The Staggering Inadequacy of NHS Scotland
We’re publishing a guest post today by a parent who lives in a village just outside Edinburgh who had a terrible experience with NHS Scotland yesterday. His six month-old son developed serious breathing difficulties, he called 111, was told an ambulance was on its way and then, 45 minutes later, a dispatcher called to tell him the ambulance wouldn’t arrive for another 12 hours. Here is the opening section:
It happened quickly and out of the blue. We’ve three young children – a six year-old, three year-old and our six month-old ‘lockdown baby’. Any parent with children in an education or nursery setting will tell you that from September to June they spend 80% of that time with a cold, cough, sneeze or sniffle. On occasion, it can be much worse. Our eldest once had scarlet fever and had to be rushed to hospital while he was having a sleepover at his grandparents. He was fine but they’ve never quite recovered. After your first sprog, you tend to roll with the punches and are able to tell if something is seriously wrong and make plans accordingly.
We were not, however, prepared for the events of this week. Having inherited a lurgy from his siblings, the baby hacked his way through the past seven days. His temperature soared now and then but we brought it down with sleep, Calpol and Ibuprofen.
On Monday we realised it was getting worse. His breath came in short gasps; he was managing only every third inhalation to get oxygen into his tiny lungs. We live in Scotland so it was also the September holiday weekend, meaning the older children were around our feet until the babysitter arrived. By evening, we decided that if the baby could get a long sleep it might nail whatever he was struggling with internally. He didn’t. When he refused to eat, drink and had a dry nappy we knew the game was up.
I’m 40 now but when I was a child I had bad asthma – meaning regular visits to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. I grew up in a town 15 miles from Ninewells and when anyone in our household became ill we could telephone our local GP who would – if required – visit our house. It didn’t matter whether it was day or night. This was the case for both adults and children; my father when he crumpled with appendicitis and we children when suffering a fever.
As a rule, I have a soft spot for things from the past. I like old cars with roaring petrol engines. I admire the quality craftsmanship of Edwardian and Victorian furniture. I love gothic fiction. Yet I am also a progressive in its true sense. I’m receptive to new ideas and fascinated by technology. I listen to others’ opinions even if inside I’m thinking “what total crap”.
My experience this week, however, has confirmed that the health service in Scotland is gasping its last breath. Rather like my son could have done had we not taken matters into our own hands.
worth reading in full.
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Snazi party: “
chocolatehealth rations are up!”If you really think that somebody but especially children are having serious difficulty in breathing then call 999. 111 is no use during the working day as they have no doctors and are only any use out of working hours if you feel the problem can be solved with the (usually remote) prescription pad.
Realistically what is the ambulance bringing? – Oxygen, nebulisers, steroids and resuscitation. It needs hospital for the tests, antibiotics and paediatrician input.
Yes, the system is broken mainly with unnecessary requests and interventions. However it works on priorities and after hospital triage the child would have been attended to immediately if necessary.
Good for waiting, not good for calling 111 for breathing difficulties, good for going to hospital under your own steam.
Agree. Our son had a similar illness and when it reached the point where we thought he needed medical attention we took him straight to A&E in the car. Just as well we did because he went straight into ICU and had to be resuscitated. Previous experiences with 111 and trying to contact our GPs convinced us this would just be a waste of valuable time. Fortunately A&E is 20 minutes from here and we have a car.
The other thing I would say to all parents is get yourself a thermometer and a pulse oxymeter and keep tabs on your kids temperature and oxygen levels when they are sick with respiratory symptoms. This is especially true if you are a new parent and don’t necessarily yet know the signs when someone is really sick.
I think we are all going to have to become a lot more self-reliant when it comes to healthcare. We cannot rely on the NHS or the ambulance service to the extent that we did in the past.
“Fortunately A&E is 20 minutes from here and we have a car”
These two issues are the real kicker. Not everyone has this situation.
An oximeter will also give a pulse. The problem is that for neonates and older babies they are usually too large to fit comfortably on a finger or big toe. The things to look out for in infants are: Posture – are their limbs floppy? Yes 999 Eyes: are their eyes open? Are they taking an interest in things around them ? Sounds – Are they crying a normal cry? Are they not crying at all ? Are they crying with a high pitched mewling? Any wheezing or similar sounds on breathing? If abnormal 999 Colour – should be pink, any signs of duskiness around mouth? Yes 999 Chest – Is the chest rising and falling regularly? When the breathe in can you see the ribs standing out? Is their tummy going in when they breathe? If not regular 999 Temperature: do they feel hot? Do they feel cold? Yes 999 Fontanelle (soft spot): is it soft? Is it bulging? Is it saucer like? If bulging, hard or saucer like then 999 Have they been off their food? Have they had wet nappies/passed urine in last 24 hours? If no 999 Have they had dirty nappies? This can all be… Read more »
Thank you. Very useful.
