How compassionate is your nurse?

Nurses are to be scored on how compassionate they are towards patients as part of a government plan to improve quality in the NHS to be unveiled in the runup to the 60th anniversary of the health service next month.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, wants the performance of every nursing team in every ward across England to be measured, with the results published on an official website.

This is a stupid idea and will only lead to more money being taken away from healthcare. The patients will provide feedback but someone will have to check the feedback meaning at least 1 administrator will have to be employed in every hospital to check it over. They will of course be paid which will mean this money will have to come out of the hospital budget which they could use on treating patients.

I don’t know how many hospitals there is but let’s give an estimate of 200. If administrators were paid on average £18,000 per year then the bill for this new scheme would be £3.6 million per year which should be spent on healthcare. As you can see this is another stupid idea by a stupid government.

New born babies put at risk

A pregnant woman was forced to give birth in a hospital corridor after being turned away from two other hospitals when she went into labour.

Humiliated new mother Emma Johnson gave birth in a hallway at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, West Sussex.

This new mother isn’t the first and she won’t be the last mother for this to happen to. Hundreds of sick babies have been turned away from London hospitals because of a shortage of intensive care beds. This is just in London. What about the rest of the country?

There is also a shortage of 2300 specialist nurses providing neonatal care which is putting even more babies at risk all because the government doesn’t know what they are doing but there is another element to this. Could it be that rising levels of immigration has lead to this?

Birth rates have rocketed in recent years which have taken government planners by surprise. Why is this when the native birth rate in this country has been steady? The only explanation there can be is that it is because of rising levels of immigration. Think of another reason why government planners failed to predict it when the native birth rate has not been rising.

Does the Islamic culture lead to mental illness?

People of South Asian origin with mental health problems are missing out on treatment, the BBC has been told.

Experts warn it is contributing to the high suicide rate among Asian women.

The chairman of one NHS Trust says he blames "institutional racism" for the "lack of engagement" with the South Asian community.

It’s not racism that is stopping them from getting access to mental health. It is their own culture that stops them from getting help. Islam is also a cause as it treats women as second class citizens so much so that Asian women are committing suicide in increasing large numbers on just one stretch of railway track because they are abused and degraded by their community.

Until the Islamic community bring themselves into this century and stop being backward and treat women as equal they will continue to have mental health problems in their communities.

Charge drunks for treatment says Lib Dems

Patients needing emergency NHS treatment after becoming drunk or incapacitated by drugs would be charged under proposals yesterday from Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman.

The plan is one of a series of policy shifts in a strategy paper he published before the party's annual conference in Brighton next week. Mr Lamb said: "If you get rat-arsed on a Friday night and get taken to A&E where you are foul and abusive to staff, is it right for the taxpayers to fund your life-saving treatment?"

I agree with this policy. If you are responsible for your ill health then you should be the one to pay for your own treatment. Tax payers should not have to fund your lifestyle.

I think this is the only decent policy that the Lib Dems have ever come up with. I think it will be the last too.

Immigrants could swamp NHS

The Health Service could be "overwhelmed" by cancer sufferers from Eastern Europe, a leading doctor has warned.

There are almost twice as many smokers in Poland and neighbouring countries than the UK, which means they have far higher rates of lung and other cancers.

It comes as a new documents showed the bill for treating health 'tourists' amounts to at least £62 million a year.

This is totally unfair. When Brits are taken ill in Poland they are deported because the Polish government refuses to take care of them.

While we are spending millions of pounds on making their citizens better they are only willing to pay for a one way ticket to this country. We are getting a bad deal being in the EU.

NHS with £1bn surplus

The Government has been urged to halt hospital closures and cutbacks after it emerged that the NHS is on course for a £1bn surplus this year.

If this is the case why does Labour want to close hospitals and cut services which have been shown will cost lives? Why do some hospitals have to send organs for transplant by coach and not ambulance?

If we have a surplus why do we have an inferior health service to that of Scotland? Surely now NICE should allow a medicine that will save 10,000 from going blind and allow an anti dementia drug which will improve peoples quality of life.

NHS sends organs on coaches

SKINT NHS bosses are using National Express coaches to transport organs for transplants.

And The Sun can reveal it meant an EYE went missing on its way to hospital.

It was sent in a box on a coach and disappeared on the way to Northampton General.

Hospitals should use private ambulances to carry the organs. But many have axed the contracts to save money.

Delivery firm TNT was due to collect the eye — for a cornea transplant — from Northampton bus station where it had been taken by coach.

But the National Express office, where sensitive parcels were held, was shut.

The eye was finally tracked down and used in an op the next day.

Labour can’t seem to do anything right. Sooner or later an organ will go missing and someone will die. It’s about time Labour actually did their work properly and gave the NHS more money and kept out of the decision making.

He survived the war but the NHS killed him

He survived Dunkirk, World War 2 and our dangerous streets as a police officer but it was our hospitals that finally killed him. Former Coldstream Guard Joseph Nixon, 87, survived the battlefields of France and Belgium.

