NHS

Southmead Hospital, Bristol is crap

Spread the love

I suffered a heart attack at 3am on Monday. I initially thought that I had experienced a severe electric shock. I was left disorientated and confused and rang 111 instead of 999. 111 was crap and didn’t call an ambulance. Instead I got a call-back from a woman doctor at about 4.30am. She hadn’t bothered to wake up before calling me. I tired of her being crap and hung-up and blocked her. I tried to make my own way to A&E by bus but tired and went home.

I attended Southmead Hospital A & E at 10.30 on Tuesday. Southmead Hospital was crap and engaged in prejudice, discrimination, abuse and neglect.

Despite having a heart attack at 3am the previous day, Southmead Hospital A & E didn’t even take my pulse for over 3 hours.

I started having chest pains and was afraid that I was going to have another heart attack.

I told a technician in A & E that I was having chest pains. She told me to sit down.

I told a paramedic in A & E that I was having chest pains. She told me to sit down, I would be assessed soon.

I started phoning an ambulance to fetch me from the A & E section of Southmead Hospital when staff eventually started to pay attention to me after 3 hours.

I am very well thank you despite Southmead Hospital.

Continue ReadingSouthmead Hospital, Bristol is crap

‘A real and present danger’: NHS cuts will put lives at risk, health leader warns

Spread the love
The lying EU bus promoting money for the NHS when all the anti-EU shites are anti-NHS Neo-Liberal shites.
The lying anti-EU bus promoting money for the NHS when all the anti-EU shites are anti-NHS Neo-Liberal shites.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/23/a-real-and-present-danger-nhs-cuts-will-put-lives-at-risk-health-leader-warns

Raiding the NHS budget or scrapping plans to rebuild crumbling hospitals would plunge the health service into its deepest crisis in decades. This was the stark warning this weekend from Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, who said the government is “living in a fantasy land” if it believes it can cut funds to the NHS without endangering patients.

Jeremy Hunt promised spending cuts of “eye-watering difficulty” last week after becoming chancellor of the exchequer. Yet he also did not reverse his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision to scrap the £7bn health and social levy that had been earmarked for the NHS.

Taylor, whose organisation represents hospitals, ambulance trusts, mental health care, community care and GP services, said his members were issuing the “starkest warning” about “the huge and growing gulf between what the NHS is being asked to deliver and the funding and capacity it has available”.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/23/a-real-and-present-danger-nhs-cuts-will-put-lives-at-risk-health-leader-warns

Apologies for bad news Sunday, this blog doesn’t do denial of reality.

Continue Reading‘A real and present danger’: NHS cuts will put lives at risk, health leader warns

Track, Trace and the Myth of Private Sector Efficiency

Spread the love

Track, Trace and the Myth of Private Sector Efficiency

The established system for contact tracing is operated through Public Health England (PHE) and run by local public health protection teams in the public sector. Its services had been badly eroded as a result of decades of cuts and closures.

Instead of rebuilding capacity the government decided to create a centralised, privatised system managed by outsourcing giant Serco and call centre company Sitel – which had no experience in contact tracing.

The 27,000 workers employed by Serco and Sitel have reached and advised an average of about two cases and two contacts per call handler over a twelve week period. That’s the equivalent of around £900 per person traced. Call handlers report having nothing to do and some have had no calls to make at all – with some even claiming that they have been paid to sit around and watch Netflix.

To make matters worse, test and trace data show in the twelve week period leading up to August 5th, the privatised national call centres and online service reached and asked to self-isolate only just over half of close contacts of those diagnosed with Covid-19, leaving local health protection teams and local councils to mop up the rest from their scarce resources.

…

Allyson M Pollock is Professor of public health at the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Newcastle University. Her latest book The End of the NHS is forthcoming from Verso.

Continue ReadingTrack, Trace and the Myth of Private Sector Efficiency

Clapping won’t save the NHS

Spread the love
https://player.vimeo.com/video/374691534

Led By Donkeys show how the IFT is trying to sell off the NHS from Clipping for the Many on Vimeo.

Time that I start posting again. The sleezy, corrupt Capitalist elite need to answer to the electorate instead of to their donors. It’s not enough to ask, we must make demands.

X

Continue ReadingClapping won’t save the NHS

Revealed: PPE stockpile was out-of-date when coronavirus hit UK

Spread the love

By Channel 4 News Investigations Team

Almost 80% of respirators in the national pandemic stockpile were out of date when coronavirus hit the UK.

Channel 4 News has obtained detailed stock lists that reveal exactly what was held, on the day coronavirus was declared an international emergency.

Around 200 million vital pieces of kit – including respirators, masks, syringes and needles – had all expired in the eight months before 30 January.

This included 20.9 million out-of-date respirators, from a total of 26.3 million. The tightly-fitting mouth masks are vital for filtering the air that NHS workers breathe.

The documents also reveal that more than half of the national stockpile of surgical facemasks had also expired.

In total, 45% of the 19,909 boxes holding PPE supplies had exceeded their use-by dates.

The documents suggest a failure by Public Health England and NHS Supply Chain’s management company, Supply Chain Coordination Limited, to maintain the stockpile in a state of readiness.

Expired stock is excluded from distribution, meaning millions of boxes of kit could have been delayed from being sent to hospitals and care homes – just as the virus began to spread.

Millions of expired respirators weren’t cleared for release until they were tested, between 10 March and 19 March. By this time, the UK was already suffering a desperate shortage of PPE.

…

Continue ReadingRevealed: PPE stockpile was out-of-date when coronavirus hit UK