Covid 19 has shown that the NHS is not safe with the government controlling the purse strings. The need to control the infection by the use of vaccination has shown how spending can be wasted. Not because the vaccines don't work, because they probably do. It's the way they have done the vaccination program. It was clear from the start that resources were not going to stretch to everyone getting the ejections straight away. So it was necessary to target to those most vulnerable first. These days computer systems can soon knock out the list of who gets done first. So why did the employ lots of people in centres and invite them in one at a time to have the jabs? Vaccination centres only make sense if anyone can just walk in and get the jab done. The first thing to waste money was having to employ people and hire the places out in the first place. The second waste of money was sending letters out to people to invite them to make an appointment to go to one of these vaccination centres. Plus the need of a website and phone system and staff to man the appointment system. A third waste of money comes from GP practices who also have contacted patients to have the jab, often after, or before a letter to make an appointment is sent out. Most people in the most vulnerable category have transport problems or require the use of public transport to get to these centres. This seems silly to me when you asking people such as them to stay off public transport. Lastly due to the fact some of the people are housebound they still require a member of the health service to do a home visit, thus duplicating the systems and cost on the NHS. The same sick and vulnerable often do not use mobile phones or smart phones or understand computers to make appointments, so that was also a flaw in the logic.
So what could they have done?
Developed a full list of all the patients needing a vaccination. And have the vaccination team equipped with this list. The team itself, fully equipped with PPE, would then visit everyone at home and give them the jab. As some people on the list would live together they would get the jab at the some time and are ticked off the computer list. Areas and streets of high Covid could have been done first and if someone is not in they move on to the next person and do the jab on them until the team need to return to get more vaccine.
Side effects? Presumably they must have had a plan in place for someone doing home visits and the person reacting to the dose. Though people in the centres were told to wait around for 15 minutes before going home. As reported on TV anyway! I know this wasn't done with at the home visits. In fact the nurse who did my dad spent about less than 5 minutes in the house before getting in her car and driving off. It turns out that I, as a carer, am on the list to. But the nurse did not inject me too! One of my relations went to the vaccination centre and his son drove him there. The doctor asked if his son was a carer, as he could have done at the same time. He wasn't, but if he had it would, if you think about it, mess up the appointment system the NHS is using. His son by the way doesn't live with the father, being married himself, thus breaking guidelines in transporting him. But since his father has MS it was the only way.
I know from my own street that at least five people qualified for the jab and some have had the jab in a block of five houses. One nurse doing our block would have got them all done in less than one hour without the need for letters and travel and the need for any of the vulnerable people to leave the house. And having contact with only one member of NHS staff, fully protected, sent from a hospital or GP surgery.
At the moment staff have to wait around for patients to turn up from the appointment system and often they don't come in. But if the government had consulted with GP surgeries they would have known that many patients do NOT turn up for doctors appointments anyway, even before the epidemic!
At the moment I have been sent a letter from the NHS and also had now two phone calls from the my own doctors to have an appointment for the jab. It's not that I refusing to have the Jab, I am just refusing to go to one of these places. I asked if they would do it at my home and they refused.
Why won't I go? Well two reasons. I look after my father and he cannot be left alone. In normal times I could ask a relative to look after him, or a neighbour. But these are not normal times. Secondly I am refusing to wear any face masks. So I cannot go on public transport or even enter such a centre. As the masks are compulsory. Mind you I would be risking myself and thus my father by travelling to such a place. Since masks only prevent the spreading of the infection if a person has it. They do not stop you catching the bug. And even with one dose a person is not safe. I have had no need to wear a face mask. I am at home, all shopping is done online, so I don't need them. Even before Covid I was never really going places. My local Co-Op for milk and bread was the highlight of my journeys! But thanks to Amazon Prime we can get those delivered. Home is sounding more like a luxury prison everyday!!
I walked around our estate only a short distance the other day. And without really paying attention to the street spotted four of the standard blue face masks on the ground in hedges, or even on the pavements. God knows how far they have spread around Sheffield!!