Yes, good points, thanks.
The other item we used a lot in Paeds ED was gut feeling, if you felt something was wrong then go with it, and that is not just us nurses but the paediatric consultants as well.
Also, this is not a one off process but a regular monitoring. One experience I had was I assessed a 10 year old and her observations were normal so she was waiting in the waiting room with her dad. About twenty minutes later he comes into me and says she was unwell. Further assessment and she was transferred into resus and needed to be intubated. Children can compensate a lot better than adults but then they suddenly fall of the edge of the cliff and crash. I never ever took my eye off the ball with a child.
More advice from a lay person. Any doctors out there?
Isn’t it sad when a lay person has to,advise the public to get a thermometer and pulse oximeter.
This used to be so much better. Our daughter had an allergic reaction in London about ten years ago. They sent an emergency responder on a motorcycle who was there in minutes. He evaluated the situation, ran a few tests, and when the ambulance arrived the situation was already well understood and under control. We were quite impressed.
“ hospital triage”
An efficient triage system is absolutely crucial to A&E. And yes – it’s obvious that a lot of the problems of demand come from unnecessary use of the facilities – exacerbated by GP lockdown, and current over-use of distanced (non?) diagnosis in that sector.
The most serious failing I have experienced re. the NHS stemmed from that source, with the misdiagnosing of an oedema’s cause.
How’s someone with no medical quaifications supposed to know what’s necessary what’s unnecessary use of A&E facilities? In retrospect, the visit the text is about certainly counts as unnecessary but how were the parents supposed to know that?
If unnecessary use causes problems, then, capacity is too low. It should have been designed to cope with some expected amount of unnecessary use and be expanded if the actual amount turns out to be larger than the expected amount.
I’m not talking about medical judgments – it’s about the use of A&E and ambulances by a certain proportion of clear ‘misuse’ of facilities. It’s not a new observation. Ask any ambulance controller or A&E receptionist.
… and I’m not suggesting it’s an easy one to solve. But it underlines the necessity of an efficient and accurate triage process.
Just wondering right now in my ignorance but would there be less people in hospital if the local GP would see more patients who right now cant get any satisfaction from the same GP at least a small connection i think
The Red Terror under Nicki, Queen of Scots.
Sadly, we get the government we deserve.
Scotland needs to repent and turn back to God.
It’s not just NHS Scotland, just returned from my biennial trip to the GP to offer blood at their altar. The Practice Nurse took the samples and asked if I had any questions, ‘will you do a routine PSA (prostate cancer) test due to my age?’ A worried look crossed her face as she said ‘ they’ve stopped doing them because of the numbers of false positives, because if it comes back positive you have to go for an examination’. So NHS England has stopped doing routine blood checks for the cancer that kills more men than breast cancer kills women. Now we know who’s going to pay in the future for lockdown.
if false positives have stopped them doing blood checks for prostate cancer then you’d think it would stop them operating this fantasy pandemic on the PCR test wouldn’t you?
Just off to the chemist to buy myself a PCR test kit and to craft a note to the Health Minister and my local MP.
False positive rate for PSA is largely due to problems with the cut offs. What you need is PSA velocity i.e. is it rising and at what rate? Of course, that calls for yet more PSA testing but they’re not that expensive and likely a more cost effective approach than waiting until an exam or surgery becomes necessary.
The two issues are closely related. PCR testing came after the facts were known about the ineffectiveness of routine random screening for such things as breast cancer and prostate cancer. The statistical facts are well established, and the case of breast cancer screening is often used to illustrate the underlying fallacy.
The nurse was correct.
In my experience the NHS has never started doing routine blood tests for Prostate cancer. I have played hockey all my life – as I got older I seemed to get better as I ended up playing for an England side in the European cup in 2015 and 2017, and the World cup in Australia in 2016. 6 weeks after the end of the 2017 European tournament I was diagnosed with advanced metastatic prostate cancer. Thank goodness that wasn’t 2020 or 2021, as presumably I would be dead by now. When I got into hospital my PSA was 3,172 – it is now 0.06. I am on hormone treatment for the rest of my life, my quality of life has been shot to bits, but I am alive. I insist on quarterly blood tests, annual CT and full bone scans; I get these as I am not prepared to be fobbed off with any excuses. I never had an annual well-man check or anything like that; I wasn’t indestructible, but I played sport, cycled a lot, walked a lot, and could just about eat anything without any effect on my weight. If the NHS actually cared about prevention at all… Read more »
My baby grandson has some issues and recently had to be taken by ambulance to hospital. Took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive – we could have had at the hospital in under 20.
