NHS TO BE PROUD OF?
A hospital we can be proud of. A clean proffesionally run department that can be the pinicle of pride? staff that are helpfull and caring in your time of need? Staff that are trained to the very highest of standards? all wonderfull words!! However not all wonderfully true of NHS A&E at hartshill, or indeed the rest of the Royal Infirmary.
Parking is poor to be nice and diplomatic about this and thats if you can find a space and are not hearded around like a fool for an hour before you find somewhere passing the same yellow jacketed felow three times before finding a spot to park my tired old car. then shock uupon shock parking costs an arm and a leg who knows how long you have to be there? better to be safe than sorry, so you book a few hours then need to find change as the machine doesnt do some coins and wont accept others.
Finally with releif you get to the doors of A and E past a cloud of smokers most of which look in differing states of trauma. Arrival at A & e from here on in depends if you came in yourself or came by ambulance as to how this scenerio plays out.
Scene one You come in yourself and get to meet the new gastapo recptionist, who`d like to know all the information in an order that makes no sence then this highly paid secretary asks about your injuries and assessment of triage after a quick decision if your needs are life treatening enough to get someone out right now or maybe you could be placed in a queue for a few hours. If you do make it past the doors and your lucky you`ll get a trolly in the corridor whilst staff sit on beds and work out who is next.. confusion over the words on charts and files as to spelling of names and who is going out with whom is only downplayed by who is getting what course and whast happening on what soap.
If your extra specially lucky to get seen within two hours you might get the chance to see a doctor with either an unpronouncable name or a accent that is so foreign its hard to understand his / her words whilst your waiting take a look around the a and e the floor looks like it hasnt been cleaned in at least three days there are swabs red with what i can only assume was blood in corners near the well stocked trollys alarms on heart monitors that ring constantly and are ignored for hours whilst staff swing their legs waiting for the next victim when they throw a dart in the board and decide if you must stay in the whole thing gets worse.
Bonus scenerio, where your either a relative or walking wounded where not only do you take longer to get seen but also you must put up with toilets that havent been cleaned for three days as the record on the wall shows signitures that stopped being added three days ago or the fact that reems of toilet roll mostly soaked in red claret is littering the stalls. take it easy on yourself and get a coffee and a mars bar lets hope they`ll see you soon but ok a coffee one pound it arives in a cardboard container and tastes like the aftermath of what can only be described as a the remains of a coffee pot after its been washed out with colour added.
Do I sound even vaguly upset?
Scene two You arrived by ambulance after being treated amazigly well by two nice caring ambulence paramedics that have your very best interest at heart they do everything they can to make you feel safe secure and in good trustworthy hands right up til lthey hand you over to the ward staff then the realisation sets in that somethings not quite right being in the abulance with you is a relative who is distraughyta fter ahving called the emergency services and you are incapable of answering your own name they the relatives do that with the paramedics so you dont have to get stressed about the details however once your handed over in a and e relatives are seperated and a curtain drawn it feels very much like vampires gathering when they all swoop ojn unsuspecting victims as they ask you questions you prolly cant asner whilst all you can think about is i dont feel well i`m dying i`m bleeding ( delete as needed)
From here on it its pretty much the same as the first scene after the choice is made on which
lucky doc is gonna see you then its a matter of waiting and seeing what and when he / she turns up ..
Stage two the terror continues.
Porters work hard!! The one that wheeled my bed for example was tired and hurting underpaid and suffering a bad back which he continued to tell me all about on the way to a ward. Now I have no troubles with people chatting to me to ease their daily stress, but after the fourth time of hearing the mans troubles it gets a little old I`m not trying to be rude but my cars outside my relatives have gone god knows where and i`m covered in tubes and monitor leads at this point and am feeling pretty dread full. People hurry past in the opposite direction with the look of dread and fear on their faces as if the porter was wheeling someone from the mortuary oh my god I must look that bad but no the porter who looks for all the world like hes from a hammerhouse horror movie was it seems the cause of the terror. After a hystericle time negotiating our way aroudn the RI bumping and clatering into a lift and down long dark corridors I layed quietly and as still as possible still wondering if this would ever end to be
stopped and braked on my trolly in a corridor with about twenty other groaning or snoring patients.
These people who had been here for most of the night as i was informed by an elderly lady with tubes in places i shoud`nt know about, where on the whole tired and now in considerable pain. Medication kicks in and I kinda dozed kinda stayed awake, kinda slept a little untill somewhere around eight in the morning when I was whisked off by two nurses and a porter to my ward. I@ should mention that since i left A and E and apart from Boris Karloff
who pushed me to this part of the hospital i havent actually spopken to another member of staff although those that i did see made every attempt to discuss topics ranging from politics in theusa to X factor and to treat me in my bed as if i was a rag doll in the process. So off to the private ward we go Its is called a private ward because well there was only me in it. Still better than with everyone else huh?
Private Ward, It was a small room off the corridor. which had untill iI arrived I think been used as a storage cupboard. correction was still being used as a storage cupboard. Two settees on top of each other behind me a matteress on top of that and an up ended chair was the furniture for my hopefully short stay. No buzzer for assitance, no light and no water. There I stayed monday, All day my relatives came in that nightIf its not hard enough them seeing their dad and husband in the place with tubes and apipes and monitors beeping and so on they looked round the room and i tho9ught tears would fall but no resiliant as ever my relatives where angry where upset to see me in such a state. Oh yes they had come in to feed me (I would be introuble if i forgot to mentin the food) three times during the day two items of food I couldnt eat and the third was un chewable unsightly let alone something you`d feed to a man who is ill. In truth I doubt most well men would have eaten it. Described as steak Ii think the nearest this proccessed meat had been to a cow was perhaps inthe burger joint it was shaped in.
My saga continued till tuesday last when I was eventuaqlly allowed to leave. I am normally the first to add praise where I can to those that deserve it but in this case I cannot do so. After being treated like cattle, kept in dirty stinking conditions in a storage cupboard where the nurses ignore you or worste still smile at you in that condescending way as if to imply "this would be a nice hosptial if it wasnt for all the patients". What could be worse? Oh yes my car was clamped as after being admitted they wouldnt let me or allow any of my captors to go to my car and place a sticker on it saying i`m in the hospital nor would they allow any nurse to take money from me to pay the parking fees, although truth be told parking fees where not on my top ten lists of priorities at that time for some reason.
So all in All Proud of the NHS? Proud of the two tear system that treats us this way ? no I`m not. what do you think ? Have you a tale to tell on the NHS?
As Vice-Chair of Governors at Longton High, I am delighted to report to everyone at Pitsnpots that, just before half term, Ofsted visited to carry out a 2 day inspection, and the result was great! The actual judgement from Ofsted was "good". This in itself doesn't sound too exciting, but when you consider it's only one judgement below "outstanding", it shows just what good teaching and learning is going on at Longton High, despite the difficult circumstances it finds itself in.
