NHS - Envy of the world?

The answer to your question is a broad "yes" if you look at other health care systems. Basically free treatment at the point of delivery and not a crippling burden on the individual. Having worked in Minnesota and North Carolina the NHS seems a dream come true for poor and middle class Americans.

Ask individuals here in the UK and you will get a range of answers.

I worked in the NHS in the 80's and left to become a clinical academic and returned to the NHS as a Consultant 20 or so years later.

The biggest changes are the loss of the "paternalistic" NHS, I used to admit people into hospital to give them a good nights sleep, be looked after and a few square meals. Griffiths killed all that along with the introduction of nurses who feel it is beneath them to do small tasks to care for people.

Don't get me wrong, the technology has improved and the outcomes are better for most diseases but something had to give, add that to peoples inflated expectation for what they can get for "free" and there is dissatisfaction.

People get pissed on a weekend, fall on their faces and expect the taxpayer to stump up twenty grand to put it all back together with state of the art treatment...................

All IMHO

Shaun

My_Teenage_Self":1q131irl said:

Oh, and the NHS is the WORLDS 5th largest employer at 1.7 million staff.

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You say that like it's a good thing.

In answer to the OP question unless there is evidence from other countries to suggest it is then the answer is no, in spite of any clouded personal beliefs to the contrary.

If in the Staffs episode the NHS was a business heads would be rolling, there would be charges of corporate manslaughter and accusations of profiteering before care.

As it's the NHS there is none of this. It's bumped off the main page of the BBC site the next day. Compare with the banking crisis, phone hacking or any other recent scandal (with a combined total of zero people dead btw).

It's expensive, massively bureaucratic, doesn't provide 'the best' care and is seemingly run for the employees rather than the patients. Why would that be the envy of the world?

I realise I'll be in a minority of around one but I think more private provision should be introduced, along with some form of insurance. Incrementally obviously, so the masses won't notice.

technodup":3mhjvq5v said:

My_Teenage_Self":3mhjvq5v said:

Oh, and the NHS is the WORLDS 5th largest employer at 1.7 million staff.

Click to expand...

You say that like it's a good thing.

In answer to the OP question unless there is evidence from other countries to suggest it is then the answer is no, in spite of any clouded personal beliefs to the contrary.

If in the Staffs episode the NHS was a business heads would be rolling, there would be charges of corporate manslaughter and accusations of profiteering before care.

As it's the NHS there is none of this. It's bumped off the main page of the BBC site the next day. Compare with the banking crisis, phone hacking or any other recent scandal (with a combined total of zero people dead btw).

It's expensive, massively bureaucratic, doesn't provide 'the best' care and is seemingly run for the employees rather than the patients. Why would that be the envy of the world?

I realise I'll be in a minority of around one but I think more private provision should be introduced, along with some form of insurance. Incrementally obviously, so the masses won't notice.

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I agree with you in part - it is massively beaucratic and management's ideology is compliance at all costs. This is obviously massively detrimental to patient care, we need the nhs to evolve and it hasn't been allowed to. If it doesn't meet the needs of a changing population it will be killed off, I don't think privatisation will help in this much needed evolution.

Having lived and worked in both South Africa and the USA where the US style "medical Insurance" scheme runs, and healthcare in almost entirely privately run for profit, the NHS is a little gem. You don't realise what you have till it ain't there. I'm also slightly biased as both my wife works there (Neonatal intensive care nurse) and my youngest sprog is about to (Operating Dept Practitioner). It's a literally ground breaking / mold shattering invention and should be rightly valued.

Unfortunately it's over managed, and directed by a bunch of weaselly politicians who aren't competent to run a burger van, let alone a complex health care system.

Big Foz wrote:

Unfortunately it's over managed, and directed by a bunch of weaselly politicians who aren't competent to run a burger van, let alone a complex health care system.

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Recent developments show the government cant even guarantee the burger van serves known meat :roll:

Too many managers and too much emphasis on theoretical as opposed to practical skills. You need a degree to be a nurse but that profession involves basic hands on practical skills which as another poster suggested made them feel many tasks beneath them. Bring back Enrolled nurses (2 year trained practical nurses) I say and cut down the number of graduate nurses (honors degree to bed bath a patient, I mean c'mon !). Nursing would be better for it. I speak as a former Nurse Auxiliary.

BigFoz":2co5krwt said:

I'm also slightly biased as both my wife works there (Neonatal intensive care nurse) and my youngest sprog is about to (Operating Dept Practitioner).

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Slightly biased?

Yeah, I had my knee op done private... Only because I get the medical for free at work. Wouldn't pay for it.

Your final weeks will probably be spent in some grubby paint peeling off the dirt encrusted walls and windows NHS ward,if youre really lucky you might get a private room that doesnt smell very nice.
The people that work under these barbaric cuts are a godsend to us all,theyre the ones that have to try to make the best of it and the experience for us less of a burden.

dyna-ti":zpoopask said:

The people that work under these barbaric cuts are a godsend to us all

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Tell that to the families in Mid Staffs.

And in any case the NHS budget is protected. It spends more now than ever before.

Phrases like 'barbaric cuts' is total hyperbole when spending is rising, the debt is doubling and any overall projected savings were around 2% or going back to the spending levels of just a handful of years ago. Was the NHS barbaric in 2005? Or is it only barbaric when it's Tories in charge?

The left would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous. Illiterate socialists were out in Shawlands today campaigning about the 'bedroom tax', which as anyone who went to school knows isn't a tax at all. If they don't know (or choose to confuse) what simple terms like taxes and cuts actually mean why would anyone trust them to run our economy?

Apart from genetically being modified for no additional sprogs I've been in hospital 3 times for medical reasons. 2 of those times required surgery and both times the surgeons said keyhole would be done. Great I thought, less time off work and loss of earnings. On both occasions I woke to find not keyhole but great big slashes needing weeks of recouperation. Not impressed and on both times when the smug surgeons came round the next day asking how I am I let both of them have both barrels. 5 minutes extra skill would have saved me months of loss of earnings.

My elderly father went in for a basic easy knee surgery and came out with mrsa

My daughter who gave birth to my only grandchild 18 months ago was cut and cut too late needing an operation to correct it, they botched the second one too. She is now too scared to go back and has been put off kids for sometime as well as post natal depression set in for almost a year

Whatever myth we hold onto our beloved nhs... the quality part very much is hit and miss and my experience is that it is the myth of yesteryear and our youth, clouds our vision on just how bad it is now