Are you old enough to remember when you went through the weekly budget with a pencil, working out whether you could afford to go down to DER and rent a TV? Remember when carpets only covered the middle of the floor? When the launderette was a welcome relief from the burden of washing by hand; when you cooked one pot stews on the gas ring attached to your gas fire?
It went hand in hand with a time when it only took one wage to support a household, when there were no child care bills because that was your wife’s job, you neither needed nor owned a fridge because she went shopping every day – in between dropping her stockings off to be ‘invisibly repaired’ and taking your Mother into town on the tram.
Gone forever; carpets go to every corner of the room now, as does the heating, and as for the kitchen – it has become a ‘life style’ choice, furnished with cleaning ladies and au pairs to look after the kids – for you are both at work now to pay for it all – you still can’t afford to buy the TV, but thank heavens for credit cards eh?
Something else has changed too – it is now considered ‘shocking’ that you should be expected to care for your elderly relative in hospital. Evidence that we ‘have become a third world nation’.
“As taxpayers, we sink millions of pounds a year into the NHS. Are we not entitled to expect that they will look after our elderly relatives in their hour of need?”
Here in France you are unlikely to see a French owned house that is not described as being ‘suitable for restoration’. If the carpet goes to the corners of the room, or there is accommodation in the attic, previously used to store apples and potatoes for winter, now turned into something suitable to impress your family and friends when they come to join you round the newly installed pool; if the photographs of the kitchen show B & Qs finest integral fridge and cooker hod – you can be sure it is English owned.
The French may be light years behind the English in terms of ‘house beautiful’, but they still cling to the idea that they are best suited to knowing which order Aunt Maude likes to be dressed in in the morning, how she likes her feet to be rubbed when she is feeling a bit ‘crook’.
They see the job of Doctors and Nurses as being one of applying the art of medicine, and even then, they like to supervise. Sit outside any consultant’s office and when a fresh name is called, watch as six or seven people, the aunts, the sisters, the grand children, all rise up and troop into the consultants room. Health is a family affair.
Visit any hospital ward and you will find that ‘visiting hours’ are round the clock – yes –even four in the morning if you wish. Beds are surrounded by entire families all watching the quiz show on TV, offering Auntie Maude little tit bits to tempt her appetite, massaging her feet (what is this French obsession with massaging feet?).
If the Doctor arrives to see Maude, or some nursing procedure is to be carried out, they are politely invited to step outside – to where there are comfortable armchairs provided for the hordes to sit, until the nursing business is over and the family returns to watch over Maude.
There is nothing ‘third world’ about it, as various articles have implied in the UK. It is simply that the French only expect their hospital service to provide medical care – they don’t assume that because they pay ‘millions into their health service’ that this means a licence to dump their relatives whilst they go out and earn the money for wall to wall carpets.
Somehow in the UK, the idea has grown up that the NHS is a permanent hotel facility for those temporarily in need of a fulltime Doctor. That ‘relatives’ are something to be excluded at all costs or only admitted between 3 and 5pm. That once something is ‘wrong’ with you in some way, you become the total responsibility of the state – I read the other day of a British postman who had super-glued his arms to the desk in protest at only getting unemployment pay and not full disability pay because he now had something relatively minor wrong with him. Outraged he was. He was ‘sick’ why wasn’t he being given his ‘ticket to ride’?
“People go to hospitals because they are too ill to look after themselves, and because their own close families lack the skills to do the job.”
What ‘skills’ do you need to help old Fred to the loo, to ensure that Maude gets to eat what she likes – and gets to eat it at all? Why would you assume that this is a specialist task, to be provided by the NHS?
‘Ah’, but the cry goes up, ‘we have this beautiful house with a massive mortgage and the carpet goes all the way to the corners of the room, and we both have to work all hours to afford it, have you seen the price of child care lately?’.
“Here we go, full speed ahead into the Third World. In the poor countries of Africa and Asia, people move into the bare, harsh hospitals where their sick relatives are being treated, bringing food and clean sheets and taking on much of their care.”
They don’t expect you to bring your own food and sheets in France and Spain – towels you provide, mind you, and they would consider it definitely third world if you were prevented from receiving the care and support of your family for 22 hours of the day. It is quite normal here to rent a cot for 2 Euros to sleep in so you can be on hand 24 hours a day.
