Good afternoon everyone,
As an infrequent, though nonetheless grateful, recipient of the NHS services, I'm looking to connect with others, to share our respective experiences and to discuss the direction and future of the NHS.
I look forward to meeting one and all.
The ability to reply to this post has been turned off.
I have had, over the last 59 year, extremely good service from the NHS from day one, being born with asthma. I now have endstage kidney disease.
Sadly, because of serious illness meaning frequent visits to A&E I get angry with the misuse of the health services. People dont seem to understand the phrase ‘Medical Priority’ and get pissed off having to wait four or more hours in A&E. The other peeve of mine is the inappropriate use of ambulances. If people can get to A&E under their own steam they will be seen in the same time scale as all other ambulatory non-emergency patients. Arriving by ambulance does not guarantee fast tracking through the system unless your condition is life threatening.
There are pathwayway to good care in the NHS. Those pathways are:
1. Ring your GP or out of hours for advice if you are not feeling well or see your local pharmacist
2. If you feel you’re case may be more urgent ring 111. They will triage you by phone and discuss whether an ambulance is needed or will arrange for your GP to telephone or call you
3. Call 999 immediately if the situation is life threatening. Trauma, loss of blood, head injury, stabbing, heart attack etc
I have seen people blowing up at hard pressed staff because they see A&E as the easy option when, for a lot of things, a simple visit to a pharmacist or telephone call to a duty doc at the surgery can offer assurance and possible ways forward.
The NHS is a very precious thing that some politicaly sharks would like to sell off for the highest price. We have some of the best hospitals, doctors and nurses in the world. When criticising the NHS Just bear in mind that less than 170 years ago medicine was quackery, admission to hospital difficult, no A&E, no free drugs and, until Anesthectics, surgery was butchery.
I apologise for spelling/grammer mistakes as I’m dyslexic
Although I have had good service from the NHS in the sense that they have used what they have available, I think the NHS for sensitive people like me is useless. They just give more and more drugs that damage the body over time to the point that no-one really knows what drug is causing what.
Having nearly died when I was on 8 prescription drugs and found the NHS useless when I was very ill, I now take no drugs and use totally diet and alternative ways of managing my health.
Complementary practitioners and homeopathy saved my life. Doctors at the Bristol NHS hospital knew far more than any doctor I had seen, although I will say the GP's who referred me were astute enough to know that I was too sensitive for any more drugs.
Diet/good food is so important and if we all had access to good food we would not need to be spending so much on the NHS.
It is good in emergencies, however, but other than that I feel totally isolated from the service because so many nurses and doctors know so little about the healing of the whole body and just treat symptoms of one part or another believing it functions separately.
With more and more people becoming sensitive and developing inflammation and immune system over load, the service needs to change considerably in order to help such people.
The letter to the Times states ' \"business as usual won't do\", 
This would not be tolerated in most of the countries I have lived in