People who work in the NHS? Is it really that bad?
Posted by Xtergo@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 217 comments
I keep seeing headlines and posts about NHS doctors striking, nurses leaving, budget cuts, malpractice stories, understaffing, and general collapse-type language.
To people who work in the NHS (thank you for what you do) but is it really that bad right now? Are things genuinely on the verge of collapse in your experience, or is it exaggerated?
How do you feel about the future of the NHS? Is there any hope, or does it feel like things are steadily getting worse?
I get that a lot of it is media fearmongering and headlines making things sound worse than they are, but I wanted to ask directly, I also understand that most NHS workers are not well compensated and it's been that case for years but ..
Do you think things got worse in the current government? Or has it been carrying over from the Torries.
I know it's hard to summarise or come up with an answer, every hospital and practice has its own stories going on but I largely hear crisis like language and Doomsday like statistics about the state of the NHS.
WeakExamination3209@reddit
I think it wouldn’t be as bad if the social care sector had more funding etc because a lot of patients are med fit for discharge but are waiting for funding / social placements etc. From what I see at times members of the public do abuse the system and a lot of people have no choice but to use A&E as cuts have been made elsewhere. Yes they need more staff and yes they need more beds but there is a bigger picture as to why. There’s a lot of chiefs in these trusts that needn’t be there.
Redditor274929@reddit
I always say, instead of throwing more money at the nhs, throw it at social care and processes for guardianship.
Don't have patients waiting in hospital for a year to have guardianship when theyre perfectly fit to be at home. Don't have patients waiting on supported living when they aren't sick. Don't have patients waiting in hospitals bc theres no care home beds.
Hospitals can physically only hold so many patients and a very significant number of them are medically fit and dont need to be there, but nobody outside the hospital can afford to get them out.
ettabriest@reddit
Open state EPHs. Like they had in the 70s.
Prestigious-Gold6759@reddit
EPH?
Elgolview@reddit
Elderly Persons Home?
WingsofFlight@reddit
This this
escanlan11@reddit
Soo many patients are in hospital when they should be in addiction services, supported living or some sort of rehabilitation center it is mad
Ok-Credit-8251@reddit
No it's called "care in the community." That's what you were left with when all the mental health institutes were closed down.People who can't cope alone left to their own devices. I said at the time this one massive mess they are creating along with ward managers. However the public let it happen as they usually do .So those old enough to remember all that happenening give yourselves a pat on the back. Oh and most social care is managed by your local council not the nhs.
BeautyGoesToBenidorm@reddit
This happened in my hometown. The patients were shoved into one block of flats in a very rough area, and left to fend for themselves.
It was beyond heartbreaking.
takhana@reddit
This is the direction the current government is trying to push physical health care into as well with their Home First approach. It really concerns me, as someone who deals with discharges day in, day out. There just isn’t the support there for it as an approach without huge investment in social care and charity networks.
I don’t believe that hospitals should be for people who aren’t sick but equally when there aren’t any tertiary care options for people to help them rehab safely there’s very little option. The choice is stay in hospital until they’re fully safe functionally or send them home when they can barely manage anything and hope they can get to A and E next time they have a fall rather than dying on their bedroom floor.
Independent-Chair-27@reddit
I think Doctors and NHS have done OKish in the cuts to services. End result as other services were cut NHS picks up the slack. As Staff demand more money for increasingly desperate working conditions these other services will be further cut.
escanlan11@reddit
This whole thread suggests the other wise, the nhs can't pick up the slack anymore.
And these doctors deserve the money!! Do you want someone struggling professionally and financially in charge of your life? Can't wait for the RCN to follow their lead
Independent-Chair-27@reddit
No it can't pick up slack and never could. It's just where people end up when every other service has been cut.
I don't think the money is there to provide universal healthcare. Unless we can reshape the tax system. But the lower earners are whacked with rent and stagnant wages. Higher earners are already hit with cliff edges designed to discourage earning money.
Doctors will get their money once the NHS collapses. Doctors can focus on treating people with money like the foreign systems they leave the UK to work in.
AnonymousBanana7@reddit
Lol trying to guilt public sector workers into accepting appalling pay by blaming them for further cuts to other services. Disgusting.
Why do public sector workers have to pay from their own pockets for the shit state of this shithole country?
Just fucking privatise it at this point. The British public have shown time and time again that they're too spiteful, greedy and thick for public services to work in the long run. They will take the absolute piss out of public sector workers until there's nobody left wanting to do the job.
obbitz@reddit
Vast swaths of the NHS are already privatised.
Thatcher devised the NHS internal market.
Major brought it into Law.
Blair and Brown implemented the NHS internal market with added PFI.
The Tories put it on steroids and passed legislation that lets outsourced services hide behind the NHS logo.
Catering, cleaning, portering, security, ambulance, maintenance, imaging, laboratory testing, GP surgeries all outsourced and large sums of NHS money it going to executives and shareholders before it gets anyway near a patient.
There are now parallel chains of management, the outsourced management and the teams NHS managers negotiating, checking enforcing contracts.
There are conflicting interest, NHS - patients, outsourced - profits.
We are heading towards the incredibly inefficient USA model where in a lot of states the largest industry is healthcare and insurance.
Redditor274929@reddit
Couldn't agree more
AnonymousBanana7@reddit
And stop letting patients stay in hospital because they don't want to leave.
I remember a woman who had been MFFD for a while, when they eventually found her a care home, sitting at the nurses station literally fucking SCREAMING because she didn't want to go to that one.
They ended up relenting and letting her stay until the family found one they were all happy with.
It's a fucking joke.
Redditor274929@reddit
Yep, even had a patient claim he was suicidal to avoid discharge. Even if he was, it was an ENT ward so we still weren't keeping him
Cantdecide1207@reddit
There was a news article about similar situation in Northampton! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c897ew0ekp4o.amp
Icy-Belt-8519@reddit
Absolutely! My nan was in hospital for weeks longer than needed because the social care took so long to get in place
WeakExamination3209@reddit
It’s so sad the elderly are the ones who are getting the shitty end of the stick sometimes. I hope you nan is ok and settled now.
Icy-Belt-8519@reddit
It is, but then it has a huge impact on the whole of health care unfortunately, then ends up having an impact the other end, I'm a paramedic and we're just stuck outside the hospital hours on end, often with elderly people, it's not fair
Thankyou, this was a few years ago, we finally sorted social care out after a while and and she was settled and comfortable for the last few years of her life 🙂
WeakExamination3209@reddit
Yes I see the paramedics in our corridors daily it’s so grim to walk past. I had to work on corridors over the weekend I felt sorry the the patients and paramedics waiting around in the heat with no fans 🥵 you all do a great job 👏
bbshdbbs02@reddit
I work in social care and it’s just as much of a shitshow as the nhs is.
WeakExamination3209@reddit
You all do an amazing job also, but you can only work with the staffing and budget you have available to you same as the NHS. I’ve worked in the trusts for 15 years I think I came in just as tories took over and that’s when things in our trust began to get cut, staffing community care facilities etc and it has never recovered. The mental heath sector needs massive investment as the patients end up needing 1:1 care sometimes up to a year in hospital as they are waiting for a bed space in a place suitable for them out in community. Sometimes the 1:1 patients end up in a bay together so it’s 1 x staff for 6 1:1 patients and then you get staff burn out and then have no staff as they go off sick. It’s an ongoing nightmare across the board I think. I’d love the government to actually speak to proper staff on the floor and really understand what the issues are and how frustrating it is trying to provide proper care without the proper support. It grinds me when you see visits from officials and the hierarchy are waiting in the line all smiles when they are they are part problem turning a blind eye so they have their promotions. I love the NHS and I’m proud to work for them it makes me so sad though watching it spiral though.
Sil_Lavellan@reddit
I was on a ward (not my usual) on Friday and there were staff there at the end of their tether. There were multiple patients yelling for help, one guy begging me to let him go home (not remotely my decision) and another guy who had no idea of where he was but wouldn't sit down. He would get up and start looking for a bus or the ticket office of the cinema in all corners of the ward the minute the nurse or HCAs back was turned.
A member of the care staff was saying "I sound like a horrible person but I wish they'd give a rest..."
You're far from horrible people. You're the kindest and most caring people out there.
bbshdbbs02@reddit
It’s all about budgets pretty much. We try our best but we’re always understaffed so can’t do as good a job as we would like, a lot of corners get cut per managements request. Nobody wants to do the job for barely above minimum wage. There are far too many people who aren’t working in the sector for the right reasons, because my employer have got desperate and accept literally anyone who applies. Some of the people I look after are extremely racist because that was the norm when they grew up or they have learning disabilities so they don’t understand that it’s wrong, so you can imagine how things go down when yet another carer from another country starts the job.
We urgently require a massive boost in funding and pay rises to save the sector otherwise it will go down like a sinking ship, have already noticed a huge difference since before Covid and it’s not for the better I can assure you that.
swallowyoursadness@reddit
My Dad was stuck in hospital for 6 weeks because they couldn't arrange a care plan for him between counties. When they did finally figure out how to get him care in a different county, he was then waiting even longer for a care company to have availability. Not only did he not need to be in hospital, his health was deteriorating because he was stuck in hospital.
Active-Answer1858@reddit
Amen. As someone working in urgent response and longer term rehab in community NHS, social care has a lot to answer for as this is the biggest impact to our work. Not "winter pressures" or norovirus or C-diff or sepsis.. It's how they are discharged, how staying home supported is sustainable. Health and social care are inextribably undeniably linked but it never happens to be truly acknowledged by powers that be.
alipal01@reddit
this is 100% one of the biggest problems especially in elderly and mental health care, if people can’t get discharged other people can’t get seen and everything gets backed up, especially in places like elderly care where the longer people wait for discharge the more likely they are to develop a new illness and have to stay longer/unfortunately pass away
GlumTrack@reddit
Check out r/doctorsuk and r/nursinguk
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Oh my
Emergency_Dispatch@reddit
r/ParamedicsUK too.
Bum-Sniffer@reddit
I worked for the NHS for 7 years ‘on the ground’ and left in 2010.
Everyone was saying the same then.
A lot of middle management jobs that simply don’t need to exist. There I said it.
No-Understanding-589@reddit
My wife works in A&E and she says it's an absolute shit show. She's only been qualified as a nurse for a year but she can see so many things wrong with it.
A&E has so many people going there and it's causing care to be outright dangerous as there isn't enough staff to provide proper care. People in corridors on beds, people having heart attacks after waiting for 10 hours in A&E because they weren't ill enough to be seen yet.
Add to that the difficulty of a lot of them not speaking English and the amount of aggressive patients and it is not a nice or anyway easy place to work
She has said it's got a bit better over the last couple of months but that could just be because it's summer
Gluecagone@reddit
A&E is the place to go if you want to see the worst of British society outside of prison.
