Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

I didn't say it was full of incompetent doctors - I did say there are many within the NHS and they are part of the reason that it is so busy. It is an absolute lottery as to whether you get a good one or not, and I could reel off a number of cases of pure negligence (only one of which relates to me) - now whilst I can accept that folks will only ever talk about the bad bits and rarely the good, for me to personally know of at least four others within my fairly limited circle of friends & family who have all had fairly significant negligence tells me that there is a problem.

 

You are fully entitled to disagree.

To answer your question, am I able to judge incompetence... I would say I am, having been faced with a the very dismissive attitude of more than one consultant. The first being a renal consultant that told me my kidneys would never function again, that they were putting me on the transplant list and I was on dialysis for life and would not listen to me pleading for them to stop "drying me out like a prune" every second day and allow my kidneys the chance to start working. Transfer to another hospital, spoke to a second consultant who actually listened - - lo and behold, I can now pee like a racehorse. Or the OT that said I would "never sit on a normal chair or sofa" and actually wanted to take my sofa away before I was released from hospital - - I am sat on a sofa right now.

Or we could go for the doctor that told my mother's neighbour that she needed antibiotics for stomach pain - - after nine months of going to the doctor and being in agony, she was taken into Edinburgh Royal where she was diagnosed with cancer (terminal, by that stage)

Or how about one of my staff taking his son to hospital with abdominal pain - sent home twice with pain relief because it was "growing pains" - once they actually decided to investigate, it was an issue with one of his testicles, that he subsequently lost (13 years old)

Or maybe my cousin's recent experience in Glasgow - he has been a renal patient all of his life, has dialysis three times a week and he has learning difficulties (approx mental age of 6). His fistula was failing, so he was sent from Dumfries to Glasgow as they were the specialist hospital. Glasgow unblocked the fistula, but had him waiting three days before they did so - meantime, there was zero control over his diet or fluid intake - by the time he got back to Dumfries, he was almost 9-litres overloaded! You are a doctor, so you know what that does to a renal patient's heart. Worse still, he had to go back to Glasgow for a second attempt at unblocking the fistula and shortly after his return he then ended up back in Dumfries as an inpatient as a direct result of their lack of control over his diet (his potassium levels were off the scale)

So yes, I am able to judge what is incompetent.

 

Indeed - my GP is superb, although getting to see her can be a challenge; and for balance, I have encountered a lot of excellent doctors and consultants. What frustrates me is that when there is incompetence, it is shrugged off or swept under the carpet.

 

I certainly don't disagree that the system is totally overloaded - but again, how much of that is appointments being made to see someone to get an appointment to see someone else to then get an appointment to see the person you should have seen first time around? Of course, like schools, water, drainage, power generation etc, successive governments have dropped the ball and failed to anticipate increases in population, further deepening the stress on services. It is easy to blame the Tories (and why not as they are a shower of shh.. manure?), but in reality the rot goes back decades - at least to the 90's if not before, and now everything is the consumer/customer's fault.

 

There are two prongs - does it need investment? Yes, of course it does. Equally, however, it needs to look inwardly with a critical eye and see what it can do better.

Put battle-scarred private business managers like myself and a good few others here in and give us a free hand... same with councils. The P45's would be going like confetti in some places.