Husker wrote:Fury wrote:Bryan Benn wrote:truchas wrote:Another resounding success of the UK free health care program. foangryweasel approves.
Yet because midwives don't have time to sit with women in early labour for more than a few minutes at most, we are encouraged to do the next best thing.
We offer them strong painkilling drugs such as pethidine or diamorphine - which is a form of heroin.
Drugs keep the mother nice and quiet which, of course, suits staff.
Welcome to the modern NHS maternity ward. A world of shoddy practice, poor hygiene standards and a shocking disregard for patients' individual needs.
Source
The UK system is not perfect. And the downsides do get a lot of bad publicity these days, such is the thirst of the media to find any big UK organisation to knock down. Such is life.
But our National Health Service does have a great deal going for it. At least so far as my own rather extensive personal experiences of it are concerned.
Don't worry Bryan, no of the critics here will listen to you. What do you know anyway? You only live there and have seen the system first hand.
I've read similar criticism here about the "socialist" health care here in Canada.
Cheers my friend.
But if you ask a dog that has spent its whole life in a crate where he'd rather live, he'd say the crate as that is all he knows. No I am not calling my british friend a dog...just an analogy. I doubt Bryan has much nice to say about British Dentists, tho'.
Not been to a dentist for 43 years! So cannot comment there.
But I have needed more than my share of "outpatient" help from my local doctors surgery. And have watched the way they continually develop their services to ensure the patient is always put first. And it's a big practice as well. Three locations and lots of doctors and nurses. But an ethos they all seem to adopt, even the lovely new young lady doctor who is helping me at present.
And I had a a lot of first had experience of the acknowledged Cinderella of our NHS: Mental Health Services. First with the incredible care that underfunded part of the Health Service gave to Bobbie. Then the similar care I saw almost on a daily basis for close to a year, it gave to a friend of mind who suffered and eventually died from a most dreadful form of dementia.
Maybe I have just been lucky down here with my experience of the UK Health Service. But I can only say it as I have seen it.
And I will tell you about my one experience of paying for health services. We went private for the operation that triggered Bobbies Mental Health problems. Not sure why now, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I think we were concerned about the length of time you had to wait for NHS operation then, (queues have been reduced now: indeed we could have had Bobbie's operation done by the National service in the same timescale as it turned out).
The private company clearly wanted money above all else. About 8,000 US$ for a simple operation. And when Bobbie's problems started afterwards they were just plain rude to me. "Not our problem, sort it yourself we are not interested" is very close to the words of the last telephone call I had with them.
I know they had insufficient staff the night after Bobbie's operation. On that night they just stuffed her full of drugs and left her for hours while they tried to cope with other patients. I am convinced that is what started Bobbie's problems. But I really could never face going through the dreadful trauma of taking them to court over it etc. That wouldn't have brought her back to me.
So I have seen both worlds of medical care here. No wonder I support our National Health Service.
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 5:25 am
)
