What a week. 

It all started last Friday . 

A phone call from my mother’s hospital . Operation date has been scheduled. Good. However, the date is 4th May. Nearly 8 months since she was initially diagnosed. I went slightly apoplectic poor man on the other end was as apologetic as possible. But completely lost the will to speak when I explained that 4th of May was a bank holiday did he know, I asked, that it was the Coronation? His hospital would only have skeleton staff. I further explained that by then mum may well have died in which case he need worry no further. He was a management something something. I could hear him shuffling papers around and eventually he said. ‘ I need to look into this’ I will ring you on Monday. He did not! However the complaints lady did. She and I are getting on really well. She is as apoplectic as me. A new date is being decided.

Later that day an anonymous lady rang me. She said she was ringing from my London hospital. She said due to  ‘nurses’ strike on Monday 13th Dipstick would no longer be ringing me for my phone appointment. This long overdue appointment the result of an MRI requested early 2022 and eventually undertaken January 2023. 

I have to say I was not very polite. Poor lady. How could she know it was actually doctors on strike. How would she know I was already losing the plot. She just made it up. Said Dipstick needed nurses for his clinic. She could not tell me if or when I would get another appointment. I wondered if perhaps Dip was on the wards helping people with bed pans and dressings and washing and showering and stuff…I am not proud of such comments. But I was super stressed. She said she didn’t know if he’d be helping on wards but that he really could not do his clinic even on the phone.

I then wrote a petulant email , copying in anyone I could think of. No of course Dipstick did not reply. Mrs Infectious Diseases did..she wrote to Dip asking for the MRI report to be copied to her team. No reply. Her team also had an appointment for me this week. In fact face to face. She organised alternatives, by phone. She explained owing to the Junior Doctors Strike, she herself would be on the wards to cover. Jerome also replied explaining he and possibly Dipstick were rota’d to be on the wards too. They were doing the work of Junior Drs.  Hence no clinics. 

Monday came and a lovely doctor rang from Infectious Diseases to make sure I was not about to board a train to London. He said he’d ring later. He did. Between us we worked out a plan for the niggling on -going bloody bladder infection. 

Tuesday Mr Nephrology rang. For his non -face -to -face appointment. He explained that as he is ‘leadership’ he doesn’t need to be on the wards. He sorted a plan for the kidney issues going forward. He also found a bit of the missing MRI report. It seems they did not manage to get all the remaining ureter stump etc into the imaging. oops. No wonder Dipstick doesn’t feel like sending it. 

Wednesday was get -the- pin-out -of -the- foot day. Alas not only but also tube strike to add to the mix. Amazing luck I got an uber. At great expense. Traffic from the station at St Pancras was absolutely stationary. But made it. Pin out. Xray done. all the dressings and boot and stuff removed. Wow looks weird but great. 

Thursday after the statutory 24 hour, dressings wait…it was a shower. Oh joy. After about 2 months. First shower. 7 weeks of foot in boot. previous to that was 2 weeks of iv antibios ie could not get midline wet. 

Wonderful to be immersed in the shower again!

It’s the simple things. 

But back to the NHS> What is it that is all so wrong? The working conditions?. The salary scale? the top slice pension cap? Lack of trainees? Leavers outnumbering the recruits. I really do not know. 

What I do know is that the consultants must have been brilliant this week. Covering the Junior Doctors. If ever there was a misnomer that is one. They are hardly junior in the sense of skiils or experience. Its just that they are not the Consultants or managers. 

Is it the NHS or is it Government , or both. 

It must be important to protect the NHS but the spin coming out of Number 10 makes us think doctors are lazy, greedy and deliberately putting lives at risk. We are led to believe they pop round to their gentlemen’s clubs, ( no lady doctors of course) or even wield their golf clubs before deigning to see hospitals, let alone a patient. I think this started when Hunt was Health Secretary. Didn;t he berate the doctors for having the temerity to strike?

I can only begin to imagine the paperwork which clinicians must fulfill. I don’t suppose teamwork exists, nor support. No quality of life for doctors nurses and all the staff that make up a hospital. How to empower the Doctors and Nurses to make decisions. How to support them and stop the reflex actions which would seem prevalent. They cannot get everything done. Something has to give. That is many things just do not get completed. A total culture and organisational change is needed. Not even much more money. The time gained from stopping pointless tasks will help recovery of the whole service.  I have a small example of the paperwork situation. I did a talk for NHS way back in the summer of 2022 . they wanted to pay me. I said no. they said yes. In order to jump through the many hoops to become a ‘supplier’ and then ‘approved supplier’ and then invoice them and then be approved and then to be paid has taken me …. 8 months. I so nearly gave up. But began to make it a point of principal to carry on.

I also understand that the time and money spent on legal battles could be better employed by using a sitting panel. Like the stewards enquiry at horse racing, or the Hawkeye system at Wimbledon. Challenge. Decide .Paying compensation and stopping the whole appeal structure. Patients and Staff equally. There is an amazing book by Peter Duffy which explains the Whistleblowers hopeless position. ‘ Whistle in the Wind’. He, like others, explains that people are terrified to make decisions. they spend ages documenting and covering back sides. Why would people train for 5 -6 years. Run up massive loans. Undertake huge, life or death, responsibilities work all night, weekends, move from hospital to hospital ‘training’ every 6 months or so. They are told when they can take annual leave. They cannot go to weddings, funerals etc if on call. Then to cap it all they get paid less than a shift supervisor at McDonalds. At least at McD the food is free for workers. Not so in hospitals. 

When I taught in secondary schools our bestest, brightest students always applied for medicine. They faced huge challenges to get their applications in early, before the rest of the students, face interviews and pre tests and goodness knows what. That gave them a flavour of what is ahead. Impossible days. One of my god- daughters is a ‘ junior’ married to a ‘junior’/ They have to work  in separate hospitals, hardly see each other and she missed her grandpa’s funeral on account of being on call. On call as in …in charge of 100’s of patients through the night. Life and Death. Yes. In charge. 

Meanwhile another god-daughter, has decided to leave the country and work in New Zealand. She is a ‘junior’ doctor then GP in UK but in NZ where her quality of life is immeasurably better, she sees her husband and indeed her daughter too. The  pay is better but the cost of living is tighter. But. The overall well-being is massively better.  Her NHS Consultant parents are horrified at her decision. But understand and bemoan the huge distance between them.