ALMOST every time I have contact with the NHS the experience proves very dispiriting.
Why? Because the culture within our state-run health service stinks, that’s why.
Here's a for instance. A few days ago I had to take my mum to a big specialist unit in Wigan.
The appointment was made for 10.30am and we turned up about five minutes early.
But then we were expected to sit and wait in a stuffy, overcrowded waiting room for very nearly three hours before mum got to see the specialist.
We couldn’t even have a cig to relieve the bloody boredom.
Opposite where I sat was a big poster on Erectile Dysfunction, showing a very depressed man with his head in his hands.
By the end of two hours I knew how he felt.
No-one from the reception desk made any attempt to explain why there was such a huge delay. They preferred to spend their time chatting and snacking.
No health service worker offered to get the elderly, and in some cases seriously ill, patients a cup of tea or coffee during their long wait to be seen.
We were just left sitting there, cheese at ninepence, with only the inane output of Moron FM Radio (Number One in Wigan and St Helens) to lift our spirits. The station is so dumb it makes Radio City sound like a Joan Bakewell lecture.
As the morning ground on, the occasional name would be called out from reception… “Edith Knocker” … “Eileen Haddock” . I kid you not, those actual names were called out, adding to the surreal nature of the experience.
Enormous queues are to be expected at NHS centres, it seems, and people just have to endure them in a kind of nostalgic throwback to the days of the Soviet Union, presumably.
Ho-hum. A nearby poster invited me to share my experiences of domestic violence.
Actually, I have in the past been battered by vicious girlfriends. I do not jest about that either. Female-on-male battering is a huge problem in this country – and especially in Hull, where I used to live.
Foolishly, I didn’t bring a newspaper or a novel with me to the medical centre (War and Peace might have been appropriate) to help pass the time while waiting with mum.
So I had to reply on NHS posters and literature for entertainment.
The idiot-friendly notice about washing your hands was not especially illuminating.
It listed the correct, state-approved, five-step way to wash your hands. Step 1: Wet your hands. Step 2: Put soap on hands. 3: Rub wet, soapy hands together. 4. Rinse hands. 5: Dry hands.
Duh! So that’s how it’s done… Step 6: Now scratch your arse!
And time really dragged, oh boy how it dragged, though the elderly patients were, of course, patience personified – as you’d expect of decent people who have never known Britain’s state-run services to be anything other than slow and institutionally inclined to treat the public like cattle.
It sometimes seems to me that the NHS is run for the benefit of its employees rather than the patients.
So many times in recent years have the health managers and health unions warned patients not to be cheeky to staff.
Standing up for your rights and insisting on decent, humane treatment in the face of bossy harridans in nurses, uniforms counts as abuse these days, apparently.
Never mind that people get well and truly hacked off with all the queues, the politically correct posturing, and the “Doctor Knows Best” bull***t that the NHS routinely throws at them.
Another poster at that medical centre in Wigan declared that the local health trust had a “Privacy and Dignity Philosophy”, though I never see privacy, dignity or philosophy getting much of a look in on the corridors of our Killer Bug-ravaged hospitals with their mixed-gender wards, privatised, virus-friendly cleaning operations, rip-off patient phone and TV set-ups, and hate-filled anti-smoking commands posted everywhere.
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alberre wrote...
Firstly I hope your old mum gets on the mend sharpish.
It is the erectile dysfunctional MPs that run the hospitals, oh and as for the doctors, well they are too busy planning their next bombing mission to bother about patients (come on ed lets see your balls and print this). PC or not PC that is the question.
Whilst on the topic of health, back to a subject close to your clogged-up heart, as you know all too well, on a packet of ciggies it says SMOKING KILLS. Well the new slogan is SMOKING WILL NOT KILL YOU, ITS THE STANDING IN THE COLD POURING RAIN HAVING A CIGGY OUTSIDE A PUB THAT WILL
Regards
Alberre
*** REGAN REPLIES: Bloody hell, Alberee, I'm getting your comments through again. Have you changed your compooter? Well, good, anyway.
Posted by: alberre | July 23, 2007 11:21 PM