1934 replies to this topic

[Matt R.]

It’s the opposite for me. My dad spent a lot of time in the hallway at hospitals…

In vic? Both my parents were heavy smokers and paid for it. Care was readily available, although ultimately ineffective.

[AllseeingEye]

Funny, didn’t seem like any crisis until recently. Always had a family dr, always had access to hospital care, never heard about 18 hour waits in the er around the dinner table.

 

Exactly! Growing up in the 60's no one ever complained about an inability to see a GP or to find one taking on new patients in the event "yours" retired or moved on, etc. When our family doctor - the only one I'd ever had since infancy - finally retired when I was about 35, my parent's GP took me on immediately and remains my doctor to this day. I literally had zero gap between GP's. See how that goes in 2022......

 

Wait times? In Emerg? At RJH? Weren't barely such a thang pardner - and certainly not to the awful extent they are today. One hour would have been considered a very big deal back then, never mind sitting on your increasingly numb butt for a half a day.

 

My mother was the senior OR surgical nurse ("hearts and brains" as she referred to it) until 1996 at RJH, and not once did she ever speak to gross wait times, shortages of critical staff such as doctors and experienced nursing staff especially. The one item of concern I do recall her speaking to, prior to her retirement and naturally well before the massive RJH upgrade of a few years ago, was certain aging equipment particularly in the imaging department and in some of the surgical operating theatres, but that's it. At that time no one, including those on the front lines, spoke in terms of a 'crisis', that is entirely a creature of the last 15-20 years.

[aastra]

In the UK it seems to be standard operating procedure for the National Health Service to be facing "the worst crisis in its history".

 

 

Daily Colonist
November 28, 1975

Britain's doctors refuse overtime

Hospital interns refused to work overtime Thursday, forcing Britain's government-operated hospitals to limit treatment to seriously ill patients. Several said they would have to shut down.

The decision by 19,000 young doctors to limit their work week to 40 hours on a shift system in support of demands for higher overtime pay brought the National Health Service the worst crisis in its 27-year history.

At least five hospitals prepared to close down and transfer patients to other hospitals.

The British Medical Association, representing the doctors, drew up a code of emergencies for the guidance of hospital medical staff.

The association said an acute appendix, a broken limb, cancer cases, obstetrics and the care of children will all come in the emergency category.

The nation's embattled health care service faces another body blow Monday when 11,000 hospital specialists say they will begin treating only emergency cases.

 

--
 

 

December 15, 2005

NHS in crisis
Build a national fightback

Another week goes by and another set of revelations about the financial crisis in the NHS.

This time The Observer quotes a leaked email from the Department of Health telling officials to ignore ministers’ promises on spending.

And it threatens staff with disciplinary action if they don’t freeze new investment.

This latest edict may mean the end of important public health measures like a national programme for bowel cancer screening.

Health trusts all over the country are trying to balance their books by cutting or closing down facilities altogether.

So-called ‘routine’ operations are being cancelled, leaving patients in pain.

Government targets and funding through ‘payment by results’ have thrown trusts into crisis.

"It’s like being in the middle of a big experiment, and no one seems to know whether our trust will do well or badly. We’re caught up in the
middle of it all," commented one senior hospital doctor.

But the real crisis is of the government’s own making. New Labour have never allocated enough resources to make up for the years of cutting and neglect the NHS had to endure under the Tories.

And the headlong rush to privatise everything is rapidly ruining what is left.

--

 

 

December 1, 2017

This Crisis Is The Worst In NHS History - Our Health Service Is At Risk Of Irreparable Damage
by Dr. Mona Kamal

It has felt that the last six years have seen the NHS in perpetual crisis but there is now a real sense that the service is being irreversibly damaged, most importantly the impact on our patients is becoming painfully clear. As healthcare workers our priority is the patients we serve and we must ensure it is their care and their priorities that directs how the service is run, but this is not just a fight that concerns NHS staff. The NHS belongs to us all and we all have a responsibility to safeguard it.

The full scale of the crisis is now undeniable - we are witnessing record waiting times, rationing (or in some cases complete withdrawal of services) and levels of understaffing which has endangered patient care. In December last year A&E departments had to close their doors to patients 140 times. During last week alone, the number of patients exceeding the maximum four-hour A&E wait rose by 28% on the same period last year and an additional 485 patients waited longer than 12 hours to be seen. The tragic human consequences of this crisis are also coming to light with reports of patients dying in hospital corridors due to chronic bed shortages and understaffing. The situation is now so dangerous for our patients that the Red Cross is calling it a humanitarian crisis.