So that's my other reason for not using them. Such masks are not environmentally friendly and were not made to be so. Since they were largely made to be worn in clinical places where once done with they are disposed off in special bins. If you ask me the masks themselves being dropped in the street by people who are more concerned with their own health than where they live. Well life doesn't work that way and having a mask on means that people with bacteria and virus' a lot worse than Covid 19 could effect the country just by not burning or destroying that mask they dropped in the street. Some bugs can live on a discarded mask for ages! What's even worse is that the Government doesn't care. There's no TV advert telling people to put the mask in the bin after you have done with and NEVER drop it in the street!
Perhaps if the government had used the above system then they could have paid the NHS staff more than 1%.
Update 26 March. Another letter from the NHS, plus two phone calls from the Doctor's in the last seven days. My doctor's surgery is now trying to work out if they can jab me at home. But the person on the phone doubted it! To be honest there's people more at risk than me that should have it! People who have to mix with people.
19 November. Still no visit from the doctor for me. In fact the doctors are not even now interested in my health (nor I suspect anyone's else) now. Apart from flu jabs notices, which they even send out after the patients have had them! Doctors get a good income from doing flu jabs, they don't like you getting them from chemists. As they don't get paid if the patient has it there.
We cocked up. So you have to pay.
The biggest wast of money on the NHS is the amount they pay out when things go wrong. It was recently reported that a great deal of the yearly finding of the NHS goes on payouts and fighting claims. Even if you are trying to suggest ways around a problem that you encountered dealing with the NHS then they jump on the defensive. It's highly likely that many medical problems or situations will lead to someone getting annoyed or pissed off with someone in the service. For example this happened in a true story. The patient a woman nearly 90 years of age was sent to hospital on a wasted journey. A transport ambulance was all that was required to pick her up from home. However that day was a Friday which means the drunks are out in force keeping ambulance crews busy. Waiting since three in the afternoon for this transport ambulance. At 9 pm about, a paramedic woman phoned up. Asking questions as though the people had just dialled 999. Not simply waiting for a transport ambulance! Sometime after that, a paramedic car pulled up with a paramedic. Again he started acting if she was an emergency case. When we explained to him she had NO PAIN at all, he agreed that she clearly had not broken anything. It was suggested to him that as the ambulance service were very busy and this was no urgent case, that transport could be arranged for another day. He agreed and said he would look into it. He then went to the bottom of the person's stairs, but could still be heard - every word he said - and he phoned Ambulance Control to book the job in. At no point did he mention her condition or delaying the job. Instead he was told that another paramedic was working on his own and that he could team up up with him and bring her to Northern General in an emergency ambulance. He said he would return in about 20 minutes with the ambulance to take her to hospital. At 2 am Saturday mourning the person looking after her had opted to go to bed. Ten minutes later a phone call from Northern General Hospital saying if it was all right to send her home and they said yes. So they waited. At 4 am she still wasn't home. So back on the phone. The Nurse in charge answered. She said she was waiting for an emergency ambulance to send her home. “Can you give me a time” the person enquired. “Could be anything up to four hours”. “What about a taxi?” “She would have to pay for it” she said. The person was pretty angry especially at that remark. “You pay for it ” “No” she replied. “I can sense your not happy” she said. “No I'm not, what about a medi car?” “No” she said. She also pointed out that the patient was under her care and that she needed 'trained people' to take her home and so she was not prepared to send her home in a taxi for that reason. Contradicting what she said about paying for one. The conversation ended with her going on about the complaints procedure to me. And on about her patient care. But clearly thought nothing about possibly keeping an elderly person up all night or waking them up if they had gone to sleep, if she had found an ambulance to take her home at 5 am in the mourning! In the end it was 10 am the next day. She explained she had been kept waiting till about 1.45 am. A doctor came into see her and said the X-ray was fine and she could go home. He didn't ask her any other questions about her health. She was in the “blue wing”. And they took her to A&E waiting area for transport home. She was on hospital trolley bed no 36. The staff tried to lower it, but it was broke and would not go down. She requested the toilet. She was not taken to any toilets for disabled people. But instead a commode was brought for her. This she described as being more suitable for a young person, with a small water holding container. It had no arms to hold onto. As she had been waiting hours, her need was great and filled it. The nurse when taking it away spilled it on the patient's pants and since she had brought another pair, since she thought she was staying in, she had to change them. They wanted her to get back onto trolley 36, but it was too high and she couldn't get on. The nurse actually said “jump on”. So they got her a plastic “reception” chair to sit on ALL NIGHT! They needed to get her blankets to keep her warm and a footstool.
