Tuesday, February 09, 2010

NHS – otherwise known as useless

Yesterday I had an appointment at the hospital to see a plastic surgeon. The infection in my hip had eaten everything in it’s path – skin, bone, muscle, even metal !!!

Consequently once my metal hip (or what was left of it….) had been removed, all that was left was a huge cavity.

In order to try and put another hip in, my orthopaedic consultant arranged for me to see the plastic man as I was going to need a skin graft on my hip and a muscle transplant to replace what had been eaten.

To cut a long story short, I wasn’t impressed with the plastic man. According to my consultant they had had several long chats about what various procedures would be done. You could have fooled me…

If it wasn’t for my name being on the file that was in his hand, I would have said he had the wrong patient. I also know it was the right plastic man as he introduced himself when he first came into the room.

To be honest it was pretty much a waste of time. It’ll be interesting to see what he actually wrote in his notes.

I’ll find out when I next go to see my consultant. It’s supposed to be on Monday. However I’ve been trying for several weeks to get the appointment time moved back half an hour as I can’t make it at the time they’ve given me.

Whenever I’ve rang the reception to get the time changed they said that there were no later appointments, so I’d have to keep ringing back every few days to see if any later ones have become available. This has been going on for over eight weeks…

I rang them this morning and was told the latest appointment they could give me was 2.15pm. I explained that was still no good as the earliest I could get there was 2.30pm.

They couldn’t give me anything later as that would mean the consultant would be hanging around until I got there.

I was to ring them on Friday and if the latest time they could give me was still 2.15pm, they would change my appointment time of 1.50pm to 2.15pm then make a note on my file that I would be fifteen minutes late.

You couldn't make it up !!!!!!!

3 comments:

Jennysmith said...

No, you;re right. If you had put that in a book (now, there's an idea) people would have said you were exaggerating - like Dickens.

There might be a lot to be said for Harley Street.

xxxx

Marie and John said...

Funny you should mention putting the journals into a book.

Once everything is finished and I'm back to 'normal' I going to try and get it published.

People have the idea that the NHS is such a caring and wonderful organisation, where their staff are underpaid and overworked. Yet in reality it's nothing like that.

Somehow I don't think the Plastic Man would have been like that if I were a private patient.

xxxx

AndyMan said...

I (/We) sympathise, due to grief with my neck, (and my better half with her ailments), as you know.
I've put a few comments on the new NHS website, that allows the public to comment on the system. I also contacted the PALS office at the Nottingham hospital in question, and got a very swift response, trying to calm me down, and offer me another appointment, (to stop me going to the press?...).

Our fingers are crossed that something more positive occurs when you re-visit the hospital.

Apart from that, we'll just look forward to seeing you again, in about 5 weeks time, "North of the border". (Provided we get back from the Caribbean!)

AndyMan (& the Jewelry-maker)