The only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive.


    That's quite a black mark!


I like the idea of a health service being free at the point of entry. But the main organisation of the NHS is utter tripe. Every relative of mine who has gone into hospital has ended up suffering from a catalogue of disasters. Notes get lost. The wrong drugs get prescribed. They get sent to one hospital for a night, and then get directed to another hospital for another night, only to be sent back to the original hospital because the medical staff have suddenly realised they forgot to do a particular test that can only be done at the one hospital etc.

With the NHS it seems you just get a culture of incompetence and waste. I'm sure plenty of them are trying, but there seems to be absolutely no sense that anyone knows what anyone else in the NHS is doing.  Sadly, about half of the nation won't hear of any criticism of the NHS at all, so nothing ever gets reformed.   Predictably, we've had about a week now of news headlines about the NHS itself when what we should really be discussing is how best to move ourselves away from this crisis.

not sure of the latest stats wd but a few years ago the mewday was in the bottom ten for deaths in both emergency and non-emergency surgery

I'm 58 now. My three experiences of NHS hospitals:

A completely needless tonsilectomy at the age of five.

A completely useless fitting for hearing aids at 44 (the settings were impossibly loud and the "technician" didn't know how to reduce them; I then had to attend an appointment with a female social worker whom I could not understand owing to the hearing aids - when I took them out she ordered me to persist or I would otherwise suffer long-term depression).

A routine day-op to remove a hydrocele. Inevitably it got infected in the hospital, I was sent home with some paracetamol, and a week later my scrotum exploded in the middle of the night. Then I went in and had another op, in which they mislaid one of my testicles (lost the blood flow to it during the op). Never mind, I was told. You only need one. Lay in the hospital bed for 24 hours with no one attending me, so I got up and left. As far as they're concerned I'm still there 11 years later. They probably think I've gone to the toilet.

An exploding scrotum and a mislaid testicle??

I'm guessing you're not out clapping every Thursday night..

Our local kebab shop is top drawer but another one won the vote as best in South East either through vote manipulation or paying for adverts.

Seriously the Consultants at Medway Maritime thought they were too special to have to wash hands between patients.

My mum wanted to bring back Matron so the wards got cleaned properly after Privatisation. I cannot imagine how many people dies of MRSA in the hospital. It was certainly hundreds if not thousands.