But after a bowel operation he caught pneumonia and superbug clostridium difficile and died at Maidstone Hospital in Kent at the end of last month.

Mr Nixon, who was also a Met Police officer after the war and a "tireless" campaigner for alcoholic support groups for prisoners, was appalled at how overworked nurses were and the dirty conditions at the hospital.

This is the NHS today. We get third rate care for our war heroes. Would they have fought and died for the country we have today if they knew what it was going to be like?

Junior doctors could be jobless

More than 10,000 trainee doctors could find themselves without posts within weeks as medical campaigners warn of a new junior doctors crisis.

The deadline to fill 22,000 NHS training posts was extended until Oct 31, but with 33,000 applicants, there are renewed warnings that thousands could lose out.

Junior doctors who do not get a post under the Medical Training Application Service face taking non-training jobs, emigrating or leaving the NHS.

Ministers have created 1,000 extra training posts that will be allocated after Oct 31 to unsuccessful candidates who are especially qualified.

But critics have said that many doctors who have already been assigned training posts have found their salaries have been cut or that they are overqualified.

While on this is going on it looks like there will be a lot of broken promises as hospitals are trying renege on the government’s promise that junior doctors would not be left out of work in order to save money. It looks like Patricia Hewitt was wrong when she said that they wouldn’t be disadvantaged because they will and the country will be disadvantaged as a result of junior doctors heading abroad.

If the NHS really wants to save money they could start by saving £4 million by paying for their own taxi fairs, first class train tickets and aeroplane travel. The £4 million wouldn’t help a lot but it would be a start.

Why does NICE exist?

Why does NICE exist? They are supposed to be the National Institute for Clinical Excellence yet all they do is allow people to suffer and make lives worse and not better.

They have taken an anti dementia drug off the NHS and it is now up to the high court to overturn their decision. Another 10,000 people could go blind because NICE has decided that they are no longer going to provide the drugs that will stop them from going blind. They have announced a review but that will take 6 months.

Cancer drugs have also been taken off the NHS by NICE. This resulted in a RAF mandying because he could not afford to keep himself alive.

The question is, how many lives have NICE saved and how many lives have they ruined? It seems as though they do more harm than good.

The best healthcare English money can buy

The Scottish have the best healthcare English money can buy. While we are paying for their healthcare we are getting inferior healthcare because of the government. This is an outrage. The English are treated like second class citizens and we are paying for it. This is shown by the fact that an RAF man died after being denied cancer drugs that you could get on the NHS. This is despite the fact that this man would have probably leapt to the defence of the people of Scotland in the event if they were targeted by military forces.

The English are now being refused a life saving heart treatment that has saved the lives of tens of thousands. The Scottish will still get it though while tens of thousands of English people will drop dead and the government won’t care because the Scottish are still alive.

Why are we treated like second class citizens in everything? It is not just healthcare where we are treated with contempt. It is government jobs too. We are refused them because we are English even if these jobs are in England. It is about time we said enough is enough and stop paying to be discriminated against.

Fatties to cost NHS £1.6 million

Dangerously obese children will be entitled to stomach-stapling surgery on the NHS, it was reported last night.

Procedures including stomach-stapling would be offered to children who would otherwise stand a high risk of developing cancer, diabetes or heart conditions.

The newspaper says that children with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 40 would be eligible for NHS-funded operations that typically cost £8,000. A normal BMI measure is between 18 and 25.

It is thought that between 50 and 200 teenagers a year may have their stomachs stapled if the guidelines are accepted.

So the tax payer may have to dish out £1.6 million because of lazy bastards who refuse to exercise or eat healthily? Where are the parents? Why aren’t they feeding their children healthy food and giving them time limits on watching TV and playing on computers?

The parents should be responsible for their children’s health. If they get diabetes or other obesity related conditions the parents should be forced to pay for the full cost of the treatment, whether they are poor or not. It is not the business of the state to bail people out just because they can’t control their behaviour. The only things the state should do is make students over a certain BMI have to take PE for 2 hours per day everyday until they are down to a healthy weight and also have healthy alternatives at lunch. The state should not get involved in anything else.

Hat tip: A Tangled Web

Health nazis strike

SMOKING in public looks to be banned on June 4, 2007, a senior health insider revealed yesterday.

I am against this ban and I don’t smoke. The government has no business telling people what they can and can’t do in pubs unless they are the ones that own all the pubs in Britain. It should be left up to the owner of the pub to decide whether they want smoking in their pub.

If people don’t like other people smoking in the pub that they also drink in they can leave. They do not have to stay there. They are the ones who are putting their own health at risk by staying there. If you are about to be run over by a car you jump out of the way. That is common sense.

If you want to stop people smoking the government should try a different way like making people pay for their own healthcare if they have a smoking related illness afterall why should the public pay for problems that you caused yourself? People should be forced to take care of themselves on not rely on the state to bail them out all the time.