The time has come

[caddyman]

So, having got a big and important chunk of work out of the way and allowed the questions to die down, we are now in the consultation period. This leaves me with opportunities to find room in my diary for the long delayed trip to the hospital for a blood test. As you may recall, I have a personal policy that all things being equal, I do not allow madmen in white coats to stick needles in me more than once a year – less if I can possibly arrange it. So when I changed doctors earlier this year I cheerfully ignored the standard ‘go and give the hospital an armful’ request, it being a bare five months since I’d done it last.

Anyway, last time I visited the quack a fortnight ago, and got told off for disappearing for 9 months (I hadn’t, I had just got them to give me repeat prescriptions, is all) the doctor, a harassed-looking soul in his 50s who looked not unlike Professor Brainstawm on a bad hair day, decided that since I am a fatty with blood pressure problems I should have a blood test¹. “I suppose we’d better test for everything” I think I recall him saying.

Charming.

Any road up, busy work period over for the time being, I thought I’d take advantage of the lull to arrange a trip to the Finchley Memorial Hospital². My God, a lesser man would have died waiting for them to answer the phone. I even tried (with no success) to contact Barnet Hospital when I got fed up with waiting. It did however, give me time to look the pair of them up on the web and I see that while both hospitals are rated as “poor” in their use of resources, Finchley Memorial is rated as “good” in the quality of service. Barnet Hospital on the other hand, seems to be poor at everything. If someone is going to stick a needle in me, I think on the whole that I prefer that it not be a cave man in a mud hut, so Finchley Memorial it is.

Eventually I got through and they get to practice this barbarity on me next Thursday, so I have blocked the entire day off in my diary. Experience tells me that regardless of the appointment time, I shall have to hang around for a couple of hours before anything happens. The bit with the pointy needle and the prodding/extracting will take about 5 minutes no doubt. Still, I have been watching lots of House recently, and am torrenting the latest episodes from season 3 even as I type. I shall be able to wander around reception, point at people and say “Lupus” at them a lot.

I don’t know what lupus is, mind. A wolf bite, perhaps. I should look it up.

¹Standard response number 3. Numbers 1 and 2 being lose weight and take more exercise, respectively.

²I must admit that I am wary of hospitals with ‘memorial’ in their name. It suggests a failure rate one should not discuss in polite company. Memorials belong in churchyards or on village greens, not hospitals.

Comments

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Ah, Professor Branestawm.

Wonderful stuff. I was particularly found of the weather control device.

what?!?

[mathcathy]

You're in London, right? The capital city? How is it that you have to call, hang on, make an appointment, wait for ages etc etc just for a blood test? In every place in the UK that I've lived it's been possible to get a blood test without an appointment. (Ok, so if you want ultra-convenience at the local surgery you have to book to see the nurse, but there are always hospitals with an open door policy for blood tests.) Why is it so difficult? Last year I was getting blood tests every month or so and each occasion was about ten minutes of my time - drop into the hospital on the way past, that kind of thing ....

Re: what?!?

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm bemused too. Blood tests in our neck of the woods are: make appointment with surgery; turn up at surgery at appointed hour; nice and devastatingly efficient phlebotomist takes the required amount of blood; phone back a few days later for the results. How hard can it be?

Re: what?!?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I think it's something to do with the way my local practice works. They used to get a nurse to take an armful in Clapham, too. Then they would give me three-month prescriptions, too, instead of every two months as now.

I liked the old way; less hassle and less expense. Still, this way gets me next Thursday off work.

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

My Local Hospital, Mayday Hospital, regualrly hits the headlines, local and national, for the quite staggeringly poor service.

At the begining of the week a story about a woman coming out of a coma was reported.....she's fine...but the hospital had wanted to switch off her life support systems.

Having the universaly recognised word for Distress wasn't a great Start.....

Still at least it hasn't got Memorial in it's name......

But 'Mayday University Hospital', to give it its full title, does rather imply that you are going to be experimented on like a lab rat ..and it's assesment of fair service provision and weak use of resources does little to bolster moral.

Mayday is more Scrubs than House !

[pax-draconis.livejournal.com]

Avoid Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital Trust.

Were I in a position where I had a choice between BCFH and, say, a leper colony sited in a disused sewer next to a Cold War-era Russian nuclear waste containment facility staffed solely by people who twitch involutarily when holding needles, I'd be signing up for my bell and bandages immediately.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I got an inkling of that when I went there with the bleeding nose last year. Having sat me in a corner as I filled recepticle after recepticle with blood, they then tteated me and kept me there all night so that someone could sort it out in the morning. That was cancelled and I was transferred to the Royal Free Hampstead instead. They were slow (because ludicrously overstretched) but competent.

[fredlums.livejournal.com]

http://www.medicinenet.com/systemic_lupus/article.htm#1whatis

All you ever didn't want to know!

The modern day NHS is unfortunately an extremely overstretched place. Mainly in due to the fact that in cost cutting efficiency measures, staff are not replaced when then leave/retire/die on the job- actually forget the die on the job bit it will probably be 3 weeks before anyone notices.

There is also the trend to call them all University Hospital of St Elsewhere at the moment. I think this is done to try an inspire confidence in the general populous but it seems to have rather the opposite effect and folk do indeed begin to feel like "lab rats".