The NHS

[John Arton]

Dave
re your #46
In Shields we too are in danger of losing our A & E plus Maternity services being downgraded. This is a result of South Tyneside NHS Trust combining with Sunderland Hospitals to form a single integrated Trust with specialist services on one site only, so Maternity is being downgraded in Shields and concentrated in Sunderland.
The claim is that by integrating services can avoid duplication and thus make savings. One size fits all springs to mind but with regard to health that's b.s.
At present there is (another expensive) consultation forum going on where jo public can air their views (doubt if any notice will be taken of them though). One thing is for sure though that even after the integration the number of "Managers" will not reduce.
Even in a small Trust like South Tyneside there are around 20 "Managers" on 6 figure salaries.
As you say Dave. The NHS is a monolith that needs a top to bottom shake up, starting with its Whitehall Ministry. It needs all political parties to get together and stop using it as a football. Start with asking the front line staff (nurses, doctors, NOT Managers) how they want the NHS to function, cancel all P.F.I. payments, institute a I.D. card system so that only genuine people who have U.K. Nationality and a N.I. number can get free care, all others should contribute towards any care they receive.
Will it happen, doubt it.
Rgds
JA

[cappy]

###two doctors in the house next door ...each works 3 days per 7 day week .....told me it helps to look after children ......one thing certainly disappeard is home visits and night calls .....idont think the taxpayers payed thousands upon thousands of pounds training to get only three days a week out of them .....and the wage must be pretty good to just work 3 days each....but that is there business it is the system which is wrong.....and the NHS will be the bain of pollies forever.....cappy

[Captain Kong]

Cappy if they are GPs they will be able to do part time. A Doctor at my Surgery is only part time, But they will only get part time wages.
.
.
No Part timers in Hospital. My lad is the Senior Consultant for Liver and Pancreatic Diseases. He works a 12 hour day Five days a week and every other weekend he is on call 24 hours a day and cannot leave his home while awaiting a phone call from his hospital. Or stay within 15 minutes drive from his hospital. and is called out continuously at weekends as that is the time people have the alcohol abuse illnesses
So that week he works from Monday all week, all week end and again all week, that is a 12 days on.
Sometimes he is really tired out. He starts with his Ward rounds at 0730 and then his clinic and then in Surgery and in the evenings he has to do a clinic, finishing around 9pm, he said he has to work evenings as well because he would never get through the amount of patients,
Where his hospital is , has the highest rate of alcohol abuse in the country.
These are the very people who should be made to pay for their treatment. Self inflicted. Then screaming for help.

I cannot understand why people get so "ill" these days, we never seemed to see so many people ill in the 30s and 40s before NHS, I know the population has increased tremendously.
BUT There are so may Obese people with Diabetes and all the illnesses that brings. but we never ever saw an Obese person in the 30s and 40s or even in the 50s.
Then since the bars and pubs and clubs were opened all night instead of the 11pm closing by Bliar, the alcohol abuse Rate has shot up tremendously. and so all requiring Medical attention. I never saw any Drugs in the 30s, 40s and 50s, again now requiring a lot of Medical treatments.
Make them all pay for self inflicted ailments.

[John F Collier]

###two doctors in the house next door ...each works 3 days per 7 day week .....told me it helps to look after children ......one thing certainly disappeard is home visits and night calls .....idont think the taxpayers payed thousands upon thousands of pounds training to get only three days a week out of them .....and the wage must be pretty good to just work 3 days each....but that is there business it is the system which is wrong.....and the NHS will be the bain of pollies forever.....cappy

So basically part time doctors in what is or should be a full time career . JC

[Captain Kong]

Cappy does not say what kind of Doctors they are. and where do they work???
are they in the Private Sector, in a nursing home, ?
They are Certainly not in a NHS Hospital.
Brian

[cappy]

Cappy does not say what kind of Doctors they are. and where do they work???
are they in the Private Sector, in a nursing home, ?
They are Certainly not in a NHS Hospital.
Brian

###one is in a GP surgery locally and one in a hospital some ten or twelve miles away ...cappy

[cappy]

##in south tyneside hospital in mid december there was 13 of the kitchen staff of 30 or 31 off sick for two weeks or more .......that must be a record .....this was not doctors or nurses or managers this was the people supposed to feed patients ....the same rate was sick last year......three years or so ago the union got them full wages when sick ....before that the sickness was much less .....the NHS is a bottomless pit ......but regardless a wonderful institution ......sadly used as a football by pollies......cappy

[Ivan Cloherty]

Have watched numerous discussions on all channels of TV and read numerous reports in various newspapers, not one politician or reporter has had the courage to say the obvious in that we are treating too many illegal immigrants or non EEC visitors taking advantage of our system. All you get is we need the immigrants, yes we may well do, but we need the 'legal and qualified' ones. Nor will they face the fact that we have a housing shortage because we are giving illegal immigrants priority, everybody is frightened of being labelled a racialist, we are not racialist we are common sense people who can see the bloody obvious staring us in the face

[Keith Tindell]

I agree Ivan, i did read somewhere the charges that are not being levied on people who are not entitled to free medical care, it ran into millions, also the cost of supplying interpreters incurred by the NHS, again millions of pounds. If, as we are being constantly told, that these migrants are here and working, paying taxes ? etc, then spend the extra money being gathered on the NHS, as usual the true facts are kept from us, kt

[cappy]

#####yes cappy

so basically part time doctors in what is or should be a full time career . Jc