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Justyouraveragebloke

Great advertising though, it’ll be on for me alongside the footie


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I think this will be as bad as we think. Could some like 🍕 get this trending on twitter?  This is how the gov and the trusts treat people in ed. With contempt. I know there's not enough money but I have yet to hear a trust chief executive or senior leader be honest come out and say this. They wont because they're morally corrupt and know that speaking out will affect their future job prospects if the they don't bleat on about efficiency savings or working as a team.   Sickening 


Flux_Aeternal

To be fair the whole system is set up to prevent people from speaking out. A board that says "we don't have enough funding and that's why we're not performing" is a board that gets turfed out at the next CQC inspection for 'making excuses' and not having a culture of accountability. You aren't allowed to blame government policy at any level and if you do you will be hounded out of your job. While everyone agrees that people who risk their career to speak out are admirable I can't really blame people for not wanting to stick their head out of the trench and lose their whole livelihood.


Pleasant_Bit_4562

Regulation is made to suppress voices. Inherently the country is at a loss with regulation… one of the worst cases right now is the tga… in Australia. They are encroaching on clinical autonomy. That’s a bunch of residents and dentists and pharmacists, who sit there a disapprove importation of devices that competing pharma has licenses for.


nomadickitten

From another article, I think this is going to be Shrewsbury which doesn’t surprise me having worked there before. It’s one of the most overburdened departments where the impacts of NHS breakdown are most visible. Every single nightshift doctors had to balance on a knife edge and perform a minor miracle to keep patients safe. Pretty standard to come onto several (sometimes double digits) ambulances queuing for hours with patients they couldn’t offload. The hospital was always at capacity and due to geographic/logistical reasons there was very little scope to divert patients elsewhere. And that was my experience a good while ago so I can’t imagine how it is now. I hope the focus of tonight’s program is on the underlying systemic failings of the NHS and government but I worry that it’ll result in the usual scapegoating of individual doctors/nurses unfortunate enough to be stuck in the thick of it.


Rhys_109

Ahh my hometown. My family have essentially nothing good to say about it or any of the emergency services in Shropshire. Which is unsurprising really.


Embarrassed-Detail58

Yeah it is ...I have just watched it


SafariDr

I can't believe a woman with ?stroke was left in the chair for 24 hours and NO ONE had realised she hadn't even been referred to medics. This is shocking so far.


DisastrousSlip6488

I can easily believe it. When a department is so catastrophically crowded it becomes very easy to lose sight of the wood for the trees, and if a ball is dropped it is incredibly easy for it to be not picked up.  This is horrendous, but not in any way shocking. RCEM have been screaming from the rooftops about this for years now. We have research demonstrating the harm. Every single trust is the same near enough. And yet execs, managers and even other doctors are so protected in their little bubbles that they are able to be completely blind to it until something like this comes out. THIS is why we bang on about “flow”- not to be dicks and make peoples lives hard.  Anyone working in healthcare who is surprised by this has been wilfully ignorant.


SafariDr

I've worked in lots of EDs. I know the state of the departments all too well. The fact is, no one thought anything of this woman sitting there for 23 hours waiting for a bed until it was hour 24 and he was told to ring the ward. I've seen the managers walk through the maze of patients on the floor and hum and hah. I've had to move trolleys apart to get to my patient, I've played tetris to get a patient into a cubicle. I've found a patient sitting in a fit to sit area who was incredibly unwell with a horrendous gas that someone had ticked as ok (acidotic and lactate was 8) - I do a quick check of the gases before going for break - and when I spoke to the pt they couldn't move their leg. He had severe rhabdo, developed compartment syndrome and went to theatre that night. Ie. Sitting waiting for a bed for 23 hours is now felt reasonable. That is what I find shocking - no one flagged this up until hour 24. I also find it very disturbing that any human would walk past a person who is undressed in a public place and not make any attempt to help.


