Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Oh there are some joke doctors. We had some geezer plonked in our surgery as duty doctor, and I had the misfortune to have to see him once. My legs had swollen up.. now I am educated, and because I'd been on a course of tablets and read the side effects etc, I knew I should get this checked out just in case. He hadn't got a clue, he actually told me, and I kid you not, "I see you're wearing flip flops, it could be that "
I was so stunned I left, because there is nothing more to discuss with someone so ridiculous.

 

I was in a now rare position of being a practising clinician who was also the manager and budget holder of my department, and did an MBA part time, which helped to ensure I understood what was going on. I worked alongside a few very good full time NHS managers, and quite a few who really should not have been in the job. During my career, I saw so many reorganisations, it was like going in circles. ( the small services are inefficient, let’s combine them into bigger ones, and then bigger ones, then these bigger organisations are too unwieldy, let’s split them up into smaller ones) And each reorganisation cost a fortune. I’m glad I got out early too.

 

Oh I totally agree. The management is often a joke. However, the buck starts at the top, it starts with governments who have the power to at least try to improve the situation, and the fact that the NHS is still primarily used for treatment, not prevention. We do nothing about prevention, in fact governments are largely in the pocket of the very corporations that contribute to the massive health inequalities we see.

Doctors' strikes used to be a very rare occurrence, now they are almost monthly, and have become so normalised. Something is seriously wrong.

Yet we allow - encourage even - politicians who plaster such shameless lies onto the side of billboards, and buses, Cameron's "I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS" and the £350m quote about their commitments to the NHS, when that could not be further from the truth. Its infuriating.

The bottom line is, those who run the NHS - the government - likely barely use it, they will mostly have private medical insurance. How then, are they supposed to understand the urgency of the situation?

 

Agreed @Erigeron but us Brits do tend to roll over and do everything our incompetent government dictates - have we/they forgotten they work for us, and are not our rulers?

 

November 2022, I was bothered slightly by an itchy lump that didn't seem to want to settle. So I requested a GP appointment. I didn't even get seen. I just got a cryptic text message that simply said 'Skin ointment issued'. It didn't say where it had been issued to or what I was supposed to do with it or anything. Bear in mind I hadn't even been seen.

This annoyed me. I'm glad it annoyed me. Had I not been annoyed, I would have just ignored it. But I complained. Ultimately got seen, got bounced to the specialist, who found malignant melanoma.

I was lucky. My combination of being annoyed at being fobbed off and having a GP that suddenly took great interest when it turned out to be serious means I'm probably ok now. But I wonder how many people just give up on the idea of being checked, and then go on to develop problems that become too advanced to resolve.

 

@Clueless 1 v2 that's shocking!

I had to write my own report to get an operation 3 years ago, as I'd spent weeks being passed from pillar to post by GPs and the hospital, and kept gettingtold I'd have to wait 18 months. I honestly would probably have topped myself from the pain before then.
I only got in because the surgeon happened to be checking the MUSKAT system and saw my report. I was in within 2 days. Tells you somet eh?

 

What's a MUSKAT, sounds like a grape variety spelt wrong.

 

Muscoskeletal assessment. Not that they actually assess anything, they just go on apparent urgency from what the GP writes. Mine had two words written on it, twice from a GP who hadn't seen me, and once from one who hadn't bloody listened to a word I'd said.
My report was 4 pages long, lol!

 

Yeah, I dont think I would ignore you.
Glad you got it sorted.

 

Thanks, I think!
The last thing anyone wants to do when they feel rough, is have to endlessly chase people up - I think many companies etc play on that.

 

More on the lazy doctors.

So thankfully all indications are I'm cancer free now. But that doesn't mean I'm right as rain. After a year of repeat hospital appointments and multiple MRI and CT scans, while they work to figure out how far the cancer got and whether I was doomed or not, I think it's fair to assume there might be a bit of stress going on. With all my fitness activities (mostly martial arts) suspended at first on the basis that's it's not a good idea to be thrown around after surgery, and then later on the basis that's there's no point (yes a bit of depression might have crept in), I put on weight and lost my fitness. So, stress, weight gain, and a reduction in activity - surprise surprise, my blood pressure has gone high.

So, with all my recent history readily available to the GP, you might think he might want to have a chat, discuss options, discuss strategies for addressing the underlying cause etc. In fact, the NHS website even says that's exactly what should happen. But no. Without having seen me (this is a different GP to the one that led my cancer response), he's looked at just the blood pressure results in isolation, and sent me a text message saying he's prescribed blood pressure medication.