That great British institution, the NHS, has two basic components; hospitals and GPs’ Practices. Patients in hospitals are there because they are too sick to be anywhere else. If this were not the case they quite simply would not be admitted. Undoubtedly many of the people who use hospitals are there through no fault of their own as becoming ill in life is something that can rarely be avoided. A large number of those in hospital are there as a direct result of bad living, which might have been avoided. We are all human however and when, for example, a person becomes a smoker or long-term drinker they do so for social reasons rather than to deliberately tie up medical resources; an unfortunate consequence of their action is that years after having started abusing their bodies and against their aspirations, they become sick.
There is a third kind of patient. One who drinks a whole bottle of vodka in one evening and then tries to take on the world. These patients can be found abusing the staff of any A & E department on any evening and usually after the pubs have closed. They sit with bloody noses in waiting rooms up and down the country and they swear and curse at anyone in their vicinity. Some just sit there crying and getting on everyone’s nerves. Numbers of this type of patient are undoubtedly on the increase and I suspect that this is down to the loutish British drink-to-get-drunk culture as well as longer opening hours. This behaviour can only be changed with education. This is made obvious by the fact that those with a better education such as public school boys although often over-indulging do not tend to suffer anything more than a hang-over as a result. It is the intellectually challenged, the uncouth and the increasing numbers of uneducated morons who stretch NHS resources on a Saturday evening.
The problem of time-wasters in GPs’ practices is another kettle of fish and one close to my heart; I work part-time in a practice and have seen first-hand what is going on.
Many practice patients have serious problems and need to see their GP but the vast majority have the common cold and many have stomach viruses and mild forms of influenza. These patients with lesser problems are wasting NHS resources by visiting their GPs. A cold can not be treated and anyone with a cold, no matter how bad they feel, should just stay away from other people and wallow in their own misery. They make things so much worse by walking into waiting rooms and infecting others who are genuinely sick. The last thing a cancer patient needs is some asshole with a cold sitting nearby and coughing and spluttering all over them.
I worked an afternoon shift in my practice yesterday and had just such an experience. Some bloody stupid woman coughed all over me and I woke up with a cold this morning. Why oh why didn’t she keep it to herself? There was nothing we could do for her and she should have just stayed at home. Stupid bitch!
What worries me much more that my own petty health problems is the vast NHS resources that are being wasted on these people who can not be cured. My estimate is that 60-70 percent of those who come into my own practice are time-wasters. I used to be much more sympathetic towards these people but I’ve learned to despise them. It is hard to feel any kind of sympathy for anyone who walks around spreading their own misery to others. The best that doctors can do for these idiots is prescribe cough medicine that can easily be bought over the counter and tell them to wrap up warmly. Even the cough medicine that is prescribed is prov-en to have no better effect that a teaspoon of honey would have.
Another example is the noro virus widely in circulation last Christmas. Even BBC newscasters was telling people that they should just stay at home and keep their vomiting and dihoria to themselves as there was nothing that they could do except ride it out for the two days that it stays in the system. So why did we get streams of people coming into the practice to infect others? It was just pathetic.
Yes, NHS resources are stretched but this is largely as a result of people’s own stupidity and over-inflated expectations. I even had to make an appointment for a woman a short while ago who thought that her children should see a doctor because the family dog had been afflicted with fleas and she was worried that the children had been bitten by them. I felt like giving her a piece of my mind but instead had to smile sweetly and make a triple appointment for herself and her two future-trash sponges thus clogging up 45 minutes of the doctor’s time that could easily have been filled by more deserving cases.