Gluecagone@reddit
Yes it is. As a doctor I despise the fact that the NHS has a complete monopoly when it comes to my training and employment and thus has no incentives to raise standards. Also, the NHS postcode lottery applies to where healthcare works in general have to work. Some trusts/hospitals are decent places to work. Other places are dumps that should be nuked.
NewStroma@reddit
Healthcare is unsustainable. Patients are increasingly complex, the costs increase beyond inflation all the time. This is the same for public, insurance-based, private and mixed systems everywhere. We are just slightly further down the line than other countries. Even the systems that everyone raves about in Continental Europe have their issues. No government wants to have these uncomfortable conversations with the public, so we'll continue to muddle through until the whole scheme collapses.
AtLeastOneCat@reddit
Do you know what is causing the complexity? Is it a lack of preventative healthcare, longer life expectancy, extra complications from Covid?
jezebelbriar@reddit
People are surviving with medical advances but that doesn't always translate into quality of life. People ar also living with much larger variety of different conditions. There are also increases in conditions like diabetes and hypertension, which has consequences from mid-life onwards.
Aetheriao@reddit
The insane expectations for the elderly don’t help.
Too many old patients getting expensive treatment so they can make it a bit longer in a care home.
And then so many beds in hospital are just being used as a care home overflow. Patients and social care make it a nightmare. Someone who is clearly never going home can spend 6-9 months in hospital while their family block attempts to move them because then they can’t get grannies house. Its so bad it’s literally the main cause of everything. 1 in 3 patients across the nhs could be discharged tomorrow if it was based on who needs actual medical treatment and not just well the care home/family don’t want them back/need to go into care and they can’t go home.
malcolmmonkey@reddit
My wife’s grandmother must have cost the NHS a million pounds in her last decade. ENDLESS intervention to try and squeeze out another few months of a life she fucking hated.
Aetheriao@reddit
Yep same with my granddad - 100 years old. Dad argues with every doctor. He’s spent moultiple months in hospital this year, over 5 ambulances. And the only time they finally drew the line and said no was major surgery, thank god. He himself doesn’t give two fucks. He regularly talks about how he can’t wait to go. But any suggestion of a lowered ceiling of care my dad’s straight down there screaming at staff how they’re killing him and he doesn’t understand as he’s got dementia.
I geinuinely think what we’re doing to him is medical elder abuse. Let alone the tax of like 10s of people his care this year alone has cost.
StandardBanger@reddit
I sat in the local A&E for 48 hours with my Mum after a nasty fall & the volume of elderly people who were brought in because it was a care homes ‘policy’ for small issues was nuuuuuuuuuuuts. One non-ambulatory gentleman was brought in because he wasn’t cooperating with care home staff & had become a bit shouty… WTF? That’s a whole ambo crew & a bed taken up for lord knows how long as the care home refused to have him back 🤦🏻♀️
Isgortio@reddit
I work in care and one of their policies is "if a client is falling over, don't try to catch them, just let them fall, don't help them up and then call an ambulance". We could prevent someone from injuring themselves by doing what a normal person would do, but no, they "don't want us to injure ourselves". I'm young, I can withstand an old lady falling on me. It feels inhumane to just watch them fall, get hurt and then leave them there for however long until an ambulance arrives. For some of these people, once they go into hospital they're not coming back out.
Reddit_user81015@reddit
Don't try and catch people who are falling, you're very likely to cause further unjuries
BiscuitCrumbsInBed@reddit
I work on an emergency surgical ward. We had a patient with us for over 2 months, medically fit. COTE wouldn't take her as they were rammed. She wasn't safe to go home, and needed a care home. The family were going to fund it. Took ages to get them to start looking, then they kept saying there were issues with every place they looked at. She was getting more fed up, started getting violent and abusive. We had to get security. Her mood went completely downhill. We had the social team talking to the family nearly daily, trying to find a solution. The family visited maybe once a week, always causing issues over nothing. In the end, she was threatened with being evicted because nothing was stopping her from going to any of these homes, aside from her family. I felt so sorry for her. Bloody doctors, every day 'you can go home now' - no she can't! Stop saying that to her!
escanlan11@reddit
Aah this has driven me mad for so long!! A consultant had a go at me for telling him on ward round (when I was on ky first ward placement as a student nurse) for telling him he couldn't discharge a patient as they had no social care set up! So glad the junior doctor was there and backed me up
AtLeastOneCat@reddit
Thanks for answering. I've been in and out of hospitals myself recently after Covid triggered something with my heart and was repeatedly told that I was exactly the type of patient who SHOULD have been taken to a ward and observed overnight but there were simply no beds. I ended up in A&E five times with the same problem. "We want to keep you in as it's going to happen again but we have no beds. Come back when you have another episode."
I wouldn't be surprised if people were dying because of this. I am relatively lucky in that I was treated every time symptoms became life-threatening but it meant I was stuck in this horrible cycle, unable to work, waiting for the next big "episode" to be bad enough to go back into A&E. Couldn't be left alone. Mad.
I'm now looking into private healthcare because the waiting lists to get this thing properly diagnosed are years long and I just want to live.
(Sorry, needed that rant. I just want to know WHY the NHS is the way it is.)
HenrikBanjo@reddit
All of those count. But the underlying reason is that humans evolved for an entirely different environment and way of life. Hence we’re suffering from mismatch diseases. Modern medicine keeps us alive much longer but doesn’t improve our health so we need more healthcare as we age.
Additionally, healthcare doesn’t get cheaper because it’s very labour intensive and reliant on new technologies and specialised knowledge.
pajamakitten@reddit
I am going to be a bit morbid here but hear me out.
I work down in the transfusion lab and our bread and butter is haematology patients i.e. those with cancers like leukaemia, myeloma etc. Some people can have those and need minimal treatment, living for years with low levels of illness. Some get really sick and need a lot of medical interventions to stay alive. They get regular transfusions daily on top of other treatments. The problem is that transfusions are never without risk and do not always solve the issue. You have patients who are very ill kept alive for years but who now have complex transfusion requirements because of how many transfusions they have had. They spend their life in and out of hospital, being admitted a few days after release because they are just so sick they can barely last at home. It might be kinder in these cases to talk about palliative care, however we insist on treating them because we do not talk about death in the UK.
MirabellaJean962@reddit
All of these plus general decline of people's mental health due to (akong other reasons) a disillusionment with current capitalist societies
Maketso@reddit
Calling healthcare a scheme is sure one wild take. It's wrong, but it's a take. No system will ever be perfect, or remotely close to it. Either way, the universal healthcare countries will save your life without bankrupting you if its needed.
palishkoto@reddit
Scheme in UK English is a neutral word. It just means some kind of plan/system/arrangement, without necessarily being negative like in N America. The NHS has plenty of initiatives it calls schemes, like the Graduate Management Training Scheme, Pension Scheme, Low Income Scheme, etc.
Artic___Fox@reddit
Some trusts/ICB's have been asked to cut non-patient facing staffing to 2015 levels, which in some cases is 50% of the current work force, on top of budget cutting, on top of fines, on top of possible more fines. This is on top of failing infrastructure from decades of underfunding by central government. Every single decision is being micromanaged and cut to the bone. So yes, it really is that bad.
jezebelbriar@reddit
I hate how little this is being reported. Its devastating and I work in the community. We are struggling.
hesnojuanpablo@reddit
It's pretty concerning. I think a lot of the 10 year plan is reasonable in theory, but the reality of taking care to community-based approach will be very costly (particularly for new community centres etc), and the shift itself will bring entirely new challenges.
I think a lot of the issues lie in basic staff experience matters. You'd be surprised in a hospital how little each area/department understands the other, and because of that they get frustrated with each other, devalue each other's input or miss something that detracts from patient experience. But there's rarely time for teams to collaborate, let alone hospitals. Flexible working is a challenge, people's fulfilment at work (which is often intrinsically linked to feeling like you can make a difference to patients) is being limited by circumstances very much out of their control, communication is often piss poor.
By robbing Peter to pay Paul the NHS is also now in a position where there will be job losses across many hospitals by the end of this year, and for some again next year. Most who work in the NHS agree that there's an additional layer of management that wasn't previously there that isn't adding value, but they embed themselves in self-protection and hold the decision-making power. They aren't going to remove themselves, so the changes that organisations will see are going to come from the support staff that are 'doers'. That's only going to add more pressure on clinical services.
It's all very complex and some change is needed - it costs billions and throwing money at it hasn't worked. But at the minute, certainly in some hospitals, so much power is with people who haven't a clue about delivering clinical services and don't acknowledge that because their priorities are totally different - their priorities are numbers, clinical service priorities are patients. Putting the power back in the hands of clinical staff might mean things aren't always as efficient or glossy, but I think they'd do a better job of balancing the two.
jezebelbriar@reddit
The community based caee is nothing new. And it is almost comical if it wasn't depressing that they are saying this yet stripping ICBs who fund GP and community care by 50 per cent budget this year on top of 20-30% cuts already last year.
I work in the community. We can't do more with less. People are only getting older and more complex.
Murka-Lurka@reddit
Very well written response.
The concept of understaffing is generally thought of as excellent staff not having enough time to do everything. But as my husband is a nurse and one of his jobs is to support staff that are close to being fired it includes staff who gave skills that the NHS needs but are not in the right places.
It also includes staff who do not have the experience or clinical skills (yet) to be put into positions of authority but are being rushed through because there is no one else. Staff who aren’t good fit because the area they work in requires skills that they don’t have (some are doing work that was a junior doctor role 20 years ago). Finally, people are passing courses that they would have failed 30 years ago but the pressure to get enough staff qualified means people are not getting the academic support or just aren’t right for nursing are pushed through and become someone else’s problem.
millerz72@reddit
Your point about job losses in corporate services is hugely important and I don’t think many outside the service even understand.
Agree there are a tier of roles that are of dubious value but it seems that cuts are directed at important admin roles that are already massively over stretched - at a time when the demand for these teams is growing and becoming increasingly complex.
No_Sherbert_9281@reddit
Put it this way... I have to pay £26 pm for a parking permit, and you know what? Since I moved to my current trust I feel it's an absolute privilege in comparison to my previous trust that for my £26pm I not only get a parking spot, but I get to park on actually tarmac! .... take from that what you will.
Mjaikumar@reddit
Psychiatrist in CAMHS& ID with independent General adult- mental health work - all trusts have numerous( 10-12) detained patient waiting for bed( sometimes have offending history, risky to both self/ others) sometimes for 7-10 days - CAMHS- waitlist numbers are creatively played using new models,1/3 referrals refused, large numbers sent away to third sector charity, ultimately re- referred. See children’s commissioner report if u don’t believe me. - ID- really in tricky shape. Beds cut down nationally to 1/3, now in super expensive package of care- 8k/ week is low end of PoC. Massive workforce crisis, ID nurses just ‘Consult’. - CAMHS-ID- don’t get me started!