My advice, if you think your child is ill enough to warrant taking them to hospital then just do it. On the advice of a nurse friend of mine, phone the police and inform them of what you’re doing and that you may be speeding because of it. Don’t waste your time farting about with on call services, 111 etc.
When I worked in an urgent care centre some 12 miles from the nearest A&E for the majority of the time I would tell patients to make their own way to A&E as they would be quicker than a 999 ambulance, if they were worried then to call 999 as they would get a faster response. The reason being that an urgent care centre or a GP surgery are considered places of safety which have resuscitation facilities and medical personnel, thus any 999 ambulance is put at a lower priority. All calls are prioritised, a non breathing or unresponsive patient is category 1, heart attack amongst others is category 2.
I forgot to add that we were discouraged from calling 999 instead we were meant to call ambulance control on a standard landline to request urgent transfer. If I needed an emergency ambulance transfer it was 999 every time.
“Don’t waste your time farting about with on call services, 111 etc.”
I totally agree – if you have the alternative available.
I attended the GP’s surgery with what turned out to be seriously irregular AF and raised heart rate. His reaction (not literally, but in essence) was : “Fuck! We need to get you to A&E. NOW.”
I didn’t even consider the offered option of an ambulance – and was right. The treatment was actually exemplary.
When my youngest had a febrile collapse it took the ambulance 45 minutes to reach A&E after collecting him and his mum, this was due to traffic conditions despite blues and twos. I wasn’t a healthcare practitioner then, I worked in Leicester not knowing what was going on, I arrived at the hospital and had to wait 45 minutes. This was in the BM period (Before Mobile).
It’s not just the Scottish NHS that’s useless when you need them. My 20 year old daughter caught Covid, and got it pretty bad, which is unusual for someone of her age. (She’d had one Pfizer jab some weeks earlier). She was in her university digs, and pretty much on her own, so having to cope with the isolation period with almost no help. It didn’t help that I had a bad case of covid too, so was unable to offer any assistance. After a few days with it getting much worse and she was having breathing difficulties. She rang 111, who told her to phone a doctor. She managed to get in touch with the out-of-hours GP of our local practice (a miracle) and they said she might have pneumonia, and would need antibiotics. However when she said she was isolating in her student digs the doctor refused to prescribe the antibiotics as we (the parents) wouldn’t be allowed to drop them off to her, which is rubbish. We could easily have safely delivered them without compromising the isolation. The doctor told her to go to A & E instead! So my daughter had to get a Taxi to… Read more »
Actually there is little that can be done other than manage symptoms for all viral infections, if there are no signs requiring oxygen or other interventions thus requiring hospitalisation. There is no real treatment for viral infections, there are some antiviral medications but they have limited impact and may be time limited as well.
… but may moderate symptoms.
“they offered no treatment at all”
This is the major issue – the total lack of treatment options in the face of ‘vaccine’ PR.
Indeed.
Dr Peter McCullough has raged about this in the US.
This is his early treatment regime which he says has been very successful for him and many other doctors around the world who rejected the “vaccines or nothing” approach.
https://rumble.com/vm3kvi-dr.-peter-mccullough-full-lecture-on-covid-19-treatment-and-vaccines.html
Exactly. I’m no sucker for every ‘miracle’ drug. But the absence of focus on early treatment rings massive alarm bells when coupled with the exclusive ‘vaccine’ narrative being pursued by patently compromised interests.
I note that it seems that there’s a sad, inarticulate finger-Jerk stalker here who seems to be a relative of the sad buggers who turn up at A&E for no particular reason and sits talking to him/herself under the breath. 🙂
I guess such do need therapy, but the saw about staying out of the kitchen also comes to mind.
For such a serious disease (it is no picnic if you get it bad, as I know from experience) you would expect there to have been some better treatments made available by now to the general public than paracetamol. If they can get emergency authorisation for vaccines, then they could do so for the various ‘off-label’ uses of existing drugs that have been proven to work.
Of course the problem with that is those drugs are out of patent and cost pennies to make so there’s no profit in it, and of course it’d negate the emergency use of vaccines.
