Woman in bed in NHS Hospital in Gillingham (Kent) rang 999 because the heart monitor was showing irregular patterns and was "going off". Apparently no nurse came to investigate the bleeping so fearing for her life she dialed 999.

What a crazy world we are now living in. Was she right or wrong or was it just poor service from the under funded NHS?

Yes crazy I agree but if it saved her life?

If £ 180 billion per year is underfunding, I'd like to know by how much is it underfunded.
Is anybody capable of putting a proper figure on the shortfall.
Should we double or treble the current figure ??
What would be a reasonable figure and how would we fund such increases??

Last year while in hospital, a guy was transferred from Brighton on the Hottest day (40°) of the year. Was caught up in traffic through the Blackwall tunnel. He never had his pain killers for hours and was in pain. The nurse couldn't give him anything until the one doctor that night checked his file.

He called Brighton hospital to transfer back, they said no. Then he called to Police, who said nothing they can do as your under the NHS trust.

Happens quite a bit to be honest.

I was in A&E in North Tees last year as I was in Atrial Fibrillation (AF). They put me on a heart monitor & set the alarm at 140bpm. It was going off every minute or so as my heart was racing upto 200bpm. A nurse came in now & again & pressed the reset button & then walked away without checking me. I was then discharged the following day as apparently I had come out of AF. I hadn't, I ended up 3 days later in The Freeman in Newcastle to have an ablation to fix the AF.

I never thought of phoning 999, I will keep it in mind for next time

You do wonder sometimes who the service is run for…the ‘customer’ or the ‘staff’..?

and you still get some who have an orgasm if they hear the words NHS spoken. ditch the rainbow zebra crossings and those diversity officers and departments might be a good start.

Underfunded? Bollocks! It’s the most inefficient, corrupt and wasteful organisation around. If our NHS is so great how come no other country has copied it?

It does make me wonder some times.
It seems a bit too unwieldy to me.
It won't be long before dentistry on the NHS is phased out. My next appointment has been cancelled because the dentist who treated me has gone to pastures new and the practice is struggling to replace her. None of the other dentists has capacity to take on any more patients so those of us involved are now in limbo, unless of course we go private and then capacity suddenly appears.

My neighbours wife who is 68 had a bad fall in her back garden when she fell down 4 steps. She broke both legs one had 4 breaks the other had two plus she split her head open. Her husband who is 72 has cancer and is very frail he needs a walking stick to move around. It happened on a tuesday morning at 10 am. He called 999 and requested a ambulance but was told it would be at least 3 hours his wife was crying out loud with mega pain and could easily be heard by the controller but despite this simply apologised and explained that each case on its own merits My neighbour who is a really good bloke lost it and said " We have paid tax all lives and never dialled 999 before..my wife is in agony and its raining please help her " again he was told it would be at least 3 hours. He told them to go foook themselves he would get a taxi and get neighbours to help move her into the car. He came and asked us and another couple for help and explained he had to do something. We went over put a pillow under her head covered her with a quilt and tried to console her. We then tried to work out how we could possibly move her from the back garden to a taxi. Just then we heard a siren it was the ambulance. It turns out that because he mentioned using a taxi the controller made it a priority. The ambulance staff could not believe he was told 3 hours for a 68yrs old woman in this condition and suggested the change of mind was probably to avoid the back lash that no doubt would have hit the media. She ended up going for 3 major operations and had metal plates and screws fitted in both legs and spent 12 days in hospital and now needs 3 carers a day to help them both get through each day. So sad our country has gone back 60 years in only the past 5 years.

I had a phone appointment in March, you have to allow an hour each side of the stated time, waited and waited…nothing, phoned up next day and told them I’d given them my new phone before Xmas…but it hadn’t been passed on.
Do naturally asked for a new appointment, I receives a letter for a new appointment at the back end of August. Funny thing is, it doesn’t surprise me.
.

Aaah dentists….to all intents and purposes it’s been privatised.
It appears all the dentists appear to want is a nice fat list of regulars paying for their regular visits and cosmetic whitening or instructions ( for a fee) on how to brush your teeth.
If you aren’t a regular payer don’t get toothache.

Just a thought ….but all a doctors patients aren’t called in for a regular check up or the system would collapse, you go when you’ve got a problem…dentists were like that once.

On the ambulance programme on BBC they often tell callers that "the present wait for an ambulance is about 8 hours" Also I laugh when the first question is "Is the patient breathing?" (No there f*cking dead you daft prat)

The problem appears to be where ambulances are held up at Hospitals. The other week is was stated that 34 ambulances were waiting outside Oldham Hospital to offload their patients.

10+ years of Tory under funding!!!

Good point that Snowy but we were brainwashed into prevention of tooth decay by regular checks, thus making them money.
Teeth appear to last longer these days though. When I was a kid, loads of people had false teeth before their fiftieth birthday and very few elderly folk went to their grave with their own teeth.
The NE comedian Bobby Thompson cracked the one where, during a bombing raid in WW2 the siren went off. Him and his wife were heading for the shelter when she blurted "I've left my teeth next to the bed, I'm going back for them". To which Bobby relied " they're not dropping pork pies yna."

The answer to this came from an ambulance driver on TV .
He said that these problems started when they started shutting down A&E’s across the country all to same script of not being able to recruit doctors.
They had further to ravel so could do a third less pick ups and the hospitals don’t have the capacity after closing so many.
Simple mathematics but the boys and girls at the top never worked it out.

Mind you, the biggest fear at the senior school was the news the school dentist had arrived to do the checks …you hoped and prayed you never got the red letter with an appointment on it.
I finally got one for a filling and I waited in the waiting room in Park Road with a class mate who shall remain nameless…he went in first and the noises he was making were scaring the life out of me, then I heard what sounded like a slap and that was it ..I was off and down the stairs, never to return and no one checked up.
Turns out it wasn’t a slap it was sound of him sliding sharply down the dentists chair.

was put off dentists years ago when one dislocated my ma,s jaw in attempting an extraction. she had massive roots which she passed on to me. never left the chair myself without being in agony with the anethetic not fully working. only ever go if the pain i,m having is far greater than the pain they,ll give me.

yes, like sending an ambulance from manchester 40 miles away to take her in the kitchen to the local hospital 5 miles off when she broke her ankle falling down the stairs last year. thought they were joking when they said they were sorry for the time they took getting to her until the full facts came out. they just shrugged their shoulders when i asked if there was no ambulance available from anywhere closer.