The family sent a letter complaining about the situation with ambulances, pointing out that many ambulances are uncomfortable and not suited for elderly patients to travel in (especially emergency ambulances). However the hospital denied everything, wasn't interested in ambulances services. Then went on the attack with the person who phoned up being abusive to staff.
I have to say it was very similar to the fictional incident in BBC's Doctor's recently were a member of hospital staff had abused the Practice Manager's mother. And when the Practice Manager went to see the staff. The staff, including the boss of the department accused him of being aggressive to the staff. They were so on the defensive that they failed to take into account that the person's life had been put in danger. Of course there was racist element to the situation. But I suspect that the staff would have defended the nurse, even if both patient and son had been white. I myself came up against this type of prejudice while living in the working class estate of the Manor in Sheffield. There was of course a violent element of people on the estate. But it was a case that if I lived there I was brother chip to them. It involved ambulance crews. Who were sent out several times to my mother who had shocking nose bleeds for no apparent reasons. The first time it happened the crew took her to Northern General and told her that they (the crew) would transfer her to Hallamshire for a procedure to seal the vessel. At Northern they didn't. Waited for it to stop and sent her home. This episode happened several more times. One doctor said the last time to have them send her to Hallamshire if it starts again. It did, the ambulance crew however would not take her there only back to Northern. So I played hell with them, that's when they started to use the abuse thing and even said "Manor". They asked the Hallamshire, who would not accept her. So she went to NG and then to Hallamshire. Where they finally sealed the blood vessels. But all that money wasted.
General Practitioners are not much, better and in the UK there's a growing shortage of them. I remember being in the Urology Department under going tests myself and there was this old chap in that was told by the doctor (infront of me) telling the daughter (I think) that he was full of prostrate cancers. His own doctors had done nothing! It's one of those strange things that sticks in your mind to this day. I had no idea who this guy was, but felt like that he was such a lovely man and while I was there he acted like one too. Of course some practices have only one or two doctors. But I suspect they are that tied up with rules and budgets they just don't have time. Others are just a complete waste of time. Prescribing pills that should only be short term, but patients are on for years. But even when there are lots of doctors and each time you go to the doctor you rarely see the same one again. It doesn't mean they are any better. With smoking a big problem for the NHS, anyone who smokes or did smoke automatically is filled in that category and the doctors look for signs of that in any diagnoses. But they can assuming that, get things wrong for years. Often at the patients expense. For example somebody coughing something up becomes part of the symptoms of COPD. Symptoms of COPD · increasing breathlessness, particularly when you're active · a persistent chesty cough with phlegm. But if the patient says after eating something such as Yorkshire Pudding they cough up phlegm? Is that COPD? The answer should have been no. That is due to a gall bladder problem, where the body can't deal with fatty foods. But I can tell at a doctors surgery in Sheffield, where at least ten doctors work, not one spotted that. And when it became known that was the cause it was too late for the patient. There was on TV recently a young girl who was seen by doctors. One of which said she was "playing it up". The girl was diagnosed not by the doctor, but by an eye tester. Where she was found to have MS.
By the way a doctor can refuse to treat you. And strike you off the list for no real reason at all. So be careful what you say to these people.
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