My 4 year old grandson had to go in to hospital last night. He couldn’t breathe – similar symptoms as described. My daughter rang 111 but after a few minutes of platitudes said sod it and got me round to look after the 1 year old while they drove him to hospital. It’s now almost 10am and they still haven’t seen a doctor. It’s absolutely fucking shameful how the NHS has gone from being the caring, competent organisation I remember the last time I was in (nearly 40 years ago – knee op. In for 2 weeks and it was like being on holiday most of the time!) to this shambles.
I was thinking last night at about 2am that the NHS needs rebranding as it is not a service about health. The Heath bit should be removed, although what it should be isn’t currently clear. The story above is the same all over the country. We had 2 year of NHS incompetence for my father in law, who gave up in the end because he couldn’t cope with the poor paultry care he was getting. He chose to die instead.
Don’t mistake. I’m entirely in sympathy with the horrendous experience what is narrated here. But it tells us very little about what is happening in general – again the same old same old frustrating problem of lack of the data that has run through this period of the Covid scam.
Beyond this individual case, and others like it: What is happening in terms of ambulance services in general? What are the response times and sufficiency? What are the historical comparisons?
These are the questions that need answering – even tho’ I am aware that all the data in the world hasn’t altered the myths about ‘Covid’.
I’m fed up with paying for Scotland’s inadequate NHS, when I’m paying for the rest of the UK’s inadequate NHS as well.
I’m fed up with a succession of governments that have caused it.
It’s not just governments though. It’s the whole “don’t reform the NHS, throw money at it without asking anything in return” campaign which runs through the NHS itself and the 24 hour news media.
I’m talking about the reality of what has happened. And a lot of that has been under the cover of the need for ‘reform’ by very ‘interested’ parties.
The NHS is shite because it’s subsidises ill-health (and is funded by fines for being prudent).
Simply : No it isn’t – despite all the crap around Covid and government/political mismanagement.
Certainly not perfect by any means, and capable of reform, but demonstrably a fuck sight better than lying under a radiotherapy machine wondering when your insurance will run out.
I know.
The current disorder is primarily political, and that source of damage is what needs addressing first.
Then NHS is a 2nd world service.
A 1st world health service is available in Germany Switzerland, Austria Holland, Japan, Singapore Australia etc etc.
None of those countries have an NHS, they have an insurance based system and no one worries about their insurance running out cos it doesn’t work like that.
All their systems have better patient outcomes than the UKs
Those who wish to condemn the ordianry working class British to a 2nd world inferior health service must secretly hate ordianry British people.
The root of the problem is the very structure of the NHS itself.
A lot of the blame for this needs to be placed on the unions and labour. What the NHS needs is for all stakeholders – including patients and pharma – to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and work out what delivery of healthcare in the 21st century looks like. Problem is that anyone proposing this is met with immediate cries of “They’re privatising our NHS!” and that’s career suicide for any politician supporting it.
All they need to do is copy what sodding works in Germany Holland Austria Switzerland Japan Singapore etc.
Pick one of those 1st world systems and copy it.
We have 50 years of proof their systems work better.
No need to reinvent the wheel, just copy what works.
All they need to donos copy what sodding works in Germany Holland Austria Switzerland Japan Singapore etc.
Pick one of those 1st world systems and copy it.
We have 50 years of proof their systems work better.
No need to reinvent the wheel, just copy what works.
Not just in Scotland. My daughter in law suffers from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Few weeks back she was struggling for breath and could scarcely stand.
Her son dialled 999 and was told ambulance would be around 3.5 hours so could he drive her to A&E? He doesn’t drive but phoned me so I took her.
I put her (gasping for breath) in a wheelchair, took her in to A&E and explained the circumstances. Receptionist’s first response was to roll her eyes and tell me she would be waiting at least 4.5 hours. Second response was to ask if she was able to wear a mask. Whilst my mind reeled with sarcastic replies, I contented myself with a firm ‘No, she can’t ‘
More eye rolling.
Our NHS.
