Have You Noticed the NHS is becoming worse because of cuts?

Other conditions
1

It may seem a strange question, and I know the NHS is well in debt, and have made drastic cuts. I stayed in hospital recently, due to a problem that was caused by a medication that was stopped in production.

Staying in my local hospital, I even seen a rat running around the grounds! Sanitation was well below par, I was so glad to get back home and know it is always clean.

The drug was Orphenadrine (Disipal) 50mg tablet and discontinued in early December 2015. However, the awareness of this action was not done very well. So, anyone on this medication long term were in for a shock when current stocks ran out.

Many doctors and specialists ran in to further problems, when a medication like this, has serious side-effects when just stopped on the human body.

Quote from the NHS:

On the 10th of June 2016 the NHS released the following notice:

Disipal® (Orphenadrine) 50mg tablets have been discontinued and are no longer available. There is a generic version of Orphenadrine 50mg tablets but they are also currently unavailable due to a manufacturing problem (Not expected to be in stock before October 2016).

Alternative medications to Orphenadrine were mentioned (Procyclidine or Trihexiphenidyl) for doctors and specialists to prescribe, however this is not a straight forward idea either. I was prescribed both of these. But, the pain levels I was used to become much worse, side-effects were terrible.

I spoke to one of my Neurologist Consultants and even he told me that he had been prescribing to his patients the same medications, and not receiving good feedback on either.

Now, anyone that knows me, will understand I'm not your average person by a long way. I do a lot of researching, and finding out things that most people would not even find. I found the answer to this issue, which amazed most people in the hospital. I even had a woman ask me if I was a doctor because I was using words like brain receptors, postsynaptics, neurons, synaptics, etc with the Neurologist Consultant.

I suppose the conversation would sound like I was a doctor regarding which medications relate to which receptors of the brain.

The fact was I knew which medications do what, out of the 34 tablets I have to take per day!

Anyway, I had already found an alternative to Orphenadrine (Disipal) 50mg tablets - which not even the doctors or consultants knew existed!

When I informed the Neurologist Consultant that I had found an answer, by resourcing numerous websites - he was shocked! and said "I never knew that was even available!".

After that I was transferred to a Neurology Ward, and spoke to the Neurology Team they were gobsmacked! The nurses on the ward couldn't believe what I had done, because they had never seen anyone to do what I did. A few of them said you shouldn't have to do that yourself, to me it was the only way out, and I was sick to death of being in so much pain.

The main question by many nurses was, that I did all that by myself - to be honest I was so fed up of no medications I have been put on making any difference.

The main factor was I have been on Orphenadrine (Disipal) 50mg tablets for over 30 years, it is a very old drug - and will be back in production from October 2016, that will take quite awhile to get to pharmaceutical companies. I am lucky because I get on well with my pharmcist, I got them to order the new drug even before getting a prescription from my doctor. The only issue I found was I could not speak to my own Doctor yesterday, so I had to speak to another - it was a case of convincing her over the phone, that not only did I get the pharmacy to order it before, seeing or chatting to a doctor!

I do not recommend anyone else to do this, I only did it because I do have OU passes in the human body, general Neurology, etc. The rest was done by resourcing using boolean expressions and cross-referencing in big data.

 

2

Les - I am in Australia, we also have a NHS type system called Medicare over here, to give you an example my GP wrote a letter to hospital saying I had osteo arthritis of hips and in doing so was asking specialist to look at my case, 2 years went past, pain getting worse and finally unable to walk, or go shopping at supermarket, heart failure husband caring for me rather than the other way around, and still no hospital appt. Finally Gp suggested to me on a pension, I see private specailist as I was never going to get into public hospital, $400.00 and five minutes with specialist he told me I nedded a hip replacement, DUHHHHH. He then started quoting prices in would you believe public hospital, but private bed of approx $10K, govt would pay for prothesis as I was on a pension, not possible dont have $10K, told him so. I believe although I can;t prove it that specialist sent letter to local hsopital, I found my self upgraded to Cat 1, that includes cancer patients, 32 weeks later fainlly contacted for surgery. But not in local hospital but thats another whole story.

Regards, medication - I have had to resaserch my husbands heart medication and condition, I have become the expert, even recently young Dr arguing with me when husband complaining about pain in his left arm, dismissed, until the consulnt walked past and heard me calling the junior an idiot, he questioned me, I detailed what had been going on for months pain in arm, tests that had been done to eliminate arthritis, rotator cuff, trapped nerve, torn muscles, when jnr's continued to deny it was heart related, all negative, consultants face got darker and darker, , he then turned to jnr's and said my office tommorrow morning with patients file, turned back to me, and said we are going to sort is out, all is well.  Following day, MRI, angiogram, three lead pacemaker installed  with defib, and husbands health improved to be the best he has been in five years, how long has he required that pacemaker frightens me.  I WILL NOT be duck shoved as I was with my hip, I have learned the hard way how the system works, and advocate for myself and husband loudly if necessary, and certainly paying for private opinions that I ask a copy be sent to husbands hospital file as well. Husband would be long dead if I had not educated myself on his heart failure, I have even been asked if I am a nurse, started with the local library, and then onto uni websites and various papers written Dr to Dr opinions.

3

Yes. Yes it has. I've worked for the NHS since I was the age of eighteen and I've seen a dramatic number of changes throughout the years.