WhoLets1968@reddit
I can't say as I don't work in medicine but myy daughter wanted to be a doctor from the age of 12 or 13.
Worked hard and chose her path carefully at school...got the GCSEs then A levels...that's 4 yrs if studying/exams
The joy and excitement of getting a place at medical school was overwhelming
Then 5 yrs at medical school...hard work..boom another 2 degrees
Into foundational, another 2 yrs...
12/14 HR shift works was ridiculous No social life Work Home Eat Sleep Back on the treadmill
Ok, many do that but if she made a mistake due to tiredness... consequences all round are dire...bye bye career
Still studying as on GP course..another few yrs of training
She regrets her decision..not because of the wanting to help people and job but pay and conditions are not great..and that putting it mildly...
i worry she will burn out before 35
Her friends she qualified with, after 2 yrs left for New Zealand
She is committed to the ideals of the NHS..but now married it's not as easy to jump ship
There was a time being a doctor was respectable and prestigious.
Not sure it is these days
Paying a £1000 a yr to BMA/,GMC and others just to 'be a doctor '
The idealistic dreams, hope and desires of that 13yr old has been almost battered out of my 28yr old....it's been a long slog (and training is still not over)
tiffsbird@reddit
Where I work we are all from consultants down to cleaners fed up and under loads of pressure. Stress is a major problem and most of us have an unmanageable workload and the problems get passed down the line
beepbop24hha@reddit
I gave up my nursing registration in 2020 and left the nhs, I was only qualified for 4 years but hated every moment of it. I met and worked with many amazing members of staff but unfortunately there was so many who would be willing to throw you under the bus so they avoided repercussions, that coupled with too many managers who had no understanding of management and also did not want to help on the floor.
Got to the point that I was constantly on sick leave because I couldn’t face waking up and going in.
I love our nhs, I wouldn’t want to see it go and I definitely do not want a system like the US but it is clear that changes need to happen. The government could start by actually funding services appropriately. We
No_Watercress8348@reddit
I have a strong feeling it’s far, far worse.
toonlass91@reddit
I have just left wards after nearly 13 years due to level of stress. Patients have more needs than ever before, are more demanding. Some relatives are also more demanding, there is more paperwork than ever before:- if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen is what we are taught so that you are legally covered. And all with less staff. I left a 30 bedded unit staffed generally with 3 qualified staff nurses and 4 healthcare assistants (on a good day). I now work in an outpatient type area and have much less stress, I know people leaving the country and the progression all together
leclercwitch@reddit
Yes. I am currently covering two other people’s jobs and we are terribly understaffed. I’m leaving on Thursday to go into the private sector. I hated it here. I like the work but I’d like to not be working 3 peoples jobs at any given time. They won’t hire more people because of the cost cutting measures. It’s so shit.
Mobile_Tumbleweed_60@reddit
We had a monthly meeting with our Chief Exec, around 100 people in the call, the guy put up a slido asking everyone to put questions in, every single one was about "is my job safe" and he ignored all of them and started talking about the upcoming heatwave. So yeah, it's not great.
Another_Female_Face@reddit
I’ve only worked in the nhs for 3 years. What I’ve seen is that there are lots of good people doing their best and who care but the funding and the way of signing off decisions is so long winded it stops progress happening quickly. Also as much as people don’t believe it, jobs in the NHS like comms and engagement are actually really important- people wouldn’t know anything about changes or be able to have their say without them
throwaway_ArBe@reddit
Relaying just what my sister has said, not my own opinion on it. She is a receptionist but is providing improvised care for people on the regular due to staff shortages. This is in A and E.
pimpom0789@reddit
Community pediatric speech therapist here. Waiting lists for therapy are now 2 years+ children are getting more complex and as it's taking so long to get therapy it's harder and taking longer to resolve problems. Audiology waiting times are even worse, hearing loss being late identified. Massively impacting some children's speech and language development. Waiting times for ASD and ADHD assessments also 2+years. Staff doing their best, struggling to recruit and retain. +Complaints from families and attendance at tribunals making an almost full time job
Limbo365@reddit
My SO is NHS as are many of my friends, just based on what I've been told I've come to the conclusion that the NHS is fundamentally broken and the only way to "fix" it is to essentially scrap it and start again from scratch
At a national level you have a century of different governments deciding that they have a new pet project and starting new services, except after the first year or two the funding for the new thing dries up but the NHS is now expected to provide that service, so they end up having to trim a little off everyone else to fund it, robbing peter to pay paul and as a result everyone is under resourced
At a local and regional level you have staff working in services that are probably on average 50% manned, in some cases less, the difference is often made up with agency staff who can't do as much as regular staff (and get paid twice as much in some cases) as a result your doing more work for less money which causes a constant attrition as people leave to be agency staff (which why wouldn't you) so the churn of staff coming and going is huge, this means that the days of having 15 year veterans working the wards are gone, most staff are only there a few years before they move on to something else which means alot of institutional knowledge gets lost
The quality of those new staff has gone down massively too, most of the NHS bursary programs have been stopped which means that only those who can afford to go to uni (or are willing/able to go into massive debt) can even qualify, there's also the issue that since they are paying customers universities seem to be unwilling to fail them even when they are completely useless (this seems to be particularly the case with international students who pay double/triple what UK students pay, your uni getting a reputation for failing people is bad for business)
The result has been worse quality recruits being trained by less experienced veterans all of whom are massively overworked to the point of perpetual burnout, out of touch managers who are either career administrators or who haven't worked on a ward in decades
Add into all this the fact that the age of the population is climbing (and the care homes are competing for those same medical staff) and every other service is under resourced (which means often mental health patients are being treated by medical staff because the MH services are overwhelmed) and the whole thing is a recipe for disaster
Honestly the only reason it's all even barely functioning is because the frontline NHS staff are killing themselves trying to do the best they can with basically zero resources and zero hope
Glittering-Wall2557@reddit
The bit about new projects and funding running out is spot on. So much funding goes towards research and innovation and finding out how much something may improve services. But the funding for implementing it and running a service longer term isn’t there.
The technological advancements that could make the NHS so much more efficient have arrived but the NHS can’t keep up.
AbjectGovernment1247@reddit
If you can stand the bullying and toxicity, you'll be fine.
The toxicity I saw in the trust I worked for was something else. I ended up leaving to save my sanity.
Wide_Appearance5680@reddit
Everything is getting worse. You could blame lots of things - workforce planning (or lack thereof), or underfunding, or an ailing, ageing population, or developments in medical technology and fancy drugs that cost thousands of pounds. If I had to pick one social trend that I think is responsible for a lot of the extra burden it would be that patients and their families (and some healthcare staff) are often very bad at recognising what is a part of the natural ageing process that can't really be "fixed."
I also think that the NHS is in something of a death spiral of ever increasing demand causing ever decreasing efficiency. The underfunding and the mismatch between demand and available resources makes is the source of huge inefficiencies.
The metaphor I would use is when I worked in a big city A&E. If it was quiet then it was very easy to work in and get things done quickly. When it was busy, it was like wading through treacle getting anything done. If it was quiet I could probably see 4 patients in an hour but when it was busy you were lucky if I would see one and hour. There weren't enough cubicles so if you wanted to see a patient you had to find a cubicle that already had a patient in it but who could go in the corridor then wheel them out, then find a new trolley, then find the bed linen, then go get your patient. There were patients on trolleys in the corridor that you had to weave in and out of. Every third patient would try to ask you for something - a glass of water, to know when the doctor was coming to see them, could you help them get to the toilet - and your choice was to either ignore them or get side tracked trying to help them out. Every time you sat down at a computer to request a scan or write your notes or whatever people would interrupt you - a nurse with an ECG, someone asking about their relative, or you'd notice a patient deteriorating on a trolley next you - and distract you again.
The NHS is - as a whole - like that now. Secretaries in hospital spend half their time fending off angry phone calls from patients who are annoyed that they've been waiting 18 months to see a specialist. GPs are fending off the same complaints, and signing people off sick or tinkering with their painkillers for joint problems that they were referred to an orthopaedic surgeon about 12 months ago but they haven't seen yet. Patients end up deteriorating from problems they've had for months but haven't been able to access treatment for, attend A&E only to be told it's not an emergency (because it isn't) and go home, then deteriorated again and then this time it is an emergency and end up with complications and an ITU admission that costs £20,000. It's a doom loop.
countingmystepsbaby@reddit
This is the most accurate summary I've read.
ayrc99@reddit
I’m a nurse and this is exactly what it’s like, well put
josh62442@reddit
I’m a resident doctor (been working for 6 years now). I’ve just finished a weekend of long days (13hrs) in what is regarded as one of the ‘best’ hospitals in the country. Even in this very well funded hospital, I was running around like a headless chicken. I started at 08:30, and had my first wee at 16:30 and my (working) lunch at 17:00. And this is all incredibly cushy compared to last year when I was in a much more poorly resourced hospital. Don’t get me wrong, obviously not every day is this bad, but yes, it’s bad at the moment. Absolutely not delivering the care my patients deserve despite my best efforts. And summer is supposedly the quiet time in a hospital
Sil_Lavellan@reddit
Yes. I love my job (Pharmacy Technician in oncology and haematology) but it's very hard to do when the message from up above is "work harder with less" and "savings, savings, savings". We're understaffed and have very restricted recruitment, yet I think Pharmacy is getting off lightly considering the pressures on nurses and HCAs.
We need to invest in community care. Like many people here, I see patients who might be better off being looked after at home, whether on a course of heavy duty antibiotics or in end of life care.
There's also a worrying amount of people who can no longer cope for themselves, or their relatives can no longer cope with them at home. We need more community nurses and doctors and beds in the community. If somebody could have checked on widower Mr J a week ago, he might not need to be in hospital for 3 weeks with sepsis. Mrs D could have had her blood transfusions or chemotherapy locally. Ms S could have recovered from her op in a bed closer to her friends and family.
ElizabethHiems@reddit
I frequently run the ward I work on as the only qualified member of staff. That means I can’t leave to use the staff loo and use the patient toilet.
If I need to give controlled drugs a member of staff runs over to help me for a minute.
I don’t take a break and I leave late.
But I still keep everyone safe and I still love my job.
The NHS is like a large fish being eaten by piranha and the piranha are politicians and businessman who want to sell it off for profit.
The profit from the NHS is live and healthy people.
driven_user@reddit
I work in a small outpatient cancer department. Its generally ok but busy. Some staff shortages. Some consultant shortages causing issues. Not particularly large waiting lists when referred for treatments. Care provided is good. Staff morale is reasonable.
