NHS

27 January

First crocus for 2016 is now flowering out in the rear lawn, which is nice to see. There should be a few more soon along with a good few snowdrops as well. None of them were planted by us, so it’s thanks to a previous resident.

The NHS is in the wars again because a child has died through the lack of training and useless systems. I’ve tried the 111 system a few times and in each case the only thing them they have been able to advise me with was to go to a GP or A&E. I already knew that but both involve long waits, and I was looking for help that would prevent that. The boy who died however, is a different situation altogether, but yet again, it’s something that I found out recently when I went to the out of hours service at Hussy. They do not have access to patient’s medical records. That seems to me to be a serious failing. How can a doctor really understand and assess what is happening to a patient they see in front of them without the prior history? What surprises me is that so few instances of the sort of sort of errors as this one have come to public knowledge.

Another Staffordshire Hospital is now in special measures over lack of care and serious mistakes, this time in maternity. I say ‘Staffordshire’ but these days it’s really West Midlands, but it would be the former in reality. There was a serious lack of midwives which now in the process of being rectified by recruiting more staff from aboard, from Italy this time. Time after time we here of health services being short of staff, from GPs to right through the whole service. Staff are being recruited from aboard on a regular basis, and it’s something shouldn’t really be happening because the UK should be training more doctors and nurses from here within the UK.

It’s very easy to blame the current government for the lack, and the current spending cuts are not doing the service any favours at all. In reality though, this has been going on for a very long time, and under various coloured governments. White at school I remember a fairly large number of girls, and in those days it was always girls, who wanted to be nurses. I would suggest that isn’t happening now. So many kids grow up with unrealistic dreams of being famous and having people throw money at them for doing very little apart from being the latest top name, by winning Big Brother or such like. That is a huge culture change and there is little that can be done to change it methinks. Some of those kids then go on to have their health and mental health issues cause even more disappointment in them.

Suicide rates are climbing in the Western world, many of them young people who are perhaps disappointed in what life has given them, and not what they dreamed of. There are of course a lot of different issues wrapped up in this one and it’s never as simple as what I have said here. I remember saying to a friend once that people were using mental health issues as a shield when the do something that other people wouldn’t do. That wise friends was Joy Clark (no relation), who knew a lot more about it than I did at the time.

Poor mental health is a killer whether it’s come from for substance abuse or a physical illness like diabetes. Mental health has always been the ‘poor relation’ within the NHS, something that continues today, and yet the amount of money that needs to be spent on it increases as time goes by. As health budgets are cut, it seems that mental health is the area that feels the axe first and most savagely. Then false tears fall and hands are wrung as to why the figures keep increasing.

Right now Jan is Skyping her sister out in Bangkok and they’ve been on about how poor the hospitals in Ulster are. Our Lynda is having problems with both her gall bladder and her kidneys. Her problem is that each condition is treated at different hospital. She has been on waiting lists for ages while they argue about which operation should be done first. Last week we learned that Lynda saw yet another consultant who did an ultra-sound on her kidneys and it seems that for some reason they are recovering not getting worse. Good job really, seeing as the hospital who was doing her kidneys had dumped her off the waiting list – clever eh, not telling her about it. And we think things are bad here in England.   

Finding a photo that fits such a subject so … 

A wedding snapper.

Today’s funny …

Hello, Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what
you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice
will tell you which number to press.

If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number
you press. No one will answer.

If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware
that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and
about to bite off your ear.