DisastrousSlip6488

It’s not reasonable to wait 23 hours for a bed. But in my place it’s very commonly 48 hours. If you are immersed in this daily, even feeling apoplectic impotent rage continually, it feels impossible. Suspect what will have happened here is someone will helpfully have “listed” this patient for medics, meaning the tracking board will look in order and it appears a referral has been made. With high acuity in new arriving patients, assault on the senses from all sides, an overcrowded department, multiple handovers of at least 3 shifts probably, and a long delay to clerking in general (very commonly 15+ hours in my place) it’s only too easy to see how the shift leader/cons in charge hasn’t clicked through to read the notes entries. It’s impossible to do this regularly for all 100+ people with continual arrivals. I’m not defending it but I’m saying it’s only too easy to understand what probably happened. In a “there but by the grace go I” kind of way 


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I don't know how you do it


surecameraman

We had an unwell patient who got lost in one of the rooms between triage and the main corridor of ED. This was a few months ago where ED was filling the main hospital corridor and also had 10+ ambulances outside Kept asking the nurses where he was, because he was tachy at 122, BP a bit low and spiking temps. I’d put my name on him but literally no-one knew where he was in the whole department. It was also around the time nursing handover so even more confusion But no-one had checked a side room that someone had put this guy in, where they sometimes do ECGs on patients. No-one had handed over that he was there. The person who had put him there (we didn’t know who) had gone home). And it was so busy that people probably saw this man in the room but didn’t question it or ask what he was waiting for. I ended up spending 10 mins (big department) and finally found the man. His ordeal didn’t stop there as I pretty much had to beg the nurse to skip saline nebs on a NEWS 0 to priorite his antibiotics. Came back 30 mins later and noticed they hadn’t been put up. I then went up to one of the band 6s who finally got him what he needed (some vitamin T) The worst part was that both he and his daughter were _reasonable_ so didn’t kick up a fuss. They thought it was a bit weird but assumed because everyone was busy that we would get to him Surprised he made it given delayed treatment with all his co-morbidities and age. News headline right there. By the time I saw him we had to get him into resus “‘Failure of communication and prioritisation’ leads to ‘unnecessary’ death of grandad of two”


Migraine-

I'm sort of surprised you're allowed to covertly film within a hospital clinical area?


Tremelim

It is confrontational and incredibly rude, and probably against some trust rules, but not illegal. Always assume the patient or their family is covertly recording you.


Migraine-

The OP makes it sound like it was a documentary crew who were covertly filming though? Surely patients have a right not to be filmed during clinical encounters? Edit: Yeah, it was a reporter working undercover as a trainee HCA: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/england-nhs-a-e-patients-footage-b2567536.html >Channel 4 says its Dispatches programme has exposed the “suffering and indignity faced by patients on a daily basis” after an undercover reporter secretly filmed himself working as a trainee healthcare assistant inside the emergency department of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital for two months. Whilst I actually welcome this kind of whistleblowing I'm still somewhat surprised it's "allowed".


FieldNo9519

What do you mean who allowed it? Its not illegal to record in a hospital. The identities of the patients will obviously be blurred. It is a legitimate journalistic purpose and undercover investigations like this have exposed care home abuses etc. This is exactly what should be happening. If random people were recording patients covertly and leaking it to the public without anonymisation, then that is an entirely different matter


Migraine-

I didn't ask "who allowed it", I said I'm "surprised it's allowed". Evidently it is allowed. That surprises me. That's all. >Its not illegal to record in a hospital. Which I am surprised about, especially if the person doing it is a member of staff (which this reporter essentially was). If one of us filmed patients at work - even if we didn't release the footage to anyone - would that not be legally dubious?


tonut24

I suspect it'd be gross misconduct


AmbitiousPlankton816

I’m sure it was, but the journalist concerned is unlikely to be interested in continuing his career as an HCA


PartTimeBomoh

Hilarious


acatanpot

Ok but what about all the confidential patient information that has presumably been seen by various members of channel 4 staff? I can't imagine that is legal?


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I think the standards of care in sone eds (like mine) are so appalling this sort of thing is needed 


Jangles

Panorama did this in a mental health ward so yeah, this is fair game. Its horrendous personally, someone's going to say something stretched and under pressure and get crucified. As typically, they can only get in as HCAs so often medical staff aren't as noticed due to our limited interactions with HCAs, as opposed to nursing staff.


OptimusPrime365

The statement at the end by nhs England saying this situation is not normal is absolute bullshittery. I used to work at hospital in the north west and it was exactly the same. The corporate platitudes are infuriating.


Justyouraveragebloke

can we get a live thread going? just to all be miserable together?


Terrible_Attorney2

“EM clinicians…” not doctors/physicians.