I know the inpatient onc ward is busy, understaffed and stressed. Our diagnostic areas radiology surgery path are all backed up chronically and bottle neck diagnosis so waiting lists happen a lot.
countingmystepsbaby@reddit
Yes, it is as bad as reported, if not worse. Unbelievably low morale. Huge attrition of talented staff overseas. Not being able to deliver the care we want to our patients day in day out no matter how hard you work is demoralising in the extreme. One example from my work is seeing young children who have waited 2 or sometimes 3 YEARS for a community paediatric appointment (almost half their lives) and have massively deteriorated in that time. Parents are ruined, child now has had irreversible harm happen to them and are now much more medicaly complex, missed education, family deterioation, the works. Senior consultants either just about keeping the service by going above and beyond in evenings etc. and at the point of burn out, or completely checked out. Staff shortages. Children sicker than before. Sadly I do not see it getting better under Wes Streeting.
pajamakitten@reddit
Something management underplay too. They keep saying everything is fine, even when it demonstrably isn't. We keep being told we will manage but management do not want to hear that staff are falling apart trying to do that.
ICantBelieveItsNotEC@reddit
I mean, management can't exactly say "everything is fucked and there's nothing we can do to unfuck it except maybe vote in the next election if there happens to be a party with a sane healthcare manifesto", can they?
Isgortio@reddit
I was working in an NHS dental paediatric clinic last week through the uni, which is where kids are referred before having treatment under GA. Some of these referrals were 2 years old, and by the time the kids came in to see us those teeth had already fallen out because they were baby teeth. The wait list for GA where I am is at least a year, when I was near London it was nearly 4 years. This is a long time for a child to wait for dental treatment, and usually it's the kids that have other needs so would not cope in a normal dental setting :/
countingmystepsbaby@reddit
I realised in hindsight this was bleak so I wanted to add that I do not think it is inevitable. We need to have a real conversation about the state of our country's health: more infants survive prematurity which is great but many will have ongoing significant health needs, children are sicker (largely due to poverty), and there is an ageing population. The reality is that we do need to invest more in our health services - not just find yet more 'efficiences' - particularly in our infrastructure and to pay staff fairly so we stop losing so many overseas (compare Irish resident doctor salaries to ours for example.) We can turn it around but not in a cost neutral way - that's an illusion pedalled by every health sec.
Ok-Credit-8251@reddit
Well who can afford to stay home and look after an elderly parent these days and how many would actually want to? Not many. The country would be stuffed if not for getting the old dears houses to care for them. in their final few months cos theor kids didn't want clean up after them. Unless of course did all the loophole jumping 7 yrs prior to poor old mum popping her cloggs. A lot of these old folks bred some very selfish kids who don't gice a toss where their parents end up. That includes doctors and nurses.
AntiDebug@reddit
Its pretty bad where I work. I'm not medical staff. I'm technical. We are constantly short of basic supplies. Sterile towels, masks, sterile gloves in all but the most useless sizes. There is no money to get machines repaired. As it is we run the machines way longer than what their recommended lifespan is supposed to be. Recommended about 5 years we generally run them for 8+ years. By that time many of the modules no longer work but if the basic functionality of the machine is still OK then they remain in service.
A lot of the better staff members leave leaving us with the useless and lazy ones. Newly qualified nurses cant get a job as there are no vacancies. Some of them are really good but we cant take them on. I wish we could get rid of some of the crap members of staff and replace them with the good newly qualified nurses.
And yes all of that leads to poor morale which continues to exacerbate the situation.
BoomSatsuma@reddit
It’s that bad especially in things like A&E.
Corridors full of patients. Typical wait times go over 10 hours. Plenty of people who really shouldn’t be there and would be better treated in the community.
LeSaltyMantis@reddit
My ambulance trust is on its knees in debt, during the tories all of out auxilliary services were outsourced to private providers who absolute screw us over financially. The obscene level of fraud committed by our fleet services is despicable. Our occupational health is a waste of space. We dont have enough vehicles in working order that we have crews sitting on station for hours with no ability to work. We are stuck in private contracts with private ambulance providers who take the absolute piss and charge an arm and a leg for the privilege. We spend most of our time attending pts that we cant help because their needs are not being met by underfunded and understaffed primary care or mental health services and an ambulance is not the correct resource. The list goes on and on and on. Wouldnt work anywhere else. I do miss overtime and fresh milk though
northernbadlad@reddit
I'm in a different part of the NHS so excuse my ignorance - don't ambulance trusts own their own fleet then? Who's responsible for vehicle maintenance? This seems a ridiculous state of affairs.
LeSaltyMantis@reddit
We own the fleet but the maintenance and repairs are run by a private provider. a dodgy mechanic on a corporate scale
thepoliteknight@reddit
Not the case for us in emas, all maintenance is done in-house on DCAs and FRVs. NEPTS is a different story though.
iambeherit@reddit
Same situation as LFB (not sure if it's still the case) all maintenance was outsourced. I think they actually leased the vehicles. And they were rinsed.
PaidInHandPercussion@reddit
I've been working with and for the NHS for ~30 years.
Its the worst I've ever experienced.
I genuinely worry about and fear my parents needing to go into hospital and how I'd need to go in every day just to make sure they had basic care. No shade on the staff - they are morally distressed at not being able to provide even the basics. Lots of decent people trying to do their best knowing its sub par at best.
Its awful..... truly awful.
99orangeking@reddit
I have a friend who worked in the finance team at the NHS in management accounting and he said it was a really chill, great place to work with good flexibility and hours and wfh days but the pay was below market
noobtik@reddit
I work as a doctor in the nhs, before that i was working in multiple different business industries.
The NHS is NOT that bad, it is very inefficient, but so do most public organisations tbh, as people have no intention to improve it. A lot of the inefficiency problems you can see in the NHS, you can find them in big corporations.
People do like to complain though, as this is the core of british culture. Take action? No, but they will complain all day long and think themselves as the biggest victim in the world.
The NHS and all other public health services in the western countries are facing an unwinnable war because of ageing population and low birth rate, compounded by baby boomer pension crisis. Together with capitalism where less resources are allocated to people in need, the free public healthcare as the way we know it is going to vanish slowly in the future.
So the NHS is not a great organisation, but not as bad as most people say.
SingerFirm1090@reddit
I worked for the NHS for the best part of 40 years, in various roles, back office and patient facing.
I'm only talking of England, I think Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have there own issues and their NHS is controlled by their parliaments or assemblies.
Some points to remember,
I don't have a solution, but I think that party politics have too much influence, the five year term of Westminister Governments does not help, as a new minister arrives with new ideas and scraps the existing changes, yet any change takes more than four or five years to properly implement.
K4TLou@reddit
I left and went private and I’ve had zero regrets. You know it’s bad when you work for the NHS, but until you leave you really don’t know how bad it actually is. I had gotten to the point of heart palpitations each night before my shift as it gave me such anxiety. I also became very jaded towards a lot of patients as we had such a huge workload, seeing some (a lot) of patients in the hospital for something that is almost entirely the result of lifestyle choices.. it’s hard to be empathetic, but you have to be.
Imagine a job where your workload increases constantly, management get used to you completing it, so add more on. You get to the point where you can’t tolerate it anymore, and they turn around and say “well you managed it last week”. This is all compounded by the fact that equipment breaks constantly, and doesn’t get replaced. Your job gets busier and harder. Management are utterly useless and unempathetic, they only care for the numbers. There are signs up in hospitals that say abuse against staff isn’t tolerated.. it’s lies.
I hate to say it too, but the quality of staff has seriously diminished. Newly qualified staff aren’t as keen to work as they were historically, but who can blame them really? Morale is so low and there’s a lack of future prospects for many. Communication is also a lot harder now as many staff are coming from overseas, that realistically, do not meet the minimum standards for the English language. They will hang up the phone on you if they don’t understand what you’re saying… and it’s not uncommon for qualifications to be fraudulent.
r_keel_esq@reddit
One of the things that would be really helpful in threads like this would be if people understood that there is no such thing as The NHS.
There are three distinct and separate organisations named NHS in the UK, one per nation of Great Britain, with Northern Ireland's equivalent body being named HSC.
This is important because many of the problems that affect "The NHS" may only apply to one jurisdiction (Foundation Trusts don't exist north of the wall, for example)
Waxy_Duck@reddit
If you need urgent care, you'll be fine
Non-urgent waiting lists are getting ridiculous... Something has to change in the next decade or so if we don't want 2 year waiting lists to become something no one is shocked by
Morale probably isn't as bad as it's sometimes made out to be in the media... But at the same time, I've worked for the NHS for around 10 years and never thought I'd leave the UK. However, over the past year or so I've entertained the idea of moving abroad to my wife (also works in the NHS) and whilst it's not likely, it's no longer ruled out
naynaeve@reddit
A lot of Non urgent care plans are also being scrapped. Although these are not life threatening they can have debilitating effects on people’s lives.
Wide_Appearance5680@reddit
Problem with that is if you ignore non-urgent stuff it has a nasty habit of becoming urgent and more complicated - and therefore more complicated.
Wide_Appearance5680@reddit
Round my way it's 2 years to see a dermatologist, 2 years to see an orthopaedic surgeon, CAMHS waiting time is about 14 months and you cannot get an ADHD assessment as an adult full stop.
pea_soup3000@reddit
My GP won’t even refer me to gynae or for a pelvic MRI for a suspected painful, chronic lifelong condition because “waiting lists are too long”. It’s shocking…
MouldyNuggs@reddit
My SO is a mental health nurse. The mental health side of things seems to be especially poor with little to no support or training for new frontline staff. She managed 3 months of work as a community mental health nurse before she had to leave due to the adverse affect it was having on her own health.
The staff turnover is insane.
quoole@reddit
I am not, but my wife works in low level mental health support, working primarily in schools.
They have been at 50% vacancy for the entire time she has been there, and many people have come in and left quite quickly and yet they are still essentially expected to do the work. Their role, whilst really important, has been poorly planned out and there is essentially no way for her to progress in it or move into a similar role at the same band (as it's not considered a 'registered profession.)
There is a saying in their team, the NHS is held together by duct tape and good will.
From my perspective, hearing about it, it sounds like a huge issue is management. I swear they have more managers than workers and none of them have ever actually done their job (because to be a manager, you have to be from a registered profession...) I have no idea what they do all day and seem to give the rest of the team conflicting information that is wrong. For example, the NHS tracks progress through something called 'SNOWMED codes.' The system they use allows them to flag their work under several different codes (again, many of which are conflicting), but only some of them are linked to SNOWMED codes. When they ask the managers which ones they should use, they have absolutely no idea and have to go up the chain to find out and they still don't know. Consequently, her team is flagged as essentially not doing anything. When they are.
This cycle with management continues, they never seem to really know what is going on or have all the information and so have to ask up the chain.
It's also incredibly inefficient, there are several systems and databases that they are meant to update every day, but essentially have to put the same information on all of them. You could probably double the cases they could treat with more efficient systems and admin support.