Ask her if she’d like to repeat that performance on tiktok
Apart from the chronic underfunding and mismanagement of NHS resources, none of which are actually criminal or unethical, the root cause of problem is what happened in the early days of the Pandemic (remove DEM{ocratic control} and you have ‘Panic’) which was undoubtedly both unethical and criminal. In those early days governments started to implement the WHO procedures for a Pandemic (only Sweden stuck with it though – and it worked there) and doctors started treating patients at the first sign of symptoms, notably hydroxychloroquine was highly successful. Then a series of decisions were taken by people outside the normal democratic control who were unanswerable to the people. The WHO Pandemic guidance to governments was shredded despite it being the collective experience of what works to maintain public health. Doctors were progressively advised not to treat patients with HCQ or other successful drugs, then banned from doing so by threat of losing their licence to practice. Patients with Covid symptoms were advised to self isolate and, if their lips turned blue, go to A&E where intubation often resulted in death. Every attempt to find and implement ambulatory treatment of disease was thwarted by quasi governmental bodies charged with ensuring public… Read more »
An excellent summary of the factual history.
A dead baby?
Mere collateral damage while the Hell Service concentrates on saving 90 year old covid lives.
SORRY AGAIN!! Just what have the NHS”done” .Im a nurse ,i work for the NHS and i went to work just like the year before and the year before that .I didnt save anyones life and my ward was not full of covid patients .My friends in the NHS ho include consultants ,health care assistant cleaners and secreatries who all just went to work.This endless priase for the NHS is at worst false at best misplaced.I am befining to wonder what a Spanish or French hospital might be like in terms of efficiency and even appearnce .This NHS is finished .It will now be filled with educated fools who feel no need to reform a ,improve or increase efficiency.In a short few years it will end up just like British Leyland
I suggest poor use of resources isn’t helping. Doing a volunteer stint at a vaccination clinic in a large, “struggling”, East Midlands hospital, a Consultant Neurologist was there all morning writing prescriptions for 3rd jabs. In the afternoon it was a Consultant Anaesthetist!!!!!
This is a regular occurance at the clinics he has volunteered at ove the last 6 months. Plus large numbers of nurses and other clinical staff wandering around for no apparent reason.
I think it would be accurate to change the headline from:
“The Staggering Inadequacy of NHS Scotland.”
to:
“The Staggering Inadequacy of the UK NHS.”
As mentioned many times here and elsewhere, the NHS is so obsessed with “covid” that everything else has gone to hell in a hand-basket – and probably will stay there now…
As an addendum to my comment above – Friday 23rd Sept 2021 – Late this morning I drove past a bus-stop in my local town and saw an elderly woman laying flat on her back on the pavement by the bus-stop, with her head back and on one side. Two other woman appeared to be trying to rouse her, whilst a third was moving about in a agitated way looking up and down the road whilst appearing to speak animatedly on a mobile phone. As the bus-stop is just 0.4 of a mile by road from a large General Hospital with a full ER, and as there were already 3 people there I didn’t try to stop as it was a slightly awkward place to do so and I have not got any particular skills that would have helped anyway. Later I drove back past the other way, a full 45 minutes later (I checked the time on my car dash-cam), and they appeared to be just loading the lady into an ambulance with an oxygen mask on. A couple of minutes later I drove past the hospital and there were several ambulances outside where some of the crews were… Read more »
I thank the lord that the day my father suffered an aortic aneurism five years sgo, it happened while he was on holiday in Lanzarote and not in this country.
The attending paramedic, having been able to talk my father after being revived briefly, requested a HELICOPTER rather than an ambulance. He was airlifted to Gran Canaria to the hospital where the world’s leading specialist is aneurisms practiced. My father was in surgery for several hours, before being given an MRI scan which revealed a bloid clot in his leg. Straight back into surgery to remove it. All this took place in the middle of the night, having been taken ill just after climbing into bed.
I remain convinced to this day, that if he had been left to the hands of our “world’s finest’ health service, he would not have survived the night.
RSV is tearing through the little ones in the USA. Probably same here, but no one knows why. Funny isn’t it that an experimental vaxx was cooked up in minutes, but something as common as RSV and parents are not being warned of its signs and symptoms and treatment.
The NHS throughout britain is now on its knees. It has been for a while, even before Covid. It will not be getting better. It is terminal. Let’s seem, no blood vials in England for starters, i.e. no blood tests. Did anyone think they would see the day that happened. A waiting list of over 5 million for those needing elective surgeries. No more in person GP visits, sorry.
Let me add something in here. The hospitals up here are just not up to the job. There used to be a few major hospitals in Edinburgh now mainly just 1.
There are hospitals on the outskirts that are all moving to the ERI. That could mean, for some, that they face an hour long ambulance ride whilst it is speeding with sirens on.
My wife hurt her back, and they couldn’t give pain meds. She lay on the floor for 6 hours before a GP would come out and only because none of us had a fever. If we did they wouldn’t have arrived.
She was bed ridden for two weeks after.