The GP surgery I work for now, for example, was so in debt that we would have had to close out doors back in April had we not managed to merge with another surgery. Still not a day goes by where a patient doesn't say to me "this place has gone downhill" It has. We've had to make many changes (and absorb the protocols of another surgery) but if we hadn't have done this then we would have closed and where would that leave our 6000+ patients? Sure they can register with another surgery in town but filling up all the other surgeries with those patients will make it even harder to see a GP.

I've been working for this surgery since August last year and two doctors have left in this time with a third leaving this December. The reason it takes so long to see a GP is because that's left us with only three doctors to care for all of our patients. And we can't afford to hire a new one.

Still, we just have to smile when people make complaints after we tell them the next appointment with Dr xxx is in five weeks.

4

Hi Lyn,

I was in a similar situation about 8yrs ago now. I went to my GP and was given anti-biotics, this went on for 6 WEEKS!!

Then I told her, no infection lasts 6 weeks and I wanted to be referred to A&E.

2 days later I was contacted by the hospital, Oncology to be precise because they suspected Testicular Cancer, not a bloody infection!

3 days later I was in hospital having it removed. 5 polyps were found, followed by a 7 yr remission period.

If I had let it in my doctors hands I probably would not be here today!

Sorry to hear about your husband though, at least you took the right paths to get him seen properly.

Too many people are being misdiagnosed these days, and having to diagnose yourself, and even medication in my case, went way above the doctors and consultants, is beyond what most people would do, or even know where to start.

Regards,

Les.

5

Les you are right, you are lucky, brother-in-law had the same nasty condition, he was also lucky, his was just an ache in his groin, mentioned as an comment I have pulled a muscle in my groin to my sister who is a very senior nurse.

She had a look and took him to the Dr's the following morning, surgery that afternoon, his cancer had got into lymph glands as well, so chemo and radiation, breezed the chemo but they burnt him badly with radiation. Horrible.

Back to my husband, medication for cholesterol tablets caused my husband to have alot of joint pain and also between joint pain, also he developed tinnitus, like a tree full of cicadas in his head, we complained told there was nothing they could do..

I ended up having to do my own research and found water based medication rather than oil based medication could/might give him some relief for joint pain, and also lowereing is stomach acid if he had silent reflux could also help with cicadas.

I presented my findings to the specialist Dr's and they changed his medication with the comment you might be right, it could help him. WELL WHY hadn't they tried the known medication in the previous three years, we had been making and same compliant, just lazy is my opinion, or gross incompetance and our lives are in their hands.

Guess what the result has been, no more pain in joints, cicadas havn;t gone but much less thank goodness.   GRRRRRR

6

Hi Sheepcounter,

It does not surprise me at all. At my surgery, I cannot even see my own doctor because she is on the 1st floor, there is no lifts either and I'm in a wheelchair.

So, what happens is this:

She comes down from the 1st Floor to the Ground Floor, then she has to find a spare doctors room or failing that it is an Examination Room! She never gets to logon to the system to see my latest notes from the hospital, so she doesn't know which consultants I've seen lately either!

The surgery itself, well they are trying to expand - but work will not start until around 2018-2020 at least.

The current surgery has 15 doctors and around 6-7 nurses, but they have over 15,000 patients because they have to accept NATO as well.

It is not so much under staffed, but it needs much more room to operate. Currently, it's using 2 places - ones surgery and another for admin and secretaries.

Regards,

Les.

7

Hi Lyn,

I'm not being 'big-headed'', but I can honestly say I know more about Neurology than my own doctor does. I can lose her with just a few details, so what is the point? Many times I go and see her and even tell her the medication required, she has to look it up, and the pharmacy has to order it in for the following day.

It doesn't say much for my Consultants, when I can tell them a medication that they have never heard of as an alternative!

In many ways, I'm like you Lyn - society and health has changed so much over the past 40 yrs!

Regards,

Les.

8

Agree with you Les, completly, and it is not at all big headed, its called protecting your own interests or life if you like, and some of the Dr's get offended by your knowledge.

I once many years ago now when my daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, we got to see the most senior and most repected even amoung the Dr's consultant, he was a very strange man and I didn't get along with him very well, but my daughter and he came to a lovely understanding of each other over many years and we tolerated each other, he also knew I was interested in understanding her condition so I could head off complications if necessary, she still has the brain tumor, and they continue to watch it every year, it has never grown thank goodness, and because it is so deep in her brain the surgery would do more harm than leaving it alone, I always fear the day when they say they are going to have to try to get it out as she is failing.

He once said to me parents and sometimes even patients become specialists in their own or childrens condition, and sometimes can even be a help with their treatment, but the young Dr's, well be need to be patient with them, I think some Dr's never get it.

9

That sounds remarkably like the surgery I work for. It's inside an old building, definitely not built for purpose and there's only five consultation rooms in total over two floors. If a patient comes in and can't make the stairs to see their GP the doctor will come down but then they have to wait until one of the rooms downstairs is free (and as you say, I'm not certain they always log on to the computer downstairs). Most recently, to the great upset of the secretaries, a small room upstairs with no windows which used to be for the secretaries to do dictation has been repurposed to be a clinical room but they haven't even installed a sink or a bench yet so we can't was our hands or examine patients that need to lie down.

The surgery has been open for ~28 years and has always been on the same site but they probably had a lot less patients back then. Luckily, on the horizon there is a plan to move the surgery about half a mile across town into a purpose-built building alongside three other surgeries. There's talk of merging the four surgeries into a mega surgery so patients have already begun to protest because they don't want that. Who knows when this will come to fruition though as the new building hasn't even started to be built yet.

Maybe I won't be working for the NHS when that time comes . . .