Adventurous-Ad3066@reddit
It's struggling for sure.
I've been here for 30+ years.
There's always been something not right.
Currently, for me, there's an apathy amongst doctors and nurses since covid which is alarming.
But back in the old days we had a get up and go culture that was founded in no underlying expertise which was the exact opposite problem but still a problem.
ReditMcGogg@reddit
My partner was seriously ill from late August until January this year.
My take away from this experience is it’s already collapsed.
Multiple failings throughout. Terrible care. Terrible process.
pajamakitten@reddit
It has not collapsed but patients fall through the gaps at time, your partner being one. It has become a lottery like that.
ReditMcGogg@reddit
….which is a sign of…..
escanlan11@reddit
I'm so sorry for the care your partner has received. I sadly don't doubt your account, it is shocking the stories I've been told
glaekitgirl@reddit
The main issue I see is delays to discharge of medically fit people.
If social care could be properly funded and staffed, it would make a huge difference to patient flow, and - as is planned, if the idea ever gets off the ground - move a lot more care from hospital to the community.
We regularly had people stay with us for weeks while awaiting community support who would have been far better off being treated at home in familiar surroundings (particularly key for those with cognitive impairment).
Additionally, I feel we've become very risk averse. On the rehab ward I worked on, we nurses and HCAs were "braver" than some of the physiotherapists and occupational therapists at mobilising patients and encouraging independence. I can think of more than one occasion where we walked a patient to and from the toilet or shower room with assistance but also without issue; the therapy staff would be shocked when we told them this as when they were with the patient, they appeared to barely be able to walk to the end of the bed.
There was an element of some patients trying to extend their stay in hospital by appearing more helpless than they were - you can see the logic: company 24/7, free meals, bed changed every day, assistance to the bathroom/shower room when needed, free TV etc - but some of the therapy staff really slowed progression down by being overly cautious.
I don't blame them; no one wants to send a patient home, have them fall within days and be back in hospital and then be accused of unsafe practice/have a complaint lodged against them. But at the same time, there is ALWAYS a risk of this happening, no matter how many safeguards are in place.
Speedboy7777@reddit
Some of it is, some of it isn’t. I work in a dental training hospital, and the core staff of clinicians and nurses alongside their admin staff try their best in tough conditions.
It’s constantly butt fucked by a ridiculously over arching huge management structure that is absolutely unneeded and a massive drain on the hospital re: wages, and creating a layer of needless bureaucracy to get anything done.
Also: patients expect the hospital to cater for them, whenever and whatever they want. The hospital provides free dentistry for people providing they consent to have their work done by students under supervision. These patients fight like hell to get in, because it’s free, then once they’re in, treat everyone like shit with a massive sense of entitlement. They moan about the staff, the students, their tutors, everything. They learn to back the fuck up when they cancel because “it doesn’t fit in my schedule” so we discharge them.
People really don’t know how good they potentially have it.
MrsTibbets@reddit
It’s awful, for all the reasons people have already stated. My particular issues, working in elderly medicine:
If I could send a public health message out to society it would be: 1. Hospital is actively harmful for elderly people (delirium risk, deconditioning, infection risk) and you should only be there if you absolutely have to be, and 2. Old people die, and sometimes all the poking and scans and drips etc you feel are so necessary will only add distress and deny a peaceful end.
FlagVenueIslander@reddit
Yes. The pay is dire. There are very few benefits, unlike other industries. It’s fecking boiling in most places in the summer. I have to wear a uniform to work 5 days a week but I only get given 3 uniforms, so I have to do a midweek wash just to have something to wear to work. I have worked from home for two days in the last 3 years. My job has limited flexibility so if I want to go to the dentist or the doctor or speak to a mortgage advisor etc, I have to take annual leave. I have to work either before or after Christmas, every single year. So I can never go very far away at Christmas I am on a rota that covers 364 days a year. So I will be working some bank holidays and probably at least one day over Christmas or new year I can’t wear nail varnish or jewellery at work Almost every toilet has a sign on it saying that it blocks easily and to be careful We regularly run out of toilet paper If I go upstairs to the nearest water cooler, the senior leadership team ask if we have water downstairs (yeah I’m just walking up a flight of stairs for water for fun)
And then clinically….. huge expectations from patients and families Expectations of recovery despite not changing anything Families treat me as if I personally am blocking access to social services funds, or rehab, or other things. They act as if I am putting up barriers for shitz and giggles. Doctors who have no respect for AHPs Pushing patients out of hospitals with no community services Newly qualified staff having inadequate experience and skills from their university courses
Good annual leave an a pension that seems a lifetime away is not enough to make up for this. And that’s why I’m a third of the way through my 12 week notice period to leave the NHS. I am an excellent clinician. I feel sad that I feel I need to leave the NHS. But I no longer want to be a martyr
zoccin@reddit
Currently employed as a biomedical scientist in a large NHS trust. It’s very bad. Email from chief exec saying we overspent by £1bn last financial year and now we need massive cuts to save this year. We have been told every vacancy in the entire trust is closed and the chief exec’s wording was ‘we will let natural wastage take its course’ concerning people leaving. Band 7 and above staff have been told if major changes are not made their jobs are at risk and my department alone has been told we are apparently over staffed by !!!19!!! People and to prepare for redundancies, which makes moral incredibly low and people are handing in their notice daily (5 people left last week, one of them only started a month ago). Workload is ever increasing but now we have to do it with no new equipment and less staff. It gives me so much pride working for the NHS, and I really love what I do and helping patients get a correct diagnosis but I’m just not sure how much longer I can do this and I’ve only been doing it 4 years! Not sure how to diversify either which is panicking me
freeagain96@reddit
Meanwhile literally 100s of people (myself included) who applied for pathology training didn’t even get an interview as it was grossly oversubscribed 🙈
katiepotatie82@reddit
The NHS has been consistently underfunded for many years. The government are now 'promising' to cut waiting times and allow local services to take over various bits of care, that is if they haven't already shut down services.
They're opening the way for privatisation.
The government also spent £35k on beermats recently.
I'm not surprised that workers are striking. Nurses pay is appalling for the work they do.
But it's OK because everyone clapped for them during lockdown.
Clapping ain't gonna pay the bills 🤦
educateyourselfFFS@reddit
I've worked in the NHS on and off for years, and it's worse than you can imagine.
There are obviously issues with budgets and political control, but alongside that, it is run like it's the 1970s. Union control (I am pro union BTW) where people won't do anything unless it's written down explicitly in their job spec, managers more focused on what the perks are than doing the job, wasted millions of £ on IT projects by not using experts, procurement based in favours and friends.
I could go on, but a couple of examples.
1)I was negotiating a contract to provide full WiFi and TV access for all visitors at a hospital to replace the hugely expensive bedside TV systems currently installed (bespoke costing each person £10 per day)
As I was doing this, a bean counter signed a non negotiable 10 year extension to the current system.
2) a two day project definition meeting was held to define all the requirements of a new oncology system that was desperately needed. It finished and everyone was very excited about the possibilities. The next day we got a memo from a manager to say "I had a chat with X yesterday, and we've decided to do something completely different" The manager had not attended the meetings, wasn't a clinical expert, but had nominal leadership.
3)an IT director who had their PA print out all his emails every day, he'd write replies on them and get her to type them up!
4)the only organisation who had a communications department behind a locked door to prevent people talking to them.
5)a new solution for community workers based on remote working and accessed via supplied ipads The pads were purchased, but them claimed by managers as they were more senior and therefore should "get them first", even though they couldn't actually use them.
6)community workers who would park up in a lay-by locally rather than return to hospital, because if they did they'd get given another client to visit, and they wanted to be able to leave work early
7)50 new laptops stolen from goods-in by a guy in a white coat. Security even held the door open for them
I could go on but it's all too depressing, billions wasted every year
freeagain96@reddit
Awful. Doctors (and nurses) working 12.5hr shifts, lucky to get a 30 min undisturbed break. Not enough equipment to do the job leading to delays for patients and late finishes. Constant task switching/distraction during safety critical jobs e.g prescribing which is dangerous and exhausting. More work to do than hands to do it/time (mostly very important work with some annoying admin thrown in). Inadequate infrastructure (no AC resulting in working spaces exceeding 30 degrees inside - terrible for both patients and staff). All the meantime having to pay from your own salary for compulsory fees often exceeding £500/item (exams, portfolios etc). Also now lack of job security - seeing management walking around looking how to save £millions in a system that has no fat to be cut. Massive hiring freezes despite already inadequate staffing. Ontop of this the moral injury of seeing people getting treatment in totally inadequate conditions.
gemogo97@reddit
From an ambulance perspective, I second that lack of social care provision definitely causes a domino effect when patients fit for discharge are sat in beds that patients in A&E are potentially spending days waiting for which is why we end up queueing outside with patients. A consequence of this is that staff get off late from holding and morale takes a hit and more importantly there are patients in all sorts of situations waiting for an ambulance that’s stuck at hospital. A lot of us live in these areas and pray that choking paediatric that hasn’t been allocated an ambulance isn’t one of our children. It’s been a very scary time but thankfully these issues aren’t as frequent in the summer but winter is coming. I have a lot of respect for hospital staff, we do our best to support ED but sometimes all we can do is watch on the sidelines and do what we can for our patients.
Purrtymeow04@reddit
understaffed, overworked, underpaid, sometimes rude and demanding relatives, urrrgh the list could go on!
slainascully@reddit
Partner works in the NHS and spends most of their time bogged down with admin. Significant exodus of experienced professionals means there isn’t the same teaching standards to new recruits. Funding is continually being cut so always having to adapt to new realities on a monthly basis. Getting rinsed by Sedexo or whichever outsourced company it is for porters or meals or security or PPE (yes, still). Stagnating wages but ending up covering for multiple other staff who have left and not been replaced.
The Telegraph would have you thinking there is some endless money pot for Head of Diversity or something, but the reality is not knowing if your critical care syllabus will be fully funded for the next cohort. Meanwhile, a+e is basically a holding pen for elderly people with relatively minor issues because there is no social care (despite the black hole of social care that council tax goes towards) and anyone under 60 just has to wait.
mrsadams21@reddit
I work in SALT, so I'm not dealing with acute or emergency cases that often (sometimes need to arrange urgent dysphagia stuff, but not my everyday job) and it's dire with us. God help those working on wards etc
One thing that absolutely boils my piss is that we're constantly told we're running over budget, there needs to be cuts etc, but the system is buggered and no one cares to fix it. I work half my time in a children's centre, which is a specialised building, with physio, OT, hearing, neuro, paeds, nurses, you name it, were a one stop shop for children with additional needs. The amount of letters we get from the departments that are IN THE SAME BUILDING is astonishing. Reports, discharge letters, appointment letters, all of which are on the online system, all get printed out, put in an envelope, put into the post, driven to the mail room, sorted, driven back to to children's centre, sorted into pigeon holes, which I then pick up, open, look it up and see it's already on CWS and then put in the shredding. I bring it up several times a month, no one with any real power is willing to listen. It's ridiculous. The cost that goes into that, across the centre, would be astonishing, and I know it's not only happening where I am.
