Comments on: THE HOSPITAL: Channel 4 Tuesday 7 April 9PM

By: Terry Galligan

Terry Galligan — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:20:50 +0000

Not a single person did I see being released from a Concentration Camp who was not as thin as a rake. And it had nothing at all to do with Thyroid function. Faulty Genes. Family History. It had everything to do with starvation and exercise. I am sick and tired of the moaner’s who blame everyone and everything but themselves.

By: alison

alison — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:31:55 +0000

My i can not stop myself from being so angry with tonights programme about being overweight for crying out loud im a size 6 to 8 eat 7 chocolate bars per day, 4 square meals, crisps, chocolate and a whole pack of b****y busquits in one sitting yet if i do not eat this amount per day i loose weight feel ill.do not say eat the good stuff i eat fruit veg and salads but to say you are what you eat upsets me a great deal my mum is a size 22 yet she eats a quarter of what i eat and walks alot, i do no exercise im proberly the laziest person i know i would love to be a size 10 and be healthy but my own doctor looks at me like im mad as im 32 and thin he can not see anything wrong WHAT ABOUT HIGH COLESTOROL OH YES HOME TEST CONFIRMED HIGH OH DEAR NOT ALL FAT PEOPLE ARE UNHEALTHY so please can you stop the stupid comment of you are what you eat ect if i could get help i would dam well take it because it does upset me when i go out order a steak my mum orders salad and they give my dam steak to her then watch in disbelief that i eat the lot i have even stopped going to the public toilets and holding it in as most look at you as to say ha see she is going to sick that up told you she could not eat that. where the hell is the help for the thin wanting to put on weight.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:42:09 +0000

I disagree with the people who are championing having empathy for these people. If we don’t start to judge people by how they live their lives then the situation will never get better. It is fair enough to say that more money should be invested in educating these people in the first place on how not to destroy their lives but I don’t think they deserve to be treated the same as sober patients in hospital. Most of them could have just gone home and slept it off anyway.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:12:08 +0000

I absolutely agree with Cathy. A cornerstone of the NHS is to treat people regardless of age, gender, race and indeed situation, even if their plight is totally self-inflicted. It is not a medical professional’s job to moralise, it is their job to treat a patient to the best of their ability. Rolling ones eyes because an 18 year old girl is on anti-depressants and has not eaten all day sets us back light years. Where is her empathy? I can’t help thinking this whole attitude of ‘teenagers these days’ is a) misguided and b) destructive, only serving towards alienating teenagers further.

By: Anna

Anna — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:03:11 +0000

Interesting comments. I was shocked to see a medication error resulting in a young girl having a cardiac arrest. I think it was brave to show (and right), I think if more errors were shown like this, as they are, in life threatening conditions, the public may realise that most NHS workers are trying to help and do their best.

By: laura

laura — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:08:28 +0000

Sorry but The Hospital missed out drunken university students, not to mention the drunken and often violent fall out of their respective club members nights: rugby club, horse club, rowing, cycling, motor cycling, who rock up at the hospital I work in as a nurse more often than I care to say. Their manners, I can assure you, are not great! The big increase at A&E we have noticed is from gym injuries and home gym equipment which is also self inflicted and at the tax payer’s expense. I had the impression this programme was really biased against young white working class people in particular.

By: scot

scot — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:02:29 +0000

Giles,

The programme highlighted the impact that a section of society has on NHS life; one that people outside of the profession rarely see. Cath was commenting on this impact and making rational statements about people’s behaviour. At no time did she come across as someone who was picking and choosing when to deliver health care.

No one working in the NHS is a saint. All people and resources have limits. All Cath was saying was that there are people in society that no longer operate within normal limits of behaviour. These people have no conception of contrition, of courtesy or decent societal values.

If someone does drink drive and almost kill both themself and another passenger of course they should be treated. But it’s entirely reasonable to understand that they will elicit less symptathy than someone who is ill through sheer misfortune.

Society needs to start being LESS tolerant of these individuals, not more; if we do not do something soon the problem will be get significantly worse. If someone drink drives, why shouldnt they pay for the cost of their health care when they are sentenced by the courts. If someone commits GBH on another person why shouldnt they pay for their subsequent NHS treatment.

The NHS receives the largest amount of funding in its history and yet resources & staff are still stretched to their limits.

If we can change societal values and hence the behaviour of this underclass, we can reduce drink related accidents and violence. This will benefit everyone and make for a more peaceful society. Furthermore, for every drink related incident that is avoided, we will have more resources for more deserving cases. Every time in the future NICE is vilified for lack of funding for a new drug remember how much money is wasted each year in A&E through self inflicted drunken incidents.

By: Giles

Giles — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:03:39 +0000

Caroline, there is no need to pay. As a consultant psychiatrist I have worked frontline in the NHS for the last 15 years and have done my time in A&E. I am simply disappointed that someone who has chosen to work in a particular speciality and with a particular client group should feel the need to publicly express their utter contempt for them.
The NHS was not created so that doctors could receive gratitude from the general public, but to give basic care to those at need, however they came to need it. The fact that she says she will treat all people the same conflicts with the views she is all too happy to express, that some people deserve more sympathy than others. It is inevitable that these views will spill out into her day to day care. I personally would not want one of my relatives to be on the receiving end when she pronounces judgement.

By: Caroline

Caroline — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:10:20 +0000

If anything the A&E Consultant should be applauded for giving a realistic insight into the frustration that must be felt by all front line staff who work within the NHS. Lets face it, this society has gone to pot and I felt angry that the majority of resources in both A&E departments were spent catering for ungrateful rat-arsed individuals who seemed partially culpable for their own injuries. It’s not to say they shouldn’t be treated, and as far as I recall that’s not what the A&E Consultant was saying either. I’d pay tickets to see the likes of Cath and Giles work under such intense pressure and then have bucket fulls of sympathy for a young man whose driven his car at 100 miles an hour into a wall after downing 12 pints. The fact his best friend was in the passenger seat and nearly died didn’t seem as bigger detail to him as loosing his license.

The Consultant wasn’t saying she would not give these people the best care possible, but that is was frustrating over-stretched resources were being redistributed to care for them. The fact that nurses and doctors are physically and verbally abused on a regular basis throughout the course of their shifts, is that acceptable? Or do front line staff now not have the right to voice their concerns for fear of offending the likes of Cath and Giles or coming across as unprofessional?

By: Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:30:16 +0000

Its a little depressing that someone brave enough to name our societies problems on TV gets attacked for being ‘judgemental’.

She articulated these issues in what I thought was a very fair and balanced way, but the sad truth of the programme is that it only looks at one set of symptoms.

A&E staff aren’t the only people who have to ‘pick up the pieces of a self destructible society’. Talk to school teachers, social services workers, benefit officers, child therapists…they will all have similar stories to tell. They will all have shared the frustration of that A&E Consultant of having to deal with the problems of society that they have no power to solve.

We have a growing problem of an uneducated, dysfunctional lower-class, and a middle-class too removed to have any good understanding of the issues.