My Lovely GP

[johnerebus]

I Visited my GP today and after satisfactorily dealing with my ailment we got to discussing the missing UK Junior Doctor Rose Polge. My GP said she hoped that the current Health Secs actions hadn't driven her to suicide.

I see BBC news online today says that there were personal reasons found in a note left by Dr Rose but also there was a passing reference to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the note.

We then discussed the forthcoming result of the implementation of new policies for junior doctors. My oh my! What a disaster for the NHS.

[terry2366]

Cannot be any more of a disaster than it already is.

[trooper]

Terry. Don't talk such rubbish. You may be unhappy with nhs but many, many people love thecnhs, especially those of us with reallyvserious conditions. My experience of the nhs has been fantastic having been treated for several cancers over 18 years - so wind your neck in. Tosser.

[johnerebus]

I agree with you trooper. I had a heart op in January from a brilliant team of doctors, nurses, anesthetists etc, 7 people in total all looking after my welfare. Yes the NHS may be patchy (underfunding?) but it's the best we have and my life was saved at the age of 7 by the NHS (it had been in existence for just a few years then.

I have relatives working in the NHS as senior nurses and teachers and get the inside stories of their stories of overwork underfunding, abusive patients and poor pay for the work they do. Nuff said innit!

[sophie]

If the NHS is as bad as you make it out to be terry whatever, why is it that the need for the NHS is the No.1 reason for people of a certain age returning to the UK. My daughter is a senior practice nurse and she works all hours and from that point of view the NHS has a lot to answer for, but if I were, God forbid, to develop a life threatening illness, I know which country I would rather be in.

[jofra]

Just five years ago I had a heart 'do' - didn't realise it, just (to me) a minor discomfort (!), rang my GP for an appointment - ambulance immediately ordered, blue lights to hospital, stuck things in me immediately on arrival (in corridor - don't know why the hurry ) - and so I'm still here....
My son - now a big, strapping healthy 42 year-old - was a prem - two pound at birth, one or two problems in his early years....
My wife - like me, getting on but also has acquired some physical activity problems which have been/are being treated....
All dealt with/cared for by the NHS - without it, where would we be?
The only thing that worries me was that after my 'do', they said I should not drive for at least a couple of months - but that I could fly after six weeks..... They never asked whether I was an airline pilot....
A friend's son will qualify as a junior doctor from medical school in June - he says that because of the attacks on and destruction of the NHS by the current government, 80% of his fellow students are planning for overseas positions - they see no future here as things are...

[waddo]

It all sounds good, but I would like to know why my daughter in the UK is still partly blind in one eye, still suffers from extreme migraine attacks, is still on so many drugs that she can hardly move around anymore? Why it took 3 months to get an MRI scan and then a further 3 weeks for the results to come through, why she had to go to a private hospital for her MRI because the NHS did not have an MRI scanner available for us and sends all its patients to the private hospital at great expense?

There are many "sides" to story's about how good or bad the NHS is and personally I think it is a structure that has been forced into a situation where it and it's staff must finally make public the injustices placed upon it by the poor Government control of the whole thing.

I noted with some humor in the news this last week, that the NHS is now going to go completely computerized in patient records and its work practices etc, this almost ten years after it scrapped the idea that my best friend was originally involved in for over five years of his working life. The major problem was in trying to get the staff to use the equipment - nobody in charge had realized at that time that the staff did not have the training nor the time to use the equipment - what has changed?

Five years before I moved here I had a hernia operation in an NHS hospital and must say that the service was excellent - well, once I had pointed out to the surgeon that the hernia was on the right hand side of my body and not the left hand side as he had marked me - but I was glad to get out of the hospital as fast as I could even so.

It is nice to see support for the NHS but truly it is a system that is doomed to failure unless it goes partly private, it was never intended to support the volume of patients it now has to deal with and needs restructure but from the ground up and not from the top down. Happy that so many people have had good treatment and are happy with the service, provided you live in the UK it must be a life saver to many. Us, well we just pay our income tax to the UK to keep things struggling on but we can't use the service we pay for so please - enjoy what you have, whilst you still have it!

Before you take me to task please understand that we are not bitter about it at all, we moved out of the UK because we wanted to, knowing what we left behind and that we would still have to pay for it after we left. Our choice and we are happy with it.

[Hector]

The issue as to the Dr's pay boils down to the fact that the junior Dr's don't want to work at weekends and if they do they want overtime pay. They are getting a 13% pay rise plus overtime rates after 7pm on a Saturday and all day Sunday. Personally there's a lot of people who'd love a deal like that right now. Ambulance staff, fire fighters and police don't get extra for working weekends so why should Dr's?

[tomsteel]

Hector just look at the qualifying route/time from med student to end of junior doctor training. Ask yourself if you would subject yourself to the hours demanded, responsibility, insurance costs, examinations et al? Whilst not a doctor, I was a chartered physiotherapist and worked a number of years in NHS hospitals. I experienced many of their frustrations, hence left for private practice. Ask London Transport tube drivers (£56 K per annum for 40 hours per week), how they view the commitment expected of junior medical staff. Incidentally, have you ever worked in any of the Health Service disciplines?