Another NHS waste of money rant
In my experience of the NHS the front line service is excellent, but the admin around it is shockingly awful with millions wasted. But todays experience at local GP practice was astounding.
Background: Had my early 40's NHS healthcheck in July. Phone call a week later, cholesterol is a little high but not bad. You need to come in and see the Nurse for a special 20 minute appointment and we don't have many of those, usual slots are 10 minutes (can't have 2 back to back 10mins that wouldn't' work apparently).
So fast forward to today when the 20 minute slot happened (had to cancel one in the intervening time because wife was giving birth).
Started badly, when Nurse was 20 minutes late, but not because lots of appointments running late giving good patient care, no because they were having a staff nurse meeting! Well stop your f'ing meeting and see the patients that are waiting!
Then appointment was all of 30 seconds long. "Cut fat off your meat (presuming we're all still living in the 50's with pork chops, steak etc every night), try to avoid too many pre-pack meals and get some exercise regularly." End of conversation.
Heart disease/Heart Attacks are one of the main causes of death in Middle aged White Males like me, and if that's the quality of advice from a "specially trained Cholesterol nurse" then no wonder. I asked how about the 6 dietary steps on the heart uk website - she can't give advice on what foods to eat apparently. So nothing about Benecol (can't mention brand names apparently, but Branded expensive drugs are ok to dish out to other patients?), nothing about 25g of nuts a day, nothing about reducing dairy and replacing with soy based, nothing about more oats, nothing about more fish etc etc. Didn't explain difference between good and bad cholesterol which I had already researched.
So that was a pointless 2 hours out the office having cleared my diary. Could have put that advice in a letter or even email and saved everyone time and money.