So the hospital sent him home
Not actually seen by urology consultant rather handled by the consultants in geriatric medicine aka "let the fuckers die" NHS style, sad that you don't merit actual time with the urology consultant at 70 years old having had prostate cancer for years and no treatment
Sent home with an exotic set of painkillers including morphine
With a diagnosis TO THE PATIENT of osteoporosis of the spine and the medics have gone to great length to tell the patient and family that its all due to wear and tear of the spine and there's nothing that could have been done
Err except he is on cyproterone acetate now, those of us with an education are not as clueless as the medics seem to think
Sent home on the Friday with no notice, no warning to the GPs, and openly "because we need the beds" with only a weekends pain relief
Pleading with the "sorry you need three days to get an appointment to see the GP" receptionists on the Monday for morphine script
And some of the family go to see the GP, explain gently that actually we may have working class accents but we are not total fuckwits, and we know dam well what cyproterone acetate is, and what the diagnosis and lack of treatment has been all along, and can they please find out from the hospital what the fuck is going on AND HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL THE PATIENT HE IS DYING
The GPs seem as genuinely pissed off with the hospital as I am, and after a lots of bollocks about patient confidentiality, and the patient making clear the close family have his full permission to know what's going on, the whole sorry mess is confirmed by the GP
That patient as ever thinks the medics are gods
The NHS is failing in the most spectacular fashion
No doubt the Healthcare commission will make more gentle remarks about low numbers of urology surgeons, and the trust will put more nurses in place to talk to the patients, and ever more people will die
Die while the waiting lists for treatment look remarkably short and impressive
Die in beds where if you reach out you can touch your fellow patients in the next beds, making cross infection inevitable
Die a good 10 or 20 years before you would have done in another equivalent Western nation, cos they would have actually treated you
Meanwhile the country continues to pour massive sums into the cancer charities when the NHS doesn't even bother with routine proven treatments already discovered and in widespread use in the rest of the world and sporadically within the NHS
This is the saddest outrageous shambles and I really don't know if I can carry on with this blog, it's all too sad
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2 comments:
Seems to me that as the months pass by, you and Dr Rant are converging on the same views. Believe me, the GPs are just as P****d off with everything as you are - as shown in this posting's example. Unfortunately this mad governments targets for hospitals are all about speed and throughput - no measurement of quality or appropriateness of treatment. result: numbers are fiddled to improve stas and patients are pushed through system asap - speed matters, not quality. It's madness. And very sad.
i hope you will carry on with this blog, it adds far more value to the NHS debate than those of Rant or Crippen. There is a lot of support for your proposal that the NHS should become a privately-run operation funded as a "social insurance" model on the lines of our European neighbours' schemes, but most opposition will be from the medical profession who have benefited handsomely from generous NHS contracts. The Taxpayers' Alliance and Adam Smith Institute have long campaigned for change in this direction but, sadly, their voices have fallen on deaf ears.
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