I seem to remember that in Britain, MOT stations started painting a line on the floor behind which the anxious owners were required to wait as opposed to hovering beside the mechanic as he tended to their pride and joy – yet we think nothing of sending our relatives behind a closed door to be worked on, and resent being invited to step inside.
Billions have been wasted on a central storage system for patient notes, simply to avoid the French method of putting the patient in charge of his own notes, to be hand delivered to whichever Doctor needs them. Can’t Britons be trusted to look after their own x-rays?
Which system do you think is ‘third world’? Discuss.
SBML is the landlord of the Raccoon Arms. He lives North of Watford and has an eclictic range of interests from Science and Technology to Politics including Woodwork and Genealogy. His political viewpoint has evolved from being a student demonstrator to more liberal views and has now seen the light in Libertarianism.
{ 34 comments }
“I seem to remember that in Britain, MOT stations started painting a line on the floor behind which the anxious owners were required to wait as opposed to hovering beside the mechanic as he tended to their pride and joy”
Fortunately I still know a friendly MOT station where this doesn’t apply (at least, not to “regulars” like me!). They don’t try and find something wrong for the sake of it, and know that I will fix any faults and bring it straight back. And I get to have a better look underneath my car than I can do at home.
Me too. Almost the only purpose of the MOT for my old Minor and Herald is that I get to see under their skirts and get the benefit of the garage owner’s suggestions, and my own observations, as to where to direct maintenance and what winter jobs to plan for.
The 46 year old Triumph passed today!
Ye Gods, Anna, do I remember DER….! I also remember my aunt cooking on a coke fired stove; her old washing boiler, washboard, mangle, pegging out the washing and by the evening having it all ironed.
Happy days………
I was washing in a tin bath and using a mangle as recently as five years ago – Mr G always, but always, gets round to doing the kitchen last!
Heck of a beauty regime but there’s nothing like a mangle for cellulite.
Ah, the monday morning filling the wash boiler with buckets of rain water from the tank behind the wash house and lighting the fire under it then trying to make it boil faster, as well as using the same boiler with a perforated metal plate in it before Christmas to cook the Christmas puds.
Indeed those were the days.
You had a tank behind the wash house?
You were lucky!
We had to fill ours from t’canal.
Etc.
Curiously, the fashion now seems to be going towards spending prodigious amounts of money to achieve a kitchen with that rustic aura of French farmhouses. And a fair old penny can be spent ripping up those wall-to-wall carpets in the hope of finding a nice wooden floor that we can dare to display the borders of.
S’funny.. I know people who, in certain respects, aspire to be rich enough to live more like their much poorer parents and grandparents did.
Here in Croatia you can also see the entire families in hospital corridors on daily basis. Most of the families do care, some of them are even overreacting and overprotective so you have to beg them to go away
Our problem is the lack of doctors so there is so much work and not much time for the patients and their families. Most of the Croats are unsatisfied with this situation, but my opinion from the inside is that it will get worse before it gets better.
Some time ago I personally witnessed a scene when the whole family came for a morning visit to a guy that died during the night. And nobody called them to inform the family about the death of the patient. They entered the room, saw that he was not in his bed, asked the personnel and… oops… It was very unpleasant situation and I can only imagine how it was for those poor people.
Remember it was we, or rather they, who voted for a government who would “take care of them from the cradle to the grave”.
These parasites on the rest of sane society are only demanding what was and is still being promised.
Until some courageous politician calls it a day on the promises of the Welfare State, it will only get worse until it bankrupts the country.
“These parasites on the rest of sane society are only demanding what was and is still being promised.”
Here’s hoping you never fall victim to a chronic illness (unless you already have your cyanide capsule to hand – wouldn’t want to ‘bankrupt the country’ would you Bob?).
The British system is not third world – it’s fantasy world.
People have been encouraged to be far too greedy and self-centred and to think of themselves as little princes and princesses. “Because you’re worth it.”
This has made a minority very rich, and left most of the rest of us gullible fools sitting in a pile of crap that we’ll be paying for over generations.
Here in Spanish hospitals it is so very similar and the joy is that everyone is included. As a widower with no family here I have been hospitalised a number of times and each time I was “adopted” by the families of the other two occupants the room. This has led to several enduring friendships. Remarkably there is very little hospital acquired infection and nobody dies from malnutrition or neglect. The staff always behave impeccably and not just because there are so many critical eyes watching their every move. And all on a budget a fraction of that of the NHS and with no reliance on immigrant labour at any level..