The whole system needs looking at, with input from grassroots staff. There are too many band 8s who haven't worked a clinic in decades making decisions that don't work at clinic level, because they have no clue and no interest in listening to us down below
MadWifeUK@reddit
Worse.
I'm one of the ones who has left the NHS. I tried to take a load of codeine because I just couldn't cope anymore. Thankfully I have a hugely supportive husband, and 18 months on I'm working a boring desk job and I love it.
The understaffing is chronic. We had more vacancies than midwives. There was no time to actually care; you were running from one person to the next. New mums in tears because the were struggling to breastfeed were ignored because we needed to look after the ill women and babies, and those in labour, and those having antenatal and postnatal appointments on the ward because there weren't enough community midwives to run clinics. And then there was the constant phonecalls, texts, Facebook pleas for staff to come in and do even a couple of hours to help out.
The only way to survive was to stop caring. To be unbothered enough that you didn't drive home in tears because once again you felt you'd failed your women. To say no to doing any extra hours because you wanted to spend time with your family or, heaven forbid, just rest. To half-ass your work so you could get your documentation finished on time to leave instead of staying unpaid for an hour afterwards to do it.
I have loved being a midwife, I was a good midwife, but I couldn't work in that system any longer.
Icy-Belt-8519@reddit
I'm a paramedic taking my patients to one of the worst hospitals for waits outside the hospital, it's heartbreaking honestly, when you see loads of ambulances outside on the news, that's real, we wait hours with our patients
I was hoping labour would get in because it's been so long of tories getting it this way that they weren't gonna fix it, only hope was a change but its not happened
It's fucked and I worry about it's future
From a patient pov personally, it's been actually not bad, and seeing it from my partner having a stroke, other than one doctor, it's been absolutely amazing and I can't believe the amount of support post stroke, so I do wonder if its mainly the emergency side of things that were broken
I massively think GPs are overworked and doing more than most yet get a hell of a lot of the blame
insertitherenow@reddit
I work in NHS mental health services and the trust has stopped all new recruitment to save money despite already low staff numbers. Anyone who leaves their job isn’t automatically refilled if it isn’t deemed essential. This means staff teams running on already low numbers are stretched further.
Cantdecide1207@reddit
My work place had 2 of us doing 3 people's job for 6 months. As the other person was on long term sick. So last week my other colleague gave her notice. They also won't let us use post it notes, because apparently we are that broke. Poor management all round.
Delicious_Shop9037@reddit
The work is quite relentless at the moment. Every year we have to do more with less, less staff, fewer training opportunities, fewer resources. A major factor in job satisfaction is the feeling of having completed your job before going home. As things stand the work is never ever finished.
Blythey@reddit
Yes. I left. I didnt even work in an emergency/urgent response type service.
HmNotToday1308@reddit
I walked out of a job I loved within the NHS and you couldn't pay me to go back.
OilAdministrative197@reddit
Probably worse. Work in guys hospital, legionellas in the water and the LFB recently said it should be closed as its essentially grenfeld in terms of fire safety but we cant afford to close an entire london hospital so theyre basically waiting till disaster happens to then rebuilt. Worse part is everyone knows this too so imagine morale.
Many nhs hospitals were also all built around the same time often including RAC concrete which is now approaching its will fall too pieces date so tonnes of our essential infrastructure will fail simultoesuly. We can barely built 1 new hospital nowadays. Imagine having to replace 50. Were screwed.
ettabriest@reddit
We have a bug in our water so now we use bottles of sterile water for patient washes.
OilAdministrative197@reddit
Yeah same here but there worst part is coms is so bad only some floors no about it so some are using the bottle water while others arnt
No_Ferret_5450@reddit
It’s shit. It’s due to the tories. The nhs faces constant budget cuts, pointless reorganisation and politicians who don’t understand healthcare. Politicians keep telling the nhs and staff to act like the private sector. Then they seem surprised when we do and bigger of to Australia or Canada for better opportunities
RTMicro@reddit
I was a biomedical scientist from 2019 to 2022ish, when I started the main biochem analysers were 2 years overdue for a refresh and broke down constantly (as in, Siemens engineers were out at minimum twice a week)
Its now 2025 and those same analysers still haven't been replaced
Superstorm22@reddit
Me studying Radiography and reading this.
Yaaaay…
TheBikerMidwife@reddit
The nhs is amazing and we are so fortunate to have it. But chronic understaffing, underpaying and the way staff are treated (by patients as well) is appalling.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Don't wanna hear this sorry
TheBikerMidwife@reddit
You want to know the problems you say? Or do you just want your shitty political ideologies validated?
camerp03@reddit
I’m sorry but you are being utterly ridiculous OP. Someone has given their opinion that clearly doesn’t align with your pre conceived doom and gloom outlook on the NHS and you don’t want to hear it? Grow up.
Significant-Echo-535@reddit
Yes it's bad.
I'm a final year student nurse and there are no newly qualified nurse jobs. Trusts nation wide are on recruitment freezes. My current Trust is offering voluntary redundancies and closing wards. I was promised in first year I'd be able to secure any job I wanted in any specialty. Now I'm considering applying to Tesco, Costa etc.
Ok-Credit-8251@reddit
I waited 24 yrs to see a spinal surgeon in that 24 years I recieved cortisone injections and nerve degeneration in my sacral area. I was eventually referred by my gp after suffering a nervous breakdown through breaking bones through constant falls and not bothering to go to the hospital as the pain was only as bad as it already was. Turns out I'd broken my pelvis and lived with a dislocated shoulder for over six months. I went to my appointment with my "spinal surgeon" who said I really don't know why they have sent you to me I am a hip and knee specialist.I was very upset and apologetic for taking up an appointment someone else needed. He reassured me it wasn't my fault told me there is no spinal team in any of the hospitals in my city and he referred me to a high end surgeon in Leeds. They did and Mri found something in my sacrum and sent the mail to Birmingham to be examined by a spinal team there.They were not happy with the Mr and requested a very clear one. Turned out I had a benign tumor in my scrum my discs s1 to L5 were badly damaged and the whole of my coccyx was dislocated.They tried to put my coccyx back in place but it did work and he said the alternative was removing my scrum and the whole of my coccyx removed.There were a lot of risks involved that had I been see twenty odd years ago I dare say my odds would have been higher than having to have a cadaver scrum replaced by my own as mine has gone so thin now as have a lot of my bones.Pain management is all I was offered for all those years and told a surgeon wouldn't touch my spine. 18 months recovery period if I make it through the op but not one person in my life to help care for me. I cannot wait for the assisted dying to come in to play and I'm gone. I was a nurse myself before all this started and I wouldn't have treated a dog the way I've been treated.
KiwiLiverpool@reddit
Yes, however bad you think it is, it’s 100% worse. I worked there for a year and it was the worst place I have ever worked. All staff were extremely overworked and underpaid. Consistently being asked to do work that was above pay grade. A lot of the nurses were not fully trained and were being taught how to do things on the job. The pharmacy was leaking money and had no room in the budget to hire any new staff causing the current workers to be doing 3 peoples job. A&E was completely overcrowded with tons of patients being left on beds out in the hallways.
psychopathic_shark@reddit
I used to work on the mental health side. I was assaulted that often in 3 weeks the police sent me a victims gateway text but I had no idea which incident it was for (never planned to go anyway) you have to report an assault but they always get thrown out even if it is established the person had capacity. There were managers for managers who never stepped foot on the floor or helped out. They sat in teams meetings in the morning and discussed the staffing level and how bad it was tut and say it was bad and then have another meeting later to notice that nothing had changed all high band nurses but none of them would step onto the battlefield. When something kicked off it was "throw the cannon fodder in first who cares about the health cares they are just human shields" pressures to get more people dealt with, with zero staff, spending 12 hours on someone's 1.1 then get blollocked for not doing the ward cleaning. The bullying, the underhanded management tactics and the whistle blowing policy that is not anonymous and if you use it then you will tactfully be dismissed from your post and disgraced especially the nurses even if you havent done anything wrong and they want you out they will find a way.
It's a horrible place to work I am glad I am out of it.
AmbitiousSympathy296@reddit
The good will is gone, we are on our knees we dieing of a thousand cuts.we have saturated third sector, even agency is saturated to the point that wards where I work and dangerously low.
A rural mental health nurse. I don't see another 10 years left sadly.
PinacoladaBunny@reddit
My best friend is working out in the community visiting patients at home who have neurological injuries - anything from strokes to motorbike accidents to brain tumours - and helping to rehab them. She’s currently doing the workload of 3 people because every time people leave they don’t recruit to save money. She loves her patients but hates her job and what it’s become, fighting to get funding for basic care for each patient, arguing with managers who try to drop patients even though they’ve been waiting for help for several years, having no time to do the job and give the patients the time they need.
My mum also just retired from the NHS after over 40 years, she worked with disabled kids. By the end they’d restructured, demoted her, reduced her measly salary, wanted her to take on additional workload and train an entire office because she was awesome at her job. She loved her job so much. Parents would bring her gifts when they came to clinic, we’d see families out when we were in the local town and they’d stop us to hug her and say hello, she grieved with parents when they’d sadly lost their children - for my entire life this was all I knew about mums job. Yet by the end she was anxious and stressed as hell about going to work, she didn’t want to go. She hated the managers and decisions they were making, causing inefficiency and adding risk to child safety, she spent much of her time fixing mistakes and data breaches. Cuts to everything, breaking services completely. Parents on the phone asking for her, begging for help with all sorts.
I cannot say it’s been a good workplace for either of them. Compassion for patients is/was the reason for staying.
gogginsbulldog1979@reddit
My girlfriend works for the NHS and it's a shit show.
No funding, people being made redundant on a mass scale, teams constantly being moved around, having to interview for your own job, etc.
She's desperately trying to get out.
REDDITKeeli@reddit
I work behind the scenes in the offices. The amount of waste is unbelievable. No sense of urgency and petty behaviour from grown adults. Lots of favouritism and nepotism going on in the labs and offices. People are fired for complaining about manager behaviour. It's embarrassing. I'm glad I'm moving on. In my opinion, we need a complete reset. Nuke the whole system and start afresh better.
Wooden_Astronaut4668@reddit
omg the nepotism and favouritism and requirement to employ or promote these guys is a big scheme to keep inept inefficient people in well paid jobs. They are all acting defensively to try and protect their own overpaid positions vs their actual value. No one actually good is ever promoted because they will upset that status quo by attempting to change things or they get “managed out” due to often made up/petty allegations or beaten down into resigning….
