NHS mentality

We all know how wonderful the NHS is but,

i experienced nhs mentality a couple of years back which left me rather bemused.

Secondly i know of a woman who phoned the NHS advice line 111 for advice regarding mental health of a family member and the 111 advice was, we will send you an ambulance...., to which the woman categorically said no as it would upset the family member if an ambulance arrived.

Guess what?....yep, the 111 sent an ambulance without her consent thereby upsetting the family member with mental health issues into crisis

So if i may i would like to regale my tale and then share a random 111 gag i wrote after being so inspired.

i was at the hospital and a porter came with a wheelchair to take me down the corridor to the xray dept....for a forearm xray (no w***ing jokes please)...
i declined the wheelchair saying ' my legs are fine i'll walk thanks'...the porter was mid sixties and a heart attack waiting to happen whereas i was early forties and the only medical issue waiting to happen for me was a fart attack after eating a sausage roll in the hospital canteen
Then in a bellowing military voice for the whole hospital floor to hear the porter shouted out , ' Matron, patient is refusing to sit in wheelchair i can't take him down to xray.
i then got a spiel from Matron saying i am walking down a corridor at my own risk and if i fall over and crack my head open it is my fault....she also wanted me to sign something but couldn't find the relevant paperwork........ffs!!!!!!!!!!

So a while later i was bored out of my skull painting a wall and come up with this....

I didn't feel well so i phoned 111
'Are you conscious and breathing', they said
'No, i am not breathing i am holding my breath, i said
'Why sir, if you are not breathing you need an ambulance', they said
'No, i don't want an ambulance i would like advice from a doctor cos i don't feel well'
'But sir, if you are not breathing we will send you an ambulance'
'Correct, i am not breathing, i'm holding my breath, but i would like to speak to a doctor', i said
'But sir, you are not breathing, we need to send you an ambulance'
'I am not breathing, im holding my breath, i dont want an ambulance, i want to speak to a doctor', i said
'But sir,, you neeeeeeeeed an ambulance'.......
Eventually a doctor comes to the phone and says, ' Sir why are you not breathing and holding your breath?'
'Well doctor, i didn't feel well and said to my mate i will phone 111 and speak to a doctor'
'HA HA HA HA, i wouldn't hold ya breath, you ain't gonna get to speak to a doctor', said my mate, and bet me a tenner i wouldn't speak to a doctor.
So i held my breath and now my mate owes me a tenner!

so i suppose my next gag should be aimed at the lawyers who prey on the nhs like leeches creating that mentality but that would be too obscene for the BCG...lol

I don't understand the 111 service and think it's probably more confusing than helpful. If you have a health issue that is not urgent you make an appointment with your GP and if it's urgent you call 999. That should be all there is to it and 111 staff are not trained in the same way as 999 ambulance staff so why call them? I'm sure they will try to help as much as they can but it could do more harm than good if they give bad advice. So the joke works aimed at 111 call handlers but not 999 call handlers. I used to work in a BT exchange and connected 999 calls which were all from London even though the exchange was in Northampton.

There were regular callers who would call 999 and ask for an ambulance even though there was nothing wrong with them and some were so regular I soon got to recognise their voices. It used to make me so angry they were taking up the ambulance technicians time when there were more urgent calls waiting. I remember some calls taking up to 5 minutes to put 999 callers through to the London Ambulance Service and that it a long time in an emergency for someone desperate for an ambulance to be listening to a ringing tone. That shows how overloaded it was and there were still people abusing the system and not being punished. Even now they can do it for months or years and then just get a fine or suspended sentence. There are far too many suspender judges around....

I don't have much experience of hostpitals (thankfully) but I was on the recieving end of a spontanious Pneumothorax once. I had a few days stay in hospital and thought it was a bonus because a nurse working on my ward was someone I recogised from the local pub scene and actually rather fancied. I soon realised having a collapsed lung isn't a good way to introduce yourself to someone.

To console myself my mates visited and had brought some lard. This is when Viz was pushing the 'Eat Lard' campaign.

Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 1st August 2017, 12:18 AM

So the joke works aimed at 111 call handlers but not 999 call handlers.

