Saw the real side of our NHS at Poole Hospital last night, one of the busiest Saturday nights they’ve had apparently, at one point there was 98 people waiting to be seen in A&E with 8 ambulances waiting to unload their patients and not even standing room in the waiting area. Behind the scenes there were ambulance trollies queued down the corridor. The waiting time went from 4 hours at 10pm to 8 to 9 hours by 2am. There was nowhere near enough nurses, doctors or primary care assistants to deal with it. But did they stop smiling? No, they carried on rushing around trying to deal with everyone with passionate and professional care. Around 2am a young Chinese nurse appeared in “Majors” and started dealing with patients. Had she just come on shift? No, she was a nurse from the ICU who was on her break and hearing how bad things were had come down to assist her colleagues for an hour. She came back at the end of her own shift and just waded back in to care for patients.
The nurses/PCA’s that were working A&E never got a break, they just kept going with the nearest being a slurp of tea and a biscuit as they passed the desk. When things started to calm down a bit at 7am the staff nurse a guy called Toby didn’t grab the chance to stop and have a break. He came to me and the other relatives who had been waiting with patients apologising for the wait and offered us a hot drink. Some of these people had been there up to 14 hours. This is our wonderful NHS, overstretched and running on a shoestring but with such dedicated professional care staff from paramedics, care assistants, nurses, porters, working long shifts with no breaks. They don’t let their frustration affect their job or the way they deal with patients, drunk’s, abusive yobs, elderly people who have had falls and don’t even know where they are, their dedication and tolerance is a testament to the brilliant health service we have, and it’s free, it’s there to save your life.
It’s your NHS so stand up for it before this evil government destroy it and it’s gone forever.
Spudgun Richards