Wooden_Astronaut4668@reddit
Also everyone moans about GPs but they are really fucking busy.
Not only do they have to run appointments, they might also have to do home visits, nursing home visits, manage the care of their patients in community hospitals. Then on top of this follow up all results. sign off prescriptions. make referrals. change treatment plans. review patient’s. All on IT systems that don’t communicate with each other.
honestly its a shit job and they are doing heroes work trying to keep people that often take little responsibility for their own health, out of hospital.
Messybirdy@reddit
Honestly GPS. They think they are busy.
Poo_Poo_La_Foo@reddit
One of my besties as an NHS GP and it sounds prettttyyyy bad.
She works insanely long days. It's incredibly stressful. She regularly has her hands tied because she cannot give the help/medication the patient needs because of xyz rules. The constraints she works within seem kinda crazy - a lot of jumping through hoops or time consuming admin that doesn't seem like it is the best use of her time?? They're running some crazy old Windows package on their tech that seems held together with hope and gaffer tape.
I'm honestly not sure how sustainable as a long term career without burning out (despite this being her aim since literally 15yrs old).
deeppsychic1@reddit
It’s not perfect, but honestly, it’s a bargain.
When you consider what we pay for National Insurance - and the fact that many people don’t contribute a penny yet still access NHS services - you’re still getting far more in return. Even if you rarely see a GP, there’s peace of mind in knowing that in an emergency, you’ll be treated with high standards and evidence-based care. That kind of security and access would cost a fortune anywhere else.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Man I'm sorry but I'm only looking at the NHS workers POV right now. I have my own experiences and opinions on public healthcare which are largely disappointing and anything but a bargain so I'll not go into the public Vs private healthcare argument. I find it hypocritical and morally extort the NHS in the way you said "many people don't contribute" that's nothing to be proud of when you actually hear stories about care workers nurses and doctors. I would happily pay or do co-payments or in some cases I'd fly to get private healthcare elsewhere outside the country when the lists have an 8 month wait.
deeppsychic1@reddit
I'm an NHS GP, I've been around the block. Private, public, UK, abroad, seen it all.
Honestly, In the UK we are getting a bargain. The NHS could be even better with more money invested in the right places, but still, it's a pretty good deal for what you pay.
And no kidding, don't even think about comparing some cheap surgery in Turkey to what you'd get with a proper NHS team.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
I don't agree man and I think this is a separate topic, I think the more you pay in taxes the less you get here.
No I wasn't talking about turkey at all but something like Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and yeah even the US and some private clinics in Germany.
Isgortio@reddit
The US has massive waiting lists too, and they pay stupid money to be on those waiting lists.
Wooden_Astronaut4668@reddit
Yes. It really is and I don’t even know where to start.
However I know two managers on £60k ish that are literally excess to requirements. have been admitted as much “when they leave/retire they won’t be replaced” x that by everyone not a manager in the nhs and thats the excessive waste on nhs management.
administration is insane.
Everyday two nurses have to physically count and sign ALL the controlled drugs in their department. This is not a scan/digital system or count which presumably would be easy to set up.
The nurse I was signing with today said she couldn’t believe she had been signing controlled drug checks for the last 34 years 🤣
An ageing population. It costs a lot to keep people with excessive co-morbidities alive.
workers vs management pay disparity. How come the chief executive of a hospital earns £300k but then the trust announces it needs to save money by cutting “bank” hourly rates by £5 an hour (approx) for the lowest paid workers. which equals crap morale?
Lack of beds.
Number of inpatient beds has decreasedly massively from when I started working in the nhs 20+ years ago. However the population has only grown/got older.
A freeze on recruitment. So existing staff taking on more work.
The expectation that you continue with post graduate education without being paid more.
I have now done a BSc and 7 Masters level modules since I qualified. This out of work “work” obviously is counted massively reduces my hourly rate. It doesn’t necessarily result in pay rises.
how you are treated by management,
every thing ever is negative.
you cant get a parking permit but you can get plenty of parking fines. you cant wear a small hoop earring or a wedding ring (because of risks which as an adult you are not allowed to take individual responsibility for despite being reminded at every other opportunity you are a registered professional and thus any mistakes you are individually to blame). You cant get a cheap lunch/or your workplace doesn’t have a canteen. You cant drink a cup of tea at your desk. You are not signed off to do x,y,z in that trust even though you did it a billion times in a previous job. You forgot to sign x,y and z. you are getting “incidented reported” for everything you dont do, do a bit wrong, do considered to be wrong by someone else.
No one ever says “thanks for turning up today, wr know its shit but we really appreciate that you just managed to get in, dont worry about the hoop earrings or wedding ring or the trainers that aren’t plain black or the fact that you did us a favour by doing that clinical task that you have been foing years and are perfectly competent at”.
Crap unions.
Patients. I saw 3 patients in one shift once with athletes foot, none of them knew what it was but weirdly before such easy access to google people would just manage shit like that but now because of the internet it might be sepsis or cancer or whatever so should get checked immediately. People not thinking logically, have I tried pain relief, time, ice, gaviscon etc or objectively how bad is my pain? can i be distracted from my symptoms? can i sit chill and scroll my phone with my infliction? Am I really numb or weak? Is there an old wives tale for this? (just sell your wart ffs, one day it will go 🤷🏻♀️)
sorry big long huge rant over.
dtr1002@reddit
Which NHS? there are four in the UK..
Fast_Apple_2237@reddit
I don't work in the NHS but I was unfortunate enough to have along stay in a hospital recently. One morning a nurse said he would change my dressing, not critical but would help my comfort. He came round to do them at 23:30, he'd been there since before I woke up, it now being many hours since he should have gone home. It seemed every day was the same, incredibly amazing people working themselves into the ground trying to help. It shouldn't have to be that way. We can talk about funding and such, but we elect the governments, ultimately all of us are why we're in this situation. Just hope that when you really, really need it it's still there.
No_Natural_6661@reddit
NHS scientist, involved in testing bloods and other samples. We are overwhelmed, understaffed and constantly expected to do more with less.
DragonfruitItchy4222@reddit
It is farcically wasteful and poorly run, a colleague of mine has written a sitcom about his time working for the NHS. His main problems are that there's too much material and a lot of it is too farfetched (although it actually happened).
Messybirdy@reddit
Yes. It is. Today I lifted and moved 6 people out of bed, while quietly and continuously wiping and cleaning their bums. And that was 7am this morning. And then I was responsible for all of those people to eat. Throw in antibiotics, it’s just brilliant right now. I started my shift at 7.00 this morning and left off 12 hours later. And then, had to deal with family members giving my consultants abuse. As those people are saving people’s lives in a way that they will never understand. Yeah. It’s that bad.
Intelligent_Put_3606@reddit
I still have an admin contract with the NHS. Coming from a background in education, I was shocked by the general lack of any sense of urgency, plus lack of IT competence across the board (even in the IT department).
And they are very resistant to flexible working hours and/or working from home (or even another hospital in the trust). This will be the reason why I eventually leave.
FancyMigrant@reddit
GF has just left the NHS after 10 years, and my mother was in it for 50. Yes. it's shit.
Bubbly_Collar9178@reddit
its awful - redundancies are a word being whispered a lot atm
Alert-Sort-4888@reddit
No, it's way worse than people realise from the outside. The buildings are literally crumbling, we're constantly understaffed and morale has been at rock bottom since the pandemic. There's a constant issue with undertraining across every department I've seen and there's going to be a genuine crisis when the current 'old guard' staff (all aged 60+) retire because the newer staff (myself included) are just never trained to do anything above essential duties. The amount of near misses and health and safety violations we all see on a daily basis is crazy. It's at the point where I really don't think it can be fixed without a significant amount of money over potentially a few decades, the rot really extends back as far as the early noughties.
West-Ad-1532@reddit
The problem with waiting lists is getting people to engage with the pathways thru health system..
The general population are pita..
AtLeastOneCat@reddit
Can you explain what that means?
West-Ad-1532@reddit
Pain in the arse...
AtLeastOneCat@reddit
Ah I see what you mean. So you'd say that bed-blocking is a major problem?
West-Ad-1532@reddit
Just poor engagement from initial phone call, email, letters etc to actually get people in for appointments, tests etc...
Maybe a small fee might concentrate the mindset of the gen pop...
AtLeastOneCat@reddit
From the point of view of a patient who has really struggled to get treatment due to poor communication, I see this from the other side too.
I am admittedly in Scotland so I don't know how it is in England but going through a horrible mystery illness has been a nightmare in getting letters the day after the appointment I'm supposed to attend, having to take time off work to wait for phone calls that never come, hospitals not communicating with my GP and vice-versa, having a new doctor at every appointment who has failed to get the test results from the last one....
It feels like the whole system is patchwork and not fit for purpose.
saladars@reddit
Yes. Staff are underpaid and burnt out with zero support, staffing is often at dangerous threadbare levels (look up NQNs and resident doctors not finding jobs!!!) patients are complex and their needs often aren’t being met. Despite best efforts.
Nobody is listening or actioning on issues that NHS staff/patients raise until a scandal comes out and even then it’s to cover the higher ups’ backs.
Leeno234@reddit
It's like being on the titanic as it sinks. You know it's underfunded, staff morale is low the funding isn't coming and it isn't going to get better. They're cutting everything until the only thing left is to privatise the whole thing we're sadly in the shit part where it has to fail to justify it. Its alot worse than reported and it won't get the funding it needs to improve
Exact-Broccoli1386@reddit
Yes it is that bad
Party-Werewolf-4888@reddit
I left my NHS job a couple of months back. In my experience, if you are the kind of person who can crack on without intertwining your emotions with your work then it's probably fine (I don't mean that to sound patronising, I think that's a much needed skill in any workplace) but if you find yourself getting emotionally involved in things it's basically just impossible to manage (which is what happened to me)
Whosentyounow@reddit
I am a NHS Complaints Officer and we are absolutely overwhelmed with Complaints. I would say the shortages across the NHS are so bad that patients rightly or wrongly dependant on your view feel they have no choice but to complain. Vicious circle really.
stebus88@reddit
I’ve seen it from both sides as I work for the NHS and I’ve also required two surgeries under the NHS this year.
As an employee, it’s pretty rough at the moment. Funding is non-existent so we are increasingly asked to do the same amount of work with fewer staff. Morale is low as everyone is run down and frustrated that we can’t deliver the high quality care we want to deliver.
As a patient, it looks even worse. I went to A+E with kidney stones in February and I sat in the waiting room for 13 hours in absolute agony before I was seen. When I was finally seen, I was put on an uncomfortable trolley and stayed there for 2 days as there were no beds. I didn’t want to kick up a fuss as I could see the staff were trying their very best but were clearly under a lot of stress.
rrainingcatz@reddit
Secretary here. Yes it’s bad. If a staff member leaves we have to pick up their work and squeeze it into our role. I work for 4 psychiatrists. There’s a lot of u well people who want urgent appointments or can’t get their meds. Poor resident doctors being pulled pillar to post. Royal Mail losing post. All sorts goes on. But I still love my job.