 

--

 

 

The Guardian
September 11, 2018

NHS suffering worst ever staff and cash crisis, figures show
Number of vacancies at record high in England as underlying deficit of £4.3bn revealed

The NHS’s staffing and financial problems are the worst they have ever been, official health service figures show.

The number of vacancies across the NHS in England has hit a record high while NHS bosses have disclosed for the first time the service’s underlying deficit built up over recent years – £4.3bn.

At the end of June the health service had 107,743 unfilled posts, up 9,268 from the 98,475 total seen just three months earlier, NHS Improvement said in its latest quarterly report on the service’s performance.

The regulator warned that the NHS’s struggles to recruit and retain staff were so difficult that vacancies would become even more common during the rest of 2018-19.

The NHS was short of 41,722 nurses – 11.8% of the entire nursing workforce. That is the highest number yet and a big rise on the 35,794 vacancies seen at the end of March.

Similarly, there were 11,576 vacancies for doctors across all types of NHS services inside and outside of hospitals. That was again a record and a significant increase on the 9,982 posts that were vacant three months before. Across England, 9.3% of posts were vacant.

Experts warned that NHS understaffing was so widespread that it was becoming a “national emergency”.

Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank, said: "After a punishing summer of heatwaves and ever-increasing demands on services, today’s report shows that the NHS is heading for another tough winter."

‘Widespread and growing nursing shortages now risk becoming a national emergency and are symptomatic of a long-term failure in workforce planning, which has been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit and short-sighted immigration policies.”

 

--

 

 

BBC News
January 8, 2022

Is this NHS crisis really worse than ones before?

The headlines were terrifying. Hospitals facing intolerable pressures with patients left dying in corridors, the BBC reported.

This is not now though. It was the winter of 2017-18 - the last bad flu season...

And that was not even a one-off. In January 2016 hospitals were cancelling routine operations, telling patients to stay away from A&E if they could, and emergency treatment areas were being set up outside some units - just as they are now.

The truth is the past decade has been a story of lengthening waits and declining performance.

This should not come as a surprise, as NHS spending has been squeezed.

The financial crash of 2008 meant all the main political parties were signed up to the idea that spending had to be curtailed.

But it is also fair to say this does not represent the collapse of the NHS, despite all the headlines.

The truth is the health service will not suddenly become overwhelmed. Instead, what is happening is that care is deteriorating bit by bit.

The heart attack patients are waiting longer for an ambulance, more elderly patients are spending nights on a trolley in A&E and growing numbers of people are waiting for hip and knee replacements.

The challenges are, of course, different from winters past. It is a pandemic after all.

...the level of staff absence from Covid is bringing another added complexity - it is nearly twice what you would expect - and explains why the army has had to be brought in. (aastra says: Unless you're an informed, intelligent, and intellectually honest person, in which case it's right about where you would expect it to be)

And the sheer numbers coming in are a problem. Traditionally winter would see around 1,000 admissions a day for all types of respiratory infections.

Currently the NHS is seeing more than double that for Covid alone - although a chunk admittedly are people who are ill with something else, such as broken arms, strokes and cancer for example, and may well have come in anyway. (aastra says: People who have serious medical issues may have come in anyway. Good point.)

So what can we conclude? The challenges are certainly worse and that is translating into poorer quality services.

But this is not the first year care has been compromised.

 

[Nparker]

Like every other crisis, the urgency of the health care crisis is entirely dependent on its political efficacy to either build up or tear down those in power or their opposition.

[Midnightly]

there has always been some push and pull with healthcare.. it's cutbacks, then more funding flowing in, waitlists but not excessive waiting..most people who wanted a family doctor could find one... nothing was quick with the healthcare system but things were done within a reasonable amount of time for the most part.. 

 

unlike the situation we are in now with multi year wait lists, having to wait 6mths+ for a MRI or CT scan, unable to find a family doctor, ER's being shut down due to lack of staff, people waiting 10+hrs at emerg just to be seen (even children are having multi hour waits when they'd often get a priority) we have people in so much pain they are unable to walk on waitlists for knee and hip surgeries they toss pain killers at them and send them home and wonder why people are getting addicted.. imagine living in northern BC and they have to send you 2-3 towns over to get a surgery done because the surgeon is currently not in town (these are towns with 10k+ people in them).. and lets not forget about those reports of people who have significant health issues who have decided they would rather have assisted dying because they can't get proper treatment from the healthcare system

 

sadly so much of what turns up in the ER could be solved if people had access to a family doctor, things can be caught much sooner..

