Skip to main content

Diary of a UK A&E visit Part 2

Apropos my recent and ongoing stomach ulceration, the NHS have really otherwise been on top of it. Fair play to them.

Apart from the 19-hour marathon between entering the hospital to shutting my front door, the service in between, despite the incredibly lengthy time it took, was exemplary. What I cannot understand is, where there is an obvious lack of action overnight, they don't "semi" discharge you at 11pm with the instruction to come back in the following morning at 9am or otherwise THEN be discharged. Instead, you end up sitting on a hard metal chair overnight, without sleep, a shower, or meals, until the hospital medical staff return for the following morning shift, which although starting at 8am does mean you are unlikely to be seen until at least mid-to-late morning.

If you do self-discharge (one patient I was with did that) during the wait, you have to return and start the entire process again upon your return. This includes queuing for, and retaking, triage, then seeing the on-call general GP, then repeat blood tests (should you have originally needed them), then going back in the queue once again to see the specific hospital expert medic for your condition.

However, I have this morning received a health questionnaire which, naturally enough, started off with the now standard six tiresome questions related to gender. Organisations now seem incapable of starting with two simple 1) male/female and 2) heterosexual/other tick boxes and then offer to leave it at that for people of uncomplicated gender and orientation.

Why not offer the secondary option to go into all the binary hoo-haa on a second screen, which, with full due deference and sympathy to those it may otherwise affect, I don't wish to sound harsh, but that I really have nil interest in.

This question in the image, however, did make me titter. Tempted though I was to put in "37" or "don't know" I just carried on reward less.

"Hey Ed, how many people live in your flat?"
"Sorry NHS, I have absolutely no idea"


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pirate Bay threatened with closure - doesn't affect me

Swedish file sharing website The Pirate Bay is now under threat following legal action by the British Phonographic Industry last December. They alleged that the website "infringes copyright on a massive scale” regarding the sharing of computer games, software, films and music. Point taken, and one can't for one minute deny that copyright is being infringed on quite a massive scale, not just on Pirate Bay, but all around the internet. However, with due respect to the originators of the shared files, I have never used Pirate Bay myself, except perhaps on very odd occasions for software, films and music. I never use Pirate Bay for software, because I prefer to pay an outlandish price for another seemingly pointless update to Microsoft Office that neither improves my speed nor productivity. And I am quite happy to part with hard earned cash to a company that has already earned a fortune from me - and others - with their updates over the years. And as for the recent update of Pho...

Airport amusement

There is no doubt that airports can be quite amusing places. That is apart from being told by a burly security supervisor at the x-ray gate that thanks to the only contribution Yasser Arafat ever made to society, I had to remove my belt, shoes, watch and place my AK-47 in the tray provided. Watching people going around their travel ‘business’ in airports and on board the aircraft is hilarious. There are those who are plainly not very good at it, continually checking all manner of minutiae with the other members of the party. “Do we go to the gate?”, “Have we time for a beer?”, “I MUST get a pizza”. There are those who have plainly not done it much before and like their fellow travellers to be made fully aware of the exact opposite, as they point and gesture to the monitor shouting out their destination and boarding gate at every passing opportunity to one and all around them. There are those who think they are something special – despite the fact they are travelling via bu...

Are Camelot dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy?

There can be no denying that UK lottery operators Camelot are on to a good thing. Especially the overpaid management. They have been reaping the benefits of the franchise for years now - a franchise that in essence, has been licenced by the government to print money. However, I can't quite make up my mind whether the management of the Lotto are dim, dysfunctional, liars or just plain greedy, although the cynic in me answers the question when I consider the chief Executive of Camelot was complaining last year that the annual bonus on her not inconsiderable 7-figure salary had been reduced (conveniently forgetting her 18 year sojourn to date at Camelot has produced a pension we mere mortals can only dream about. How about the poor soldiers, CEO Dianne Thompson, who come back from the far-east minus a leg and have to legally fight for compensation that doesn't even touch what you earn less than a month? And they don't receive CBE's for their troubles either !). Irres...