Ex-Pat Alfie,
I would second that comment – we live around 120 miles from the hospital – thus precluding my husband being there all day and all night. I too have been ‘adopted’ by other patients and their families – and indeed by ‘volunteer visitors’ who tour the hospital for just this reason.
Well, that’s brightened up my day – at last some good news about Europe!
Now, how can the NHS be transformed into a decent & efficient system like that in France or Spain?
Clue: don’t ask Cameron or Lansley.
I do agree with the sentiment of the article, but feel you have done a half job. To leave the Hospitals and unions free of blame in how this came about is very generous.
I would dearly love to have been able to stay by the bedide of several of my much loved relatives as they passed over but have been prevented by “visiting hours”. It seems strangely sadistic to prevent a dying person the comfort of seeing their family in their final hours and yet this is overlooked.
We soon learned to fight tooth and nail to get Grandad home as soon as possible so he could die with those he loved.
I do expect some degree of care from proffesionals. Here are some examples from my own experience where I found the nursing lacking any, well, nursing:
I do expect nurses to help my elderly Nana to the toilet in the night instead of shouting at her and leaving her in her own urine.
I do expect the nurses to keep the IV drip in her arm despite it meaning that they had their sleep interupted by her needing help to visit the loo.
I do expect them to fit a catheter and not take her out of reach of her emergency cord, which she kept pulling just because she didn’t like lying in urine.
I do expect them to make sure she does drink water when she dehydrates due to the lack of IV drip.
I do expect them to expect the dehydration to cause her to become delerious and uncooperative.
I do expect them not to use this delerium in a very well practiced manner to blame the patient for what was done due to Nana’s “attitude” and “language” (I have never heard her blaspheme, let alone swear in my life).
I do expect them to clean up the mess they created and not leave it to the next shift of (extremely proffessional and caring) nurses. It is always the night shift workers who are working extra shifts in the private hospital the next day to pay for the dishwashers, BMW X5′s and 2 week holidays to Cos mentioned earlier.
I do expect them to care.
We cannot be there at night and only twice a day during vising hours. If we had all day then the nurses wouldn’t need to feed or water them. It must be so inconvenient for them.
/applause for this comment
Agree with this comment entirely!
And, while this next point may sound flippant, it isn’t meant that way. There are certain members of my close family I wouldn’t want around me anywhere near 24 hours a day, who I wouldn’t want being given the responsibility of care. Not because they don’t care, but because in their well-meaning way, they only need the tiniest excuse to try to mollycoddle as it is. And who, if I were trapped into relying on them, would drive me to pulling out the drips or disconnecting the ventilator myself.
Hear, hear.
How we treat our elderly is a disgrace, and a sign of how degenerate we have become.
Even third worlders aren’t that bad. At least to their own families. However they are that bad to our elderly relatives who we give over to their tender Phillippino or Nigerian care with a least a hint of suspicion as to what might happen.
Shame on us.
I agree with the majority of your post Anna ,and i have seen the French system first hand and it does and has for years left the NHS” wanting” for lack of a better word ,where i would question you is on the family trooping in to the consultant or doctors rooms for what ever investigation or discussion that is needed,the closest relative maybe or friend or whatever ,but the whole tribe,this happens under the NHS now.
As long ago as fifteen years my wife was seeing a consultant at the London Hospital in Whitechapel ,London as most people would be aware this is a densely populated area ,mainly of immigrants ,the person before her was called and eight people ,children babies ,grandmother ,etc all trooped in ,when my wife was called in she asked the consultant ,whom she had seen several times ,how did he cope with all that ,the reply was ,”with great difficulty” no one spoke much English and the whole family did NOT help the consultation ,this remember is not France ,the signs in this hospital are in numerous languages and interpretors are on hand ,i could go on but i think from this you get the gist of the problem, here.
Ah, but do any of those ‘internees’ look forward to a spell of peace-and-solitude, away from some of their interfering relatives?
Did you hear about Mr & Mrs Wallcarpet? They named their newborn son Walter…
In memory of the late, great Roy Castle.