[dasmo]

They stopped surgeries for two years and fired thousands of seasoned healthcare workers. They continue to keep them from working. In fact Bill 36 seeks to expand their control and the ability to mandate vaccines into the private healthcare sphere too. It’s logical it would be worse than ever especially since the system was already over capacity for 20 years already as ASE pointed out.
But hey! Mandatory vaccines for chiropractors is in the works!

[aastra]

The 1960s/1970s crisis narratives re: Victoria's hospitals and the downtown hospital in particular were all part of the lead-up to the construction of the new suburban hospital. By the way, did we all know the CoV was extremely keen on keeping the downtown hospital? Moving everything to the 'burbs was a major controversy at the time.

 

 

Daily Colonist
November 21, 1976

Jubilee surgery delayed
Extended care beds needed - MD

A shortage of extended-care beds in the Capital Region District is responsible for some surgery being cancelled at Royal Jubilee Hospital, says... the hospital's executive director.

Serious overcrowding in the 950-bed hospital was responsible for some operations being cancelled last week and the same situation is likely to continue for some time...

The hospital continues to be jammed with patients, and those not requiring surgery are occupying beds that otherwise would be used by elective surgery patients.

"The number of operations cancelled has varied from day to day,"

...although time was available in the operating rooms, there was no place to put patients before and after surgery.

The number of beds "blocked" by patients who need another level of care was the basis of the problem facing the hospital administration...

About 700 of the 950 beds are for acute-care patients. Ninety-four of those 700 beds Friday were occupied by patients not needing that level of care but with nowhere else to go to receive the lesser care they require...

"We desperately need additional extended care beds in the community in order to solve our crisis situation," he said.

At one point last week the hospital had 42 extra beds set up in corridors to accommodate patients.

"...we have had to cancel several operations because of the overcrowding."

Between 50 and 60 operations a day normally are performed at the hospital, but in the last few days this has been reduced by 10 or 12 on days when beds have not been available.

 

--

 

 

Daily Colonist
October 4, 1977

It's not over-doctoring, it's just lack of space

The lack of long-term care facilities is still the major cause of overcrowding in Victoria's two acute-care hospitals, and it means compromises must sometimes be made in emergency care, the medical director of Victoria General Hospital said Monday.

Last week, a sudden increase in the number of emergency cases forced both Victoria General and Royal Jubilee to find room for patients wherever possible.

At Royal Jubilee... patients were put in the treatment rooms, siderooms, and eventually even in the hospital corridors.

"It's a dreadful thing for a patient to be in a corridor, but we had 30 more patients than we had room to accommodate them."

...with all the regular beds occupied, patients were being left in the emergency room.

"That compromises the ability of the staff in the emergency department to care for other patients who might come in,"

"If the department is busy nursing patients in the beds, they may not be able to deal with an emergency situation such as a cardiac arrest that comes in the door, as quickly as they could otherwise."

"It's inevitable that a cyclical increase in the number of emergency cases will result in overcrowding when the hospital's medical and surgical beds are 95 to 103 per cent occupied."

Both Royal Jubilee and Victoria General appeared to be back to normal, meaning close to 100 per cent occupancy, on Monday.

...when the hospital is short of beds, new admissions are scrutinized very closely by the hospital, and the staff also checks the charts of patients already in the hospital to see if they can be discharged.

Many patients... do not need the services of an acute-care hospital but continue to occupy precious beds because there is nowhere else in the region to put them.

If there were adequate long-term care facilities in the region, the acute-care hospitals could deal with routine fluctuations in the demand for beds without being regularly forced into a crisis...

 

[aastra]

I can't find the full text but here are two headlines from the summer of 1985 (conclusion: that new suburban hospital didn't remedy the crisis):

 

 

July 9, 1985
Times-Colonist

Surgery cut as RJH battles "horrendous" overcrowding

 

--

 

 

June 22, 1985
Times-Colonist

RJH overcrowding "invites disaster"

Edited by aastra, 18 November 2022 - 10:57 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Birth certificate contradicts Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's account of her father's parentage and ancestry

 

https://www.cbc.ca/n...ntage-1.6657129

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 22 November 2022 - 03:38 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Four — perhaps even five — Canadian military veterans were given the option of medically-assisted death (MAID) by a now-suspended Veterans Affairs Canada caseworker, the country's veterans minister told a House of Commons committee late Thursday.

