Roughly half the NHS budget is staff .. I can't find any figure for what proportion of that budget is non-medical. [...]

In that the medical facility staff only consisted of himself and a receptionist, fictional "Doc Martin" seemed a television throwback. Though, of course, I can't rule out there still being rural communities in the UK with that kind of financial efficiency. It's just that, like across the pond, it seems highly improbable in this day and age.

In the US, the last era that a "doctor's office" in a small town consisted only of a doctor, one nurse, and a receptionist might have been the 1950s (though that could occasionally have survived into '60s or even later). Today, even with computers, they seem to have a minimum of five to six people doing non-medical work appended to the one doctor and the one nurse (albeit the nurses have also usually proliferated in number -- when they are available).