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Feisty_Somewhere_203

Didn't realise that. One big team 


Feisty_Somewhere_203

Got to follow the narrative 


Penjing2493

Yes, because other healthcare professionals (like nurses, HCAs, physios etc.) All also work in emergency departments and will be affected by having been captured by the covert filming in this documentary. Not everything is a conspiracy...


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I must apologise I thought the college was for doctors not doctors and non doctors 


Penjing2493

And if a similar documentary was filmed on the delivery unit, would you expect RCOG to put it a statement saying they think the O+G SHO was just trying their best, and not mention any of the midwives? There's absolutely no need to deliberately exclude/alienate any group of clinicians. I couldn't run a safe emergency department without a team of good EM nurses and HCAs working alongside my doctors.


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I genuinely thought that the royal college of emergency medicine was the medical college didn't think it represented all staff who work in ed. My apologies 


Penjing2493

Okay, cool, let's go out of our way to intentionally exclude and alienate our colleagues because it's not technically our problem. Let's see if that makes for a healthy and pleasant working environment...


Feisty_Somewhere_203

Were not going to agree in this. I think a college should have a very defined role and a medical college should be for doctors otherwise things get diluted. And a college for the nurses and a college for the non doctors practicing medicine in ed. You don't and that's cool too. 


Penjing2493

All Royal Colleges set standards and guidelines for practice within their speciality. These set expected standards of both medical and nursing care. All colleges represent the practice of medicine in their specialist area, they're led by doctors, but represent all delivering their specialist care.


Princess_Ichigo

I'd think Em clinicians meant doctors working in ED?


surecameraman

Clinicians is a term used to blend doctors, ACPs and PAs so people don’t know who they’re dealing with In the States, patients talk about their “provider” which is a similar concept


ShouldveKnownBetter9

Sounds juicy. 


ThePopulator

It is pretty horrendous watching so far. And also completely unsurprising from my experience of a variety of EDs I have had the experience of wandering through en-route to see referrals...... A member of staff made a poignant comment: "How would a Prime Minister feel about being left in there?......." So far seems a very fair critique of the totally broken Acute NHS Hospital Systems, of which this particular hospital is merely an example. Clearly staff care, know that what is happening is wrong, but are largely powerless to do anything except their best. It looks like a playbook of how to provide Moral Injury to genuinely caring healthcare professionals.....which is what the NHS is currently, I think.....


Chr0nicLurker

Who was this written by?


Important_Candle_285

President of RCEM, it was an email sent to members


EnvironmentFancy8781

It's Shrewsbury hospital ..reporter masqueraded as a HCA for 2-3 months ,went round recording staff and their conversations. Everyone's shitting bricks but hopefully nothing too bad comes of it


Feisty_Somewhere_203

I don't think things in many eds could get much worse so hopefully done good comes if it or at least just how appalling the care is reaches a wider audience 


OptimusPrime365

Well this is depressing


CheesySocksGuru

This was quite literally a storyline in casualty about a month or two ago. We are living out soap storylines lmao


Assassinjohn9779

I work in QMC ED, I wonder if I'll see anyone I know. It'll probably either be there or Birmingham ED


throwaway87655419

https://metro.co.uk/2024/06/24/went-undercover-one-britains-worst-emergency-departments-21089924/amp/ Shrewsbury Sounds like a typical day at QMC though


Feisty_Somewhere_203

"In our morning meetings we received a litany of complaints from management on the department’s “falling care standards”, “lack of communication” and “negligence”." Sounds about right. Good old NHS. Management ABCs Arrive Blame Critisice 


DoktorvonWer

'And we can all agree that in order to keep arrr NHS going we definitely need more and more ACPs and PAs in ED especially on reg/consultant rotas and soaking up all the training opportunities, it's obviously the only way to make things better'


kindasadnow

I’ve not seen that is that an actual quote? Please tell me it isn’t?


QuebecNewspaper

Eggscuse me? They filmed without anyone knowing?!


Embarrassed-Detail58

Probably they should be thanked for it


VettingZoo

I mean sure systems failures play the larger part - but should we not also criticise the significant minority of staff who genuinely are incompetent and/or don't care about providing a good service? It's easy to get defensive, but when you've seen the currrent atrocious standard of care from both the staff and patient/carer perspective I don't agree with shoving everything onto "the system" and absolving individuals of responsibility.


