Where's the Compassion?

Buzz10

Hi Trish

I've found that it is a constant chore and very exhuasting to be constantly having to ring the doctors for relief. I just get asked what i want (I don't know!!??) Or they give me 5 days worth of pain relief and tell me to ring back if i need more and have to go through the whole thing again.

Hope you are managing to feel somewhat comfortable and you are getting somewhere with them :)

Trish9556

Hi @Buzz10

Sometimes I think I need to get my virtual big rubber mallet out for the doctors like I did with people who wouldn't pay my invoices when I was working.

Next time you ask for more of the meds tell them you want it on respect

Love n hugs

Trish xx

Arthuritis

@jonr @Trish9556 @frogmorton

on AI… Daleks and Elon Musk… I think like the advent of electricity we just have to learn how to wield its power well, and not let ourselves get zapped! You know if we were invaded by Daleks we just have to run up the stairs and it’s defeated … unless it’s one of these… https://youtu.be/-e1_QhJ1EhQ

then all bets are off. It would make a good nurse/home helper though… 😁

@jonr only people who have had little or no contact with the NHS, but fear the prospect of ill health have the impression that the NHS national insurance is run by saints. It’s compassion and empathy exhausted with any staff who’s been there for over 10 years jaded and lost the ideals on why they joined the service. Its numerous human failings make it the perfect problem for an A.I. which has no ego to massage or ambition to climb the greasy pole.

@frogmorton Elon worries about 2 things… that a competitor races ahead with their AI development ahead of his developments (he is working on merging human brain with AI circuitry) and the AI is misused to manipulate voters who are gullible and not too numerate to vote for an easy answer, and do on the cheap what Cambridge Analytica did for the wealthy minority in democratic countries who needed the vote to move in their favour eg how do you get the very rich minority democratically elected into power when the majority are poor and not likely to vote for them? You create a popular social media meme convincing the disenfranchised poor not to vote in a “rigged” system… so only the wealthy and their cronies vote… and become elected by a landslide majority of those that voted! It would be bad for Elon if an AI helped poorer workers have cheap access to the kind of power Cambridge Analytica offered the very wealthy… and started having more govt influence.

Technology is the genie that once out of the bottle, can never be put back in, and any country that does try it will be at a disadvantage unless all countries agree to it, and some will always be on the “do as I say, not as I do”. Take for example the Chinese scientist who edited the human germ line genes to delete the HIV receptors, making them resistant to HIV, and brought the edited embryos to term giving birth to 2 girls. These will grow up and their offspring will inherit the HIV resistance. The world condemned him, because the outcome of the gene editing could have gone badly wrong, and maybe it did on earlier experiments. But all that did was drive the practice underground to those willing to pay for it in countries that turn a blind eye. The same societal offense was caused by Dr Christian Barnaard’s first heart transplant, in messing with the seat of the soul… but now it’s routine albeit dangerous. In fact the next bit of work is in replacing it with a genetically engineered piggy heart. (Mechanically ones do too much damage to blood cells to offer a permanent solution).

@Trish9556 On NHS wastage… the pointless receptionist staff… don’t get me started! Everyone deserves to be paid enough to comfortably live on the work and value they put in this was not perfect but better than now, before the govt started printing money, killed our means of trade with our biggest partner and trashed the value of UK treasuries(debt) that saw the £ tumble near parity with $.

The excess NHS headcount is a symptom of tax funded orgs - use your budget or lose it, so they make poor decisions to keep the budget, and make little to no effort to spend efficiently on suppliers or contracts. There’s always the bottomless taxpayer pocket to fund it. The trusts do not talk to each other about the deals they do, nothing is shared, everything siloed and reinvented, so suppliers are able to fleece the trusts mercilessly knowing there will be little pushback. The doctors & nurses want more pay, because the train drivers and others got pay rises which jacked up the doctors & nurse’s living costs … but that payrise spiral is self defeating, as they will be no better off despite the payrises because the value of the £, or it’s purchasing power has declined, and the protests should be about the govt inaction to restore the value of the £ before the money printing, the frauds, lost trade and treasury devaluations.

This comes through improving efficiency of taxpayer funded services and getting smarter.

Take for example NHS trusts negotiating supplier contracts for products & services individually like little hamsters that don’t talk to each other with little leverage, a stark contrast to the PLC Inc. approach where they negotiate as a single giant entity, a 1000lb purchasing gorilla wanting the best competitive value bananas… and gets them. Instead the hamster approach allows suppliers to play off Trusts against each other, bundling stuff the Trusts don’t want with stuff they need, offering some better terms than others dependent on the luck of the negotiators at the time. Then there’s the evergreen moan from successive governments about the unemployed either skiving (present gov) or giving them highly paid tax payer funded “non-jobs” that go nowhere and wither when the taxpayer credit card is maxed out. What no gov has done to a big extent, is offered large enterprises tax incentives to take people off the dole queue and reward them for training them to become productive tax payers. Employers don’t want the risk of an untrained person off the dole queue, and job centre agents are pushed by the clueless ministers to punish the unemployed with docking their welfare for failing to find an employer willing to take on the risk. Corporation tax has been raised ready to be squandered on whatever next hare brained scheme or get defrauded as happened during the pandemic, instead of using a carrot & stick to get big corporations which have the capability to take people off the dole queue and train them up. In the US Amazon has done this really well, so well that city councils compete to have Amazon’s staff recruitment & training programmes in their city, where ordinary people with no money or job can train to the their maximum talent, from just high school education to a well paid programmer if they have the drive & talent or in a number of other transferable careers eg logistics. Google did the same for a while here and in the US, offering free use of their hubs for tiny startups and self employed, all without govt help. This should be encouraged. Govt simply can’t be entrusted with spending big money efficiently, only those who earned it will watch the the pennies that well, and of those, only a few know how to grow a corner shop into a successful chain that will employ more people. With greater productivity and mastery of AI we would have a rising GDP, which would improve the value of the £, making the UK wealthy again, instead of disillusioned like Venezuela, and their currency that buys little.