Lawrence MacAulay said the matter is now being turned over to the RCMP for investigation and his department's internal review is ongoing.

"We expect all Veterans Affairs candidate employees to interact with veterans with care, compassion and respect and the actions of this one employee is simply disgusting," MacAulay told the veterans affairs committee. "And I condemn this behaviour in the strongest terms."

https://www.cbc.ca/n...ation-1.6663885

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 25 November 2022 - 01:39 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

No different than this ghoul they lives amongst us. And kills lots of us.




Writing about her first assisted death, Green says: “Harvey isn’t just my first assisted death. He is the first MAID death to proceed on Vancouver Island and among the first in all of Canada. I am aware I need to get this right — for myself, for the MAID program, but most importantly, for Harvey.”

At that time, Green was one of three providers in Victoria and five on the Island. Green took to ferries, propeller planes, highways and water taxis to assist patients across the Island and the province.

https://www.timescol...d-dying-5202287

In the first four months of MAID, Island Heath was averaging six assisted deaths a month. In the first year, the Island was providing three times more than the national average.






She’s made it her mission to kill more people than any other doctor in Canada.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 25 November 2022 - 01:43 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Canadian Company Uses Suicide To Sell Products

 

https://youtu.be/Q-VB3opfTfQ

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 29 November 2022 - 04:37 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Quebec-based retailer Simons made a conscious move last month as part of a new video titled “Inspiration.” Everything is beauty.

The video revolves around and is narrated by Jennyfer Hatch from BC.

The 37-year-old died on October 23, electing to receive medical assistance while dying (MAID) after dealing with complications and chronic pain related to her diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a group of inherited disorders that cause the Affect connective tissue that supports many parts of the body.

In the video, available on Simons’ shopping site, viewers get a glimpse of some moments from Hatchs last month and hear her share her thoughts on life, death and her quest to spend her final days “with beauty, with nature and with connection”.


https://canadatoday....website-141176/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 29 November 2022 - 04:42 PM.

[Mike K.]

a group of inherited disorders that cause the Affect connective tissue that supports many parts of the body.

Huh?

[North Shore]

No different than this ghoul they lives amongst us. And kills lots of us.

She’s made it her mission to kill more people than any other doctor in Canada.

 

Pretty harsh judgement considering that the majority ( >65%) of "those she helps have terminal cancer."  

 

My father died from throat cancer: slowly wasting away - starving, actually, because it was too painful to swallow food - over two years.  After his 4th round of chemo, he was given a large bottle of morphine liquid for the pain.  I remember him asking me whether he should just take the whole lot in one go, and slowly drift off.  Of course, I argued against it, and watched him further waste away in pain for another few months.  Now, I'm not so sure that I did my dad any favours by urging him to not take the overdose.   

 

If *you* don't want MAID, then don't choose it - but calling people who offer it 'ghouls' cheapens their service, and increases the suffering of those who opt for it.

[Victoria Watcher]

The reason this ghoul travels extensively to kill people is because the local or the family doctors refuse to do it. The doctors that best know the patient. So she swoops in, quickly introduces herself, and kills the patient.

Now, do you accept that at some time, likely already, someone will be killed, and the family will look back on that and say it was a mistake? It’s unfortunately an irreversible mistake.

There is a saying in legal circles that goes along the lines of “better 99 guilty men are acquitted than one innocent man convicted”. I think that can be modified for MAiD. Better 99 suffering patients be spared a premature death than one patient mistakenly diagnosed for MAiD.

And Canada’s ever-expanding death industry means many more - including minors - will get caught up in the trend of killing themselves.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 30 November 2022 - 11:46 PM.

[Nparker]

99 suffer so one can live? That's just cruel.

[Victoria Watcher]

Canadian parents have asked for medically assisted death for babies, doctors say

Doctors say explicit requests for MAID have come from parents involving very young children. Should it ever be granted?

https://nationalpost...24acf391aa/amp/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 30 November 2022 - 11:47 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Perspective: Inside the world of Canada’s assisted suicide — for ‘mature minors’

Canada’s already controversial euthanasia laws could expand to include children who qualify. This policy will nurture the country’s growing culture of death

https://www.deseret....dying?_amp=true

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 30 November 2022 - 11:48 PM.

[Nparker]

That depends entirely on the circumstances of the child's condition.