RonnieBobs@reddit
Yes it really is that bad. My current role involves having a lot of 1:1 sessions with nursing staff and I make sure I have a packet of tissues in my bag every day because people cry more than I expected. I started in the NHS in 2012. Since then I’ve never experienced any increase to funding for any of the services I’ve worked in. Each year whichever NHS Trust I’ve worked for has had a budget cut so anytime a politician has claimed they’ve put more money into the NHS I’ve genuinely never seen any evidence of that in my daily work life. My NHS pension age is 68 and I genuinely don’t think the NHS will exist by then. I suspect we’ll get fucked over with whatever substitute pension they come up with. In my opinion the Tories have absolutely ruined things. Disappointingly I have no faith nor respect for Wes Streeting either.
There are pockets of the NHS that aren’t horrendous to work in. A lot of people stay for the benefits (our annual leave is good, sick pay is good, difficult to get the sack etc), but a lot of people also can’t afford a pay cut to start a new career at entry level. Someone posted on the nursing sub the other that day chat gpt reckons if our “pay rises” continue at the current rate then a band 5 nurse will be on minimum wage in 10 years. So that’s great.
Currently a lot of the NHS is on a recruitment freeze for nurses, because they have no money. A lot of student nurses are coming to the end of their training and cannot find jobs. Every day staff on the wards tell me the standard number of staff per shift isn’t enough. Trusts can’t afford to increase the numbers to a safe level so nursing staff are just coping with the absolute bare minimum, it’s scary for them.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Your reply stood out/was particularly hard hitting.
I always assumed shortages meant guaranteed jobs for nurses, didn’t realise even that’s falling apart. Apparently they are still taking PLAB exams to hire overseas doctors though (saw a post but not sure if it's true)
Educational_Walk_239@reddit
It’s awful. I’ve never felt this level of concern. Trusts are being told to “live within our means” and we’re having to make some pretty horrendous decisions on what to cut in order to do that. I fear for what waiting times will be like in a year.
Cultural-Manner6305@reddit
As a learning disability and now a CAMHS nurse it is so bad, like we literally have no funding, staffing is always short and hate the lack of quality care I provide to young people on a daily basis.
reikazen@reddit
CAMHS for real it's bad there ! Wow okay things are bad then ...
tyger2020@reddit
Its bad.
People will claim that the NHS is getting more money than ever and they're right (but only if you don't adjust for inflation).
Staff wages have fallen, actual budget has fallen, whilst the population has increased by +5 million and the PENSIONER population has increased +4 million since 2010.
We just need a party that actually gives the NHS better money - it's amazing, they will let the NHS struggle for years and then give the triple locked state pensions a £15 billion pound increase. It's political choices, nothing to do with actual finances.
Love_Lions@reddit
I've only been working in the NHS for over 2 years now, but what I've heard from my bosses / supervisors is that in some areas, it has become worse. When I worked in a community hospital, we'd tended receive patients (from the big local secondary care hospital) who were well enough to be admitted as they just needed a bit more monitoring & rehabilitation following their infection or operation etc. However, it wasn't uncommon to be sent patients who just needed a care home, or who were actually way too unwell to be sent to a community hospital (there's no medical team at night or over the weekends, so we'd typically send the latter back).
Another thing that was shocking is that a lot of the trusts don't use the same software programs for patient information. It's a bit of a nightmare as it increases human error (e.g. if someone is on holiday in your area, then goodluck being able to access their records - you're going to have to rely on them having a good memory of their conditions, medications, & allergies etc.)
Finally, sadly it's really unfortunate that some parts of the NHS can be quite toxic, with allied healthcare professionals (AHPs) being targeted by some medics who are very anti-AHP (particularly towards physician associates, but also advanced nurse / clinical practitioners etc.). It's such as shame as like most people in the NHS, AHPs do help people in the job & play an important role in the NHS, yet many are being pushed to leave.
SmoothBarracuda5637@reddit
Midwife - it’s horrendous. No breaks half the time, short staffed, a ratio 1 midwife to 9 women AND 9 babies on postnatal wards. Constant pressure to discharge people who aren’t ready to be discharged and then new admissions before the bed space is even cleaned. It’s honestly like a conveyor belt. You feel awful because you cannot provide the care these women deserve and then it looks like you don’t care, but we do. We all care and we all wish we could do more.
throwaway593090@reddit
Pharmacy person here. It’s awful. Morale is in the toilet as we have to focus on services like blood pressure case finding. Now we do contraception services that eat up pharmacists time. We must process 15k items a month and it’s not enough. Dispensers can’t keep up, pharmacists can’t keep up.
Sparkle_croissant@reddit
staff are burnt out with overwhelming amounts of work and ever increasing pressures. we have targets and standards that are impossible to reach, but yet still want to give every patient the best possible care.
social care needs better funding so patients aren’t stuck in hospital, we need patients and families with realistic expectations of us, and who take responsibility for their own health and the demands they place on the nhs.
the nhs has been a political pawn for decades, and this is the result
RainbowSparkles17@reddit
Nursing staffing levels are shocking, as it the pay which doesn't help morale. We are burnt out.
Lots of people fit for discharge but social care is a mess.
MirabellaJean962@reddit
I recently quit my job with nothing else lined up and YES
escanlan11@reddit
I do think we will have to move away from free at the point of use to some type of European insurance based system asap. As a healthcare it was horrible, as a student it's shocking and it's unlikely I'll get a newly qualified nursing job at the end of my course in a year despite the lack of staff of wards.
anotherangryperson@reddit
I used to work in but not for the NHS as a hospital social worker. At that time it was easy to organise support for people on discharge so there was less pressure on beds. However, there were always delays with medication for discharge and doctors signing the discharge notes. There was so much waste in terms of management non-jobs and sickness and I suspect little has changed. We have to remember that the NHS was a health service and not a sickness service. Incredible advances in health care have made the demands on the NHS unimaginable in 1948. My daughter was recently diagnosed with cancer. She had excellent treatment and will be monitored using state of the art equipment for the next five years. People are surviving years with conditions that would have meant a certain death or severe disability a few years ago. So, we need to attract people into social care. We need to streamline management and systems. And we need to celebrate the incredible work done by the NHS.
Banana-sandwich@reddit
Good days and bad days. My pay has been eroded and essentially cut in real terms for the last decade but fortunately my spouse earns enough to subsidise me. I love getting to help nice people. But the waiting times are truly depressing. The figures alone are shocking (over a year for urgent gynaecology, 3 years for routine, 7 years for ADHD, CAMHS only seeing suicidal kids). But when you meet the people who are suffering as a result of these ridiculous waits, it's upsetting. Plus, as a GP, I am constantly told by the media and idiots on Facebook I am paid too much and don't work hard enough. Luckily, my patients don't buy into that and are genuinely appreciative. It's lovely being able to help a Mum with post natal depression get better or pick up on signs of cancer then support them through their treatment.
Electronic_Cream_780@reddit
mental health services are just plain unsafe. We send seriously ill patients back to primary care, people who should be getting long term support and monitoring are lucky if they get 6 weeks. Stress levels are through the roof, morale is in our boots and people are dying
naitch44@reddit
Imagine how bad it is as a patient, now imagine working that every day. It’s bad. The NHS is a disgrace.
ClarifyingMe@reddit
Are you living in a privileged area and/or just blessed with good health? It's the only way I could imagine this question being asked in earnest.
Raregan@reddit
I haven't been able to register with my local GP for 4 years, and haven't bothered with anything hospital related like A&E for 10 years.
The NHS to me is like some parallel society thing that other people in the UK use and I have to pay for it but it's not for me.
There's a lot of people like me who the NHS feels like a foreign concept for
doughnutting@reddit
That was me before starting in the NHS. I started during the pandemic and it was absolutely mind boggingly terrible. But I was making a great contribution to society. At some point it’s going to end and it’ll go back to normal and it’ll be nice again, right?
Wrong. It’s actually worse than in Covid because everyone is burnt out, or new and inexperienced. It’s very difficult to work in right now.
Only_Initiative_6537@reddit
It's manic. Staff shortages, recruitment freezes at higher bandings, staff morale is so low, recruiting agency staff to fill gaps which is expensive, difficult to do service development work, so many trusts and departments are in debt.
nmg93@reddit
Yea it’s really bad. We’ve been told we need to cut 10% of the cost of our department. Cutting costs = lay offs. We are supposed to do the same work (and more) with less staff 💀
OminOus_PancakeS@reddit
I work in a GP surgery.
Don't get ill.
Seriously.
StacysCousinsAunt@reddit
Do i think it's on the verge of collapse? No
Do I think every day is more horrendous than the papers report on? Yes
Plenty of hospitals have buildings that aren't fit for purpose. I work with severely immunocompromise patients, and we have had rat and ant infestations
Our ITU department is short staffed, so level 3 patients can't even be looked after as 1:1s anymore
I would say 95% of the time we end up leaving late. I've worked it out that over my career at this rate, I'll have given 40 entire days of my time for free. Record, so far, was leaving 3 hours late from my shift
And everyone is completely miserable. Morale is hanging from the ceiling by a rope. Staff are becoming increasingly rude towards each other because everyone is just over stretched and stressed
AnimalcrossingWW@reddit
Been qualified 4 years as a nurse, and it’s just getting worse and worse.
eachtoxicwolf@reddit
I've not worked for the NHS but ever since I started work at a disability benefits charity in 2016, I could see how the waiting lists for fixable disabilities (hip replacements and other assorted surgeries) was just getting longer and longer. People with more hidden disabilities also got screwed bad because of how their waiting lists went up as well, but we could see how long it was taking for anything to get done.
screwfusdufusrufus@reddit
It’s pretty horrific to work for and the clinicians aren’t paid for the work they do. Got a part time job? Don’t worry we have enough paperwork to keep you busy and stressed for 7 days a week.
I wouldn’t point at the current government tbh (not saying they won’t make it worse), but I’d look at the criminals who held power for 14 years prior to that
Kind-Combination6197@reddit
By cousin was a naval surgeon for 22 yea. He opted to practice medicine on cruise ships in the Caribbean rather than work for the NHS after he left the Royal Navy.
PatTheCatMcDonald@reddit
A relation in herclocsl PALS admin tells me it depends how strong her anti depressants are.
So not good but they do fix an awful lot more than they break.
Own_Translator_8894@reddit
It’s worse 😭
continueasplanned@reddit
Yes it's awful. People don't believe me when I tell them what we have to deal with on a daily basis.
MB093@reddit
Yes. It is.
Old_Nail6925@reddit
Ermmm to sum it up very briefly, no it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s plods on.
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