If you were stuck in the waiting room at the fictional Pittsburgh trauma medical center (PTMC) – and, as is the case with most real emergency rooms, to be at “the Pitt” almost certainly means waiting for hours (unless you’re imminently dying, but even then …) – you would at least have a lot to read. Paperwork and entry forms, for one. Signs warning that “aggressive behavior will not be tolerated”, a response to the real uptick in violence against healthcare workers.
Except no US medical drama would have real NHS waiting times as a plot point. No American would possibly believe such a stretching of what could possibly be true.
Oh I dunno. We could have a sci fi epic with a time traveller moving seamlessly between appointments.
It could have Kathy Bates as the doctor’s receptionist and Sally Hawkins as the nice but useless NHS patient liaison manager.
Carry On Doctor Who?
I was told to report to A&E immediately – early evening, January 2nd. It was the quietest I’ve ever seen it.
Moreover thrice this week we’ve been tootling about by car. Roads quiet, tons of parking spaces. Again, where is everyone?
Gone skiing? How do they possibly do it, post Brexit? I mean, the Continent is now completely cut off, isn’t it? It must make Crouch Enders most perplexed.
The doctors have all gone skiing; I’m not sure the patients have.
As a long term user of the NHS for the last 40 years, I can tell you that no TV company would commission a 26 part programme about waiting times in the NHS. 26 two hour shows about a bloke sitting in a chair waiting for a doctor would have no commercial value whatsoever. Even the Boring Black Broadcasting Corporation wouldn’t make it because it might damage the reputation of “The World’s Finest Health Service”, although given the UK’s current reputation as an Islamo-Marxist basket case, it probably wouldn’t matter. Although the amazing waiting times in hospital and the queue to even get there don’t apply to “undocumented” arrivals. Mind you, some arrivals, even well documented ones, aren’t allowed in the country if they’ve shown a disinclination to be raped by Muslims…
. 26 two hour shows about a bloke sitting in a chair waiting for a doctor would have no commercial value whatsoever.
It’d made a great film for Warhol or that Hungarian director who died recently.
We could have a “24” style show, clipping between people waiting in beds, chairs and ambulances to be seen. Might be a teensy challenge to maintain the drama levels, but my cousin, who spent six hours in an ambulance outside a hospital in Brum with a life-threatening bowel problem, assures me that waiting can feel quite dramatic in real life…
Any UK NHS drama would inevitably be propaganda, with cartoon villain white male politicians, administrators and private surgeons and saintly multi-ethnic/gender medical staff, all working terribly hard while on the edge of starvation. Same for the patients, a United Colours of Benetton smorgasbord of decent folk rescued by Our NHS, spoiled only by a few racist gammons clogging up the system.
From a reader for whom the comments system doesn’t seem to be working:
“A&E used to be for serious stuff.
Once upon a time you could turn up at the GP without an appointment, sit and wait for a bit, and then be seen. This was the same “free at the point of use” NHS that lacked a price system to regulate demand.
Now, you can’t, so if you want or need “free at the point of use” medical attention in the very near future, your only recourse is A&E. Turn up there and apart from those at death’s door, who are triaged and seen quickly, everyone else sitting around has ailments they would have gone to the GP with.
Some of these can be apparently silly. A few weeks ago I had a hangnail which became infected. I went to the GP. “Fuck off” said the receptionist, in so many words, so I went to A&E and was seen in a sprightly three hours, where the boil was lanced by a nurse and I was sent away with antibiotics. When I were a lad that would all have been done by the GP’s practice nurse.”
Round here we have minor injuries clinics. When I managed to get serious gash near my elbow and went to A&E they despatched to the minor injuries clinic in Weymouth and they looked after me after that for follow up treatment. Far easier than A&E.
My mother was reminiscing about having her tonsils and appendix out as child, the ops carried out in the local cottage hospital by her GP who was also a surgeon. Even when I was a child 30+ after that, home visits were the norm. Now, my parents have to jump through hoops to get an appointment and the chance of seeing the same doctor twice in a row is miniscule. Mind you, I will say the practice nurse is more use than many of the doctors.
Round our part the only way to get a GP appt is via a website called Anima, which asks a load of questions that take forever to answer, and then says ‘go to A&E, we won’t send this to the GP’. So to get a GP appointment one has to divine the wording that will generate such. Having said that, I went into the GP surgery to collect some prescribed drugs, and then asked them for a PSA blood test. That was done 2 days later.
This particular story is a good illustration of how dependent people have become on the State. If I was suffering that ailment, I doubt I’d even consider the GP route let alone A&E. I’d just sterilise & needle in a lighter flame & lance the bloody thing. Then douse the result with anti-septic. Done it umpteen times for various injuries etc. Just sort it out. Are people really this helpless? Fucking pathetic!
It’s why GP waiting rooms & A&E’s are so inundated. Inadequate people welcoming minor ailments as excuses for reassurance in their pathetic lives by Mummy .The inevitable outcome of the Welfare State.
Standard procedure “back in the day”. Done without going to parent if one could find a needle around the house.
…as is the case with most real emergency rooms, to be at “the Pitt” almost certainly means waiting for hours (unless you’re imminently dying, but even then …)…
TBH sounds like a typical visit to A&E. Spooky…
…a perilously tenuous system where individual heroism and systemic cruelty exist side by side…
Yup, that’s ARE NHS
So, the Grauniad is using a fictional TV drama to evaluate the US healthcare system?
FWIW, my partner & I, living in a medium-sized US city, had to use the emergency room twice in the past year. Partner was in significant pain, and we were there during non-peak hours. Had to wait an hour or two for treatment, but they checked immediately to make sure there was nothing life-threatening. The second trip required emergency surgery.
Once admitted for treatment we were quite impressed with the level of care and professionalism. And, contrary to what you probably expect, our share of the costs was quite reasonable.
My better half had to queue at A&E in order to get someone to issue a prescription for a pack of specific blood thinning injections because our GP said it was beyond his authority. Half a day lost.
In 2020, when to go to hospital was to risk a deadly infection pandemic, 40,000 people went to A&E to complain about a tickly cough.