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supernick
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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Panorama's investigation is a stark portrayal of the indignities faced by elderly people as they reach the end of their days in a major British hospital.
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� Patients in excruciating pain from terminal cancer because their pain relief drugs were not being administered properly.
� Patients desperate to use the toilet having to wait for lengthy periods while nurses fail to respond to their calls for help.
� Nurses eating patients' food in the kitchen whilst some patients who were unable to feed themselves went hungry.
� And how patients can die alone and unnoticed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/4655929.stm |
And Panarama is an excellent show, but remember this has nothing to do with the NHS, as it to do with one hospital, and one ward. I would say that in all hospitals, under all systems of health coverage, situations like these are common. Basiacally, it boils done to each hospital's management, and in this case, the management of the hospital is to balme, not the MHS as a whole. |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 9:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Mariella713 wrote: |
| No public service is ever perfect. The NHS doesn't look too bad when compared to health provision in other developed countries. Interestingly, two OECD figures that I've seen before show the UK has greater life exectancy and lower infant morality than the US. The NHS could definately do with inprovements though, no doubt about it. |
Infant mortality rates and life expectancy are a reflection of individuals' health rather than healthcare quality (and individuals' health has very little to do with the healthcare system). Where actual healthcare is involved, such as rates of cancer survival, the NHS produces rates that are near the bottom. Of course, infant mortality does reflect on the healthcare system somewhat, so good on the NHS having reasonable outcomes in that respect, but in both cases - infant mortality and life expectancy - the really important factors are diet, safety, sanitation, genetics, income and lifestyle choices, things which the healthcare system has no control over. Actually, a great advance in life expectancy was the discovery of how to immunize people against diseases like polio, measles, flu and small pox - a discovery that pre-dated the NHS.
Hong Kong and Singapore don't have a health system remotely like the NHS (nor much of a welfare state at all) and have some of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. Switzerland also has a high life expectancy, yet recently Swiss voters rejected a single-payer health proposal. Costa Rica has a higher life expectancy than Luxembourg, but is Costa Rica's healthcare system superior to Luxembourg's? In every nation in the world, there's a big difference in the life span between men and women, but do women receive superior healthcare? |
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chellovek
Joined: 29 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:48 am Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| but do women receive superior healthcare? |
You read the Daily Mail don't you, dear old Serge? Then you should know that this because of feminist plots against men. |
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chellovek
Joined: 29 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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A further study showing UK healthcare to be not as crap as market-types would have us believe.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10634371
Was interesting to see that India came out the worst. What a nascent superpower! |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 11:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Sentimental and idealistic attachment to the NHS doesn't do much good. The service it provides is surpassed by different systems in other countries in numerous respects. How ever a health system is funded, organized and designed, it will always have strengths and weaknesses. If you're on your last legs and need some painkillers (inevitably this means mostly opioids, which is 100-year old medicine and so simple to produce that it's on every street corner in the form of heroin), the NHS performs well. That's fine. Dying of old age and basic pain relief they can handle, but survival rates for cancer, heart disease and stroke are poor by developed world standards and there are limits to what state-run health care can provide (and particularly at a time of aging populations and rapid technological advancement). One great advantage in France, for instance, is that most treatment requires some form of co-payment (which most people insure themselves privately for). Inevitably, this will increasingly be the case in the UK. |
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