"A doctor writes"

I am a doctor, so i have skewed view to start with. Patients are patients, therefore they have skewed views from their own perspective.

I have come on this website after the Channel 4 Dispatches tv programme. Patients come on this website after going through a bad experience (well... mostly).

My two cents worth now:

1 treat nursing staff/medical staff with a little more decency and give them a bit more time to do their work. this will have a knock on effect on patient care in a positive way.

2 increase staff numbers... most nhs managers worry about targets, not a single iota about staff, let alone patients who are the people we are trying to help.

The rest may be a little more radical - but i think it will work.

3 charge a nominal fee to be seen in A&E, say 2 pounds. those who are acutely unwell etc will be seen asap. i agree there is a 'free service provision' the nhs must adhere to, but i have seen enough people who could have a: easily waited for a routine appointment with their GP. b: can just go to work on a monday and not bother turning up on sunday night expecting a sick note c: drunk and unruly and distrupting the department.

4 the fact that nhs is free works well with the elderly and most other ages. but there is a signigicant minority who expect the nhs, esp a/e staff to cater to their every whim and fancy... this is very wrong.

5 some elderly try not to come into hospital because they 'don't want to trouble' the nurses and doctors! these are the patients we want to help. not the drunk unruly and worried well people who demand at times ludicrous things at 3 am in the morning!

6 last and certainly not the least - the 4hr wait is a joke. for more information: figure out what these acronyms mean...CDU, AMU, MAU, SAU. All ways to get around the A/E 4hr wait... for the unknowning patient in all of us: this could mean u could be in the hospital for possibly 24hrs... and officially not be admitted into the hospital.

It is all about the statistics... to meet the targets... to please the nhs target driven non-clinical managers.

ps: not as eloquent as i would like this venting of mine... but i hope you understand the pressures and idiotic burecracy we work in.

A Doctor...not jaded yet.. but getting there...