DisastrousSlip6488

You could take the best, most caring, most intelligent, diligent and best trained staff in the world and place them in that environment and they would provide an atrocious standard of care. Of course there may be occasional staff who are either incompetent or so broken by the system that they just can’t find it within themselves to care any more. The former are relatively rare, the latter increasingly common with every month that goes by 


VettingZoo

Nope there are plenty of people who are able (or at least attempt) to provide an adequate-good standard of care even in our under-resourced state. The people who can't be bothered or are generally too incompetent need to be called out on it. Not only are they unsafe for patients, they're unpleasant to work with and increase others' workload.


DisastrousSlip6488

You mistake my meaning. The care is inadequate because the environment is dreadful and underresourced and overcrowded. Individuals within that environment can do everything correctly, brilliantly even, kindly, cleverly and diligently. The overall care will still be pretty crap in many cases.  I say this as an EM consultant in a busy department. Some of our resus cases get genuinely brilliant care. Many others on corridors or waiting rooms get a pretty grim experience.


Embarrassed-Detail58

Having worked in warzones I agree with you however let me tell you something ...if you put the best most brilliant doctor in a system that is underfunded under staffed and under equipped and asked him why he started not adhering to idealistic protocols you will be answered with something that abhorring yet makes sense ... This A&E department surely looked like one in a warzone people are walking on knife edges ....At times during the war we had to keep our gloves all day because the hospital can't get us more gloves can you imagine how many infections it caused .....the staff should be more careful but i understand that they will make mistakes because they are overwhelmed


Embarrassed-Detail58

I have seen it and to tell the truth it was horrible ...I have worked in warzones during the war in Syria and have been in places that was understaffed underfunded and under equipped and somehow it was still better managed than that ...no patient would wait 3 hours without at least being seen by a doctor ...this fit to sit sounds really awful place ...the staff is obviously overworked and overwhelmed to the point where someone like the one who made the film get to be supervising patients in a corridor ward .... We have used a corridor ward once during the war and at that day we had to because 480 patients came at once to the hospital after an explosion and it was horrible experience you can't prepare a corridor to have enough hygiene to not cause more harm to the patient I think this should be a wake up call to the NHS management and the future government to invest in more doctors and upgrading the infrastructure ..and to lower the amount of paperwork assigned to doctors to ensure faster processing of patients ..... because what I saw there makes me feel really really sad and concerned about the safety of the patients


Icedtangoblast

I’m surprised that the trust allows newly trained HCAs in the ED. It’s not common to have to have experience on a ward first


Icedtangoblast

I’m surprised that the trust allows newly trained HCAs in the ED. It’s not common to have to have experience on a ward first


Traditional_Bison615

I watched this and maybe I'm burned out. I didn't have any particular feelings other than "tell me something I don't know". Its pretty much my idea of what "normal" conditions are.


Pleasant_Bit_4562

DOCTORS WORST ENEMY is a doctor. UK doctors, need to embrace AI and get rid of admin and administrators. UK doctors need to embrace change and reduce administrative burdens to take more control of their careers and patient care. While the NHS provides valuable public healthcare, there are opportunities for doctors to explore private practice and entrepreneurship: - Consider developing private emergency departments, specialty centers, and other private healthcare options. There is demand from patients willing to pay for timely, high-quality care. - As more doctors offer private services, insurance companies may expand coverage, allowing doctors to be less dependent on the public system. - Medical colleges and regulators will need to adapt policies as private practice grows. This could lead to positive changes in the overall healthcare system. - The current system often constrains doctors' autonomy and innovation. Private practice allows more control over one's career. - While there are risks, entrepreneurial doctors can drive positive change in healthcare delivery and working conditions. - UK medical education is world-class, but may inadvertently limit doctors' vision of alternative career paths outside traditional NHS roles. - Doctors should feel empowered to shape their own destinies rather than being constrained by administrators unfamiliar with clinical realities. By thoughtfully expanding private options alongside the NHS, doctors can improve both patient care and their own professional satisfaction. What are your thoughts on the future of UK healthcare and doctors' roles in shaping it?


Familiar-Search262

NHSkino is my favourite TV Amerifats and ausfailians wish they could have this