I can remember (just) the sentiments of the first 3 paragraphs…
As to the health care aspect, I think my father had some secret inkling about the standards in UK hospitals mentioned by “Rob”. After 2 months of inconclusive tests he was diagnosed with extensive cancer in early August. We were given assurances that lots of treatment was available, and an appointment with a specialist was made. However he went downhill very quickly, and died only 10 days later. During this short period we were left to our own devices. After 2 very stressful nights of more or less constant supervision by ourselves, and a few rather heated phone calls, we did eventually get some home help organised. But it seems that the NHS isn’t equipped for people to die that quickly, or at the weekend.
On what turned out to be his last day, I spent some time moving bedroom furniture around to make space for a loaned hospital bed (by which time he was almost unconscious). However he must have still been aware of what was going on – a few hours later he’d had enough, and passed away in his own bed with all the family around him. We like to think that was a wise move on his part…
“yet we think nothing of sending our relatives behind a closed door to be worked on, and resent being invited to step inside”
Yet, if you do offer to “step inside” you immediately get pulled up short by that bureaucratic nonsense of “patient confidentiality”. I accompanied a relative on a visit to the cardiologist because at the last consultation they didn’t understand a word the consultant uttered: sadly a combination of a ‘heavy’ foreign accent and plenty of technical medical jargon. I wasn’t allowed to “translate” nor ask questions nor see the notes or even the ECG. They wouldn’t even let my relative have possession of the notes at the clinic so that “they” showed me rather than the consultant or the nurses. In the end we had to wait for the GP to receive the ‘results letter’ and have my relative get the GP to translate and explain. If something potentially serious has happened I feel that, with the patient’s permission, it should be perfectly acceptable for the family to be involved.
As for the NHS “looking after our elderly relatives in their hour of need?” this loosely translates to “care in the community has failed” or, more usually, that there’s a bank holiday coming up and so hospitals become a “granny dumping ground” whilst the rest of the family goes away.
“That bureaucratic nonsense of “patient confidentiality””
That’s a joke. As both father and me have the same first initial, getting letters addressed just to “D” Bloggs is nothing out of the ordinary. HOWEVER getting two letters in the same week, BOTH from the local NHS, and BOTH addressed to “D” Bloggs is not funny, or confidential. Particularly as one was for him (the specialists appointment), and the other was for me (an X-Ray appointment).
I complained, and the next (computer generated) letter to me was obviously intercepted and put in a hand written envelope. But the following week another letter arrived addressed to “D” Bloggs…
In the past I have even found prescriptions similarly poorly addressed.
“Patient Confidentiality” my arse!
This is so sad. I still live very much in the old way. Mostly alone as my family are not close by. I don’t have wall to wall carpets or central heating. Not that I would want them. But I don’t feel abandoned. There are always neighbours who would help me if I needed it. And I know this.
I work in other people’s gardens during Summer, and I bed down with two quilts and a hot water bottle during Winter.
In fact I have a very pleasant and stress free life. I pay up front for everything I buy, and I owe no money to anyone. What is so wrong about this? So why should I feel sad? Mainly because so many people don’t know how to do this anymore.
No, I am never ill, so far, but I certainly don’t worry about it, and I would much rather be ill here than in UK if I have to be ill at all.
An English friend of mine had to see a French Consultant, and I went with her. I wasn’t barred from holding her hand or being present during the examination. And she was seen light years sooner than she would have been in UK. Problem solved long before it became serious. which it could have done.
So I am sad because Britain has lost itself in the process of demanding it’s rights.
However, I could do with a slightly better Pension, like wot The French get, but there is always The Restaurant de Coeur if the exchange rate gets really rough. The Restaurant de Coeur gives out free food to people who are struggling financially, and with never a hint of despisition. I know because I relied on them for a couple of Winters before the advent of my Pension. I might have to again one day, but they will deliver if I can’t go to fetch it.
This is the sort of caring that goes on daily in France. It is all around me.
As a war baby brought up on Reading’s slightly foxed Whitley Estate, gas but no electricity until the 1950s, I don’t want to go back to any of that.
I visited my dying sister in hospital H.Vienne in 2004. What was striking was no wards, and .that my sister was in an accessible hospital in a nearby small town.
I didn’t have to drive 3/4 hr to a bewildering hospital complex with either no parking available, or then have to pay about £8 every morning and every afternoon if I could find a space, or worry about the ticket having run out, or the parking warden.
Try visiting hospital daily at somewhere like Brighton, or Worthing.