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Hooray!!

yeh deffo aimed at 111

i ha an ex g/f once many loons ago...er, moons i mean, and she did the BT 999 call handling and she told me when some bloke phones up and says quite graphically what they want to do to the call handler.....rape, murder, necrophilia etc, they were required to listen in and not allowed to put the phone down........wtf?

and im happy the joke works..i laffed..lol

thanks DT

apparently when you phone 111 for advice the idea is u talk to a health practitioner or dr..

but it seems common practice for the 111 to send an ambulance even when folk are declining an ambulance

and ive been told the 999 ambo despatchers cant refuse any 111 call no matter how inappropiate it seems...

I don't know whether it's relevant to this or not but having had some dealings with the NHS lately I can say they aren't exactly worried about spending money on things. I wouldn't call them savers of the century. Probably the regulations at fault for it meaning they can't reuse stuff but any small business bod would be shocked at such financial outpouring.

The top man at the Hospital that I work in always starts his talks to new recruits "I have the easiest job in the Hospital!"

I feel like saying "Well why are you paid so much? Take a f**king pay cut!"

Quote: nobby pullin @ 1st August 2017, 9:38 PM

it seems common practice for the 111 to send an ambulance even when folk are declining an ambulance

and ive been told the 999 ambo despatchers cant refuse any 111 call no matter how inappropiate it seems...

View original

Interesting and as the service is a private company the cynic in me wonders if there are cash incentives to turn a call in to a visit. There were very strict rules for a 999 call so even if someone was being abusive you couldn't just hang up because they could be in a real emergency. Sometimes it was obviously a prank call and if it was someone shouting WAAAAAANKAAAAA down the phone I would give them an ear bashing which on a few occasions lead to an apology. If there was silence or mumbling it could have still been an emergency so I would always let the police know and give them the details. BT had some nifty software so you could see all the callers details including full address even if they tried to hide it and this was back when mobiles were rare so most calls were from landlines and public payphones. The software even showed you when the receiver button was being pressed and I remember a lot of calls to 999 and 100 from toddlers who had picked up the phone and you could tell by hearing them dribbling on to the handset and repeatedly pressing the hang up button with the TV on in the background After a few minutes the parent would notice and either hang up straight away or have a conversation and apologise profusely

My job was simple because I just heard a bell in my ear which indicated it was a 999 call and would then ask which service they need before connecting the calls and making sure the other operator had all the information they needed before hanging up and it was the ambulance staff who were amazing and could handle the most chaotic situations out of all the emergency services. I think they had to be qualified paramedics to do the job and it shows because they could handle anything. It's why it used to fry me that one woman in particular who obviously had issues would call every night and knew if she called 999 and asked for an ambulance she would be put through to someone who inevitably would quickly work out it's not an emergency and the woman would even admit it and say sorry before hanging up. Then a few hours later the same woman calls again and it went on day after day. It started to get to me because I was getting real emergency calls from people who needed an ambulance and it could take several minutes to put them through because the lines were so saturated because of hoaxers like her. This was 20 years ago and even now the penalty hasn't changed so it's still rife.

Being a cynic myself my ears always prick up when a woman says, 'the cynic in me'...lol

i understand 999 call takers are receptionists who just read out qu's from a call card which is frustrating for genuine callers cos they just wanna shout help, fred is half dead for example....but hoaxers get bored answering, or can't answer the qu's accurately so hang up the phone.

i better not mention the bloke in town ive been told about who phones 999 with a complaint the medics can't prove or disprove.
he phones on a friday or saturday evening...gets taken to the hospital in the city, discharges himself quickly and goes down the pub.
this is known because they were called to the pub later in the night and saw him in there.
on another occasion after a free ambulance taxi ride, he got hit by a car (but not hard enough) walking the 18 miles back home pi55ed up so got taken back to the hospital he had quickly discharged himself from earlier that night....

i think the general concensus of opinion is he should save his beer tokens and stay in, subscribe to the porn channel and try an indoor workout....

to quote the Levellers, 'there's one in every town'