Just my individual opinion based on many decades in diff states and seeing what worked and what didn’t… ☺️

Lambourne

#Arthuritis not all of us voted for this government and their policies, we need an NHS that caters for all, is properly funded and staffed and not being prepared for privatisation.

Buzz10

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/comment/708305#Comment_708305

Haha!! I agree with this! Managed to get some yesterday but the doctor was not the best and suggested i just exercise and that will be it fixed. If only!

Hope you're keeping well x

Arthuritis

@Lambourne Very interesting point you raise. I just hope whichever govt next comes into power will have its promises critically evaluated for feasibility and credibility. However it just depends on how the majority votes…

Unfortunately the way the NHS top mgmt allocates budgets and staff and means no amount of funding will ever be enough because the waste is simply colossal. Not many organisations can claim to have spent 10billion on a grandiose IT project (NPfIT) and then had to right it off, leaving it the ignominious title of worlds largest fax buyer as the only system that interoperates across Trusts. Or publicly claim that it loses £ 1 billion each year on no-show appointments, blaming patients for the loss and suggesting fees, while refusing to solve the boring non career progressing task of enabling appointment scheduling online, leaving most with the 8am scramble, something that all private orgs got sorted as a necessity. Junior docs are leaving in droves because the “old fuddy-duddys” in charge of practice and budget don’t want to adopt new ways and rock the boat. Indeed, one senior consultant presenter at an NHS conference had this advice for the bright sparks to persevere “Where there’s retirement, there’s hope!”

This govt crippled our ability to trade with our nearest trading partner, and the NHS leadership was no better in failing to learn from our neighbouring countries that were hit first during the pandemic, if you recall, while EU countries had loss of smell as a key symptom of Covid, this was not recognised by the NHS until it hit us because well “we are somehow different!?”

If that’s not bad enough, we used to have a bilateral agreement to allow UK patients to use an EU member’s national health facility for specialised NHS treatments if the NHS was full, (with prior nhs approval), however that ended on 31/12/2020.

I just hope that whatever promises whatever next govt makes, they will be critically evaluated for feasibility and credibility and show how they are going to prove spend efficiency and not squander our hard earned tax payer cash on debacles like the PPE scandal (among many others).

Part of issue I think, is that the “charming” people we vote into power to be in charge of ministerial budgets and leadership have no experience in the field of even running a chip shop business or basic science let alone a whole health ministry. So they are easily conned into buying into unsuitable proposals recommended by their cronies as they lack the background needed to understand expert advice, so have to rely on cronies giving them sound recommendations. (I think…am I being too cynical?😉). Happy to chat more on DM though☺️

Trish9556

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/comment/708359#Comment_708359

H @Buzz

I am ok ish this morning after a long day out on a coach trip I'm a bit stiff but not in as much pain as I could be. I'm trying not to let this stupid osteo arthritis rule my life and stop me doing the things I love doing.some days I fail abysmally. I hate the stupid crutches too but accept they're a permanent attachment at the moment but some days I do cheat and struggle round the house without them. I get told off by my husband but he knows I'm stubborn.

The rubber mallet is in my handbag now and my work assertiveness will definitely come out next time I am unfortunate enough to speak I that gp.

I hope you're ok?

Love n hugs

Trish xx

Podge65

GP's are private companies which the NHS sub-contracts for their services and this has been the case since 2004. The NHS itself is no longer recognisable as what it once was so may as well be renamed. Contrary to popular and media belief here is money in the "NHS" it is just very badly managed and often spent (wasted) on higher non-clinical roles. I say this as an NHS nurse of 37 years having seen the changes irrespective of political party in power. As a nurse, patient and carer I am saddened by the lack of empathy, kindness and compassion in many health care professions meaning it is often sheer luck that you come across those qualities.

noddingtonpete

Hello @Podge65 and welcome to the Community, good to have you here. We are a friendly and supportive group and I hope that will be your experience as well.

You don't say how arthritis affects you so if you would like to share a bit more than others can connect and share their support and experience as well, so now you are here please keep posting and let us know how you are getting on.

Best wishes,

Peter (moderator)

Trish9556

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/comment/708776#Comment_708776

Hi @Podge65

I totally agree and have had many discussions on the NHS both on here and elsewhere :)

Trish x

Arthuritis

@Podge65 Now you’d make a worthy Health Minister or NHS Boss. You know way more than the overpaid £150K plus pretenders in higher seats. 👏👏☺️

Trish9556

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/comment/709194#Comment_709194

Have I been sacked? 😭

Arthuritis

@Trish9556 As the bearer of the inflatable mylar mallets of common sense (for applying to nhs management ) you can never be sacked… your essential role is assured. 😂

Buzz10

https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/comment/708434#Comment_708434

Hope you're doing better now Trish :)

Trish9556

Hi @Buzz10

Thank you, good days and bad days. I've only tried once since to book an appointment only to be greeted by a message to say I need a third app to book an appointment and if I want to speak to a human I have to jump through lots if hurdles.

I gave up!

Love n hugs

Trish xx