Great if you live down the road or on a bus route
I also have a lot of sympathy with Robs comments, based on experience. The trouble, those that haven’t experienced better are pathetically grateful for the ‘service’ they get.
When I flung my bike up the road at the Paul Armagnac circuit in Nogaro in The Gers 4 years back I fractured my left shoulder blade, as I was not the only one to have snogged the tarmac and the Pompiers were rather busy with more seriously hurt persons than myself my wife drove me the 15 kliks to the private clinic at Barcelone du Gers where I was immediately admitted, after asking ‘Nogaro?’ with a wry smile, ( I was not the only guest from the circuit that day ) and not only had an Xray but also at my request a scan as I was’nt sure at my age whether I had damaged some internal organs, the staff thought this unlikely but agreed to my request.
I then spent 4 nights before they let me out because as I am diabetic they wanted to be sure that there would be no complications. My girlfriend, now my wife slept in the little cot provided and was a marval, rushing around organising all sorts of things. A few weeks later back in the home town hospital they did it all again, scan and all, just to make sure…… after spending several nights over the years when I lived in the U.K. mainly for R.T.A.’s, the smiling staff, clean wards and genuine friendliness of the French system makes very glad I got to live in France.
One of the flies in the ointment of families caring for loved ones is the overbearing ogre of “certification”. No matter how simple it is to take auntie to the loo, it will be frowned upon unless you’ve an NVQ in advanced toilet escorting.
Mrs D is a professional carer and the amount of courses she has to go on and certificates she has to hold onto to prove her attendance is staggering.
Her annual certificate haul fills an a4 ring binder. Note that’s just the certificates, not any notes associated with the courses.
Somewhere in the past 15 years we’ve gone from an open society to a closed shop of certificate holders where people holding bits of paper and attending courses measuring hours are deemed able to lord it over us.
Its yet another aspect of the de-personalisation if UK society, started way back in the nineties by none other than Mr lack of personality himself, John Major.
Yes, the cult of the piece of paper which always leaves the question in my mind – who said those certifying the qualifications are actually qualified to do so? My experience says most of them aren’t.
where do you find these ‘families’? If you actually have children they are likely to be spread all over the ccountry and full time employed.
Families , helpful neighbours and friends tend to be romantic creations of popular magazines.
Not were I live, they aren’t.
I have the urge to throw some cold water over everyone’s heated rants about how ‘terrible’ the NHS is and how ‘wonderful’ everyone else’s healthcare system is…. and particularly the allusions to ‘third world’ service.
Lots of anecdotes quoted and extrapolated into general truth. My family’s experience of the NHS has been mostly positive, with a few negatives quickly fixed by our familial bolshiness, persistence, crafty diplomacy and presence. The illnesses were/are serious and the nurses were/are thoroughly professional and flexible. There has been the odd FU and we’ve had to have the odd word with a ‘doogie howser doctor-type’. By and large I have been happy with my version of the NHS – perhaps I live in a parallel britain?
I have also lived in foreign climes where the poor would have given all they owned to have access to the kind of care we affect to despise. I have friends who have suffered terribly at the hands of the so-called fabulous care in Germany and France and Spain.
Do my anecdotes have precedence over everyone else’s in establishing a general truth? No. The NHS is pretty good and I am thankful for it for the sake of others in my family. The NHS can be better, the standard of care can be better (everywhere and always). It is NOT third world care….. that’s self-indulgent nonsense from, I suspect, people who have never in their pampered, protected lives actually seen Third World care. And certainly never had to live their whole lives in it’s shadow.
I have chatted on more than one occasion with our Landlady on the subject of how each NHS (and indeed Private) patient has an absolute right to receive copies of clinical letters written about him/her following an appointment with a GP, a Consultant or a Consultant Surgeon. Very few people realise this and hospitals and doctors’ surgeries can be very awkward if you ask for copies of letter sent between clinical staff, but they shouldn’t be; please exercise your right and make sure that you ask to be included in the ‘carbon copy’ list for all your medical correspondence and if you have trouble, here’s a nice PDF which puts the guidelines in fairly obvious terms – print it off if you have any trouble. I believe it is exactly the same for your GP and any enormous hospital you may have to attend. It’s your right to know and they shouldn’t make a fuss.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/documents/digitalasset/dh_4086054.pdf
{ 1 trackback }