Posts

Is it ‘far right’ to expect decent standards of care?

  There have recently (August 2024) been protests and indeed violent disturbances apparently because of issues involving migrants. I’m not going to delve into the issues that the mainstream media, and politicians, have been discussing; Viv and I have personal, recent, experience of the effectiveness of overseas recruits working in close contact with the public in England.   I have revised this post in case anything I had initially written could possibly have been misunderstood. That I should feel it necessary to do this at 3.30 on a Saturday morning is a sad reflection on modern society.   + + + For years we’ve heard of a ‘social care crisis’: there aren’t enough care workers to fulfil demand; hospitals won’t discharge patients unless care is arranged for them, and the health and care aspect of the welfare state is gradually grinding to a halt. Viv and I have been ‘service users’ (that’s what they call beneficiaries of social care) on and off for the last seven years, all related to Vi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Fawlty-esque goings on at our local Endoscopy Unit

  Viv’s medical conditions have meant that she’s become something of a regular at our local Endoscopy Unit - a modern building, round the back of the hospital proper, seemingly located where it will be difficult for patients to find it, and for them to be picked up afterwards when they’re feeling groggy from the effects of sedation. I’ve been seen there once, a few years ago, for a much simpler condition than Viv's, and I found the experience somewhat less than inspiring - I was, initially, to be ‘done’ by a junior, under the supervision of a consultant, but the junior seemingly mistook my windpipe for my food pipe, causing me to become quite uncomfortable, at which point the experienced hand took over.  Viv’s experiences at the Endoscopy Unit have most definitely not been what one might expect from an ‘envy of the world’ health service. Her first visit was a waste of time, for they needed equipment that was not available to them; her most recent encounter was an unmitigated disast
Post a Comment
Read more

What's your GP written about you?

Do you remember the NHS IT Programme? Twenty or so years ago it was one of the flagships of the Blair era: a single, modern, IT system for the whole NHS. But it never really happened, or rather, wasn’t allowed to happen. I remember it well, I was part of the programme’s delivery team for four years. *** The plans sounded fine: the NHS should work like a bank, or a motor car business, or indeed almost any other industry in the modern world, which all have ONE set of records for its customers. Years ago, you could walk into a bank in a town and cash a cheque without them knowing whether you had enough money in your account - you needed a cheque guarantee card (remember them?). In the 1990s all of the banks moved to having a single set of records for all customers, and now, whichever branch of your bank you walk into they will know everything about your accounts from the one set of records. The NHS IT programme was based around the same idea: it should not matter which hospital a patient
1 comment
Read more

The roots of my character

Image
  This is my first blog entry for a few months. I had to take time away, Viv has had some time in hospital and follow up treatment, life has been, unfortunately, just too busy for writing. Things are now settling down so normal service is slowly being resumed. *** We got home from the shops a couple of weeks ago and there was a red card through the door, from the Royal Mail: I had been sent a parcel from Allied Newspapers that they had been unable to deliver. I had no idea what it might be. The card said they would try to deliver it again on Monday, when we were also going to be out; it mentioned I could request it to be sent to my local Post Office using their online tool.  Several clicks later I thought I had achieved that, but no, they still tried to deliver it on Monday. Moreover, even two days later their online tool didn’t show the parcel being at the Post Office, but at the sorting office. The opening hours of that are 8am to 10am daily (yes, very customer-friendly), so we drove
Post a Comment
Read more