alistair Feel for you man and its an understandable frustration as you have to manage the emotions of the other half and all the questions revolve around why?

My other half hasn’t seen her mum in almost two years now and during the earlier days, she was extremely anxious about when she would get back to see her. Especially seeing as she somehow contracted Glandular Fever! The wife is now at the stage where we’ll only go to the US once the numbers start to stabilise and hopefully, the vaccine has bought a decent amount of time in the interim.

    I have to have these conversations quite regularly. Only yesterday we postponed a cancer operation for somebody who needed an ICU bed post-operatively and we could not provide it. Part of the reason there was no bed is because we had been up at 2 am doing another operation on an emergency patient that needed an ICU bed.

    There is a huge backlog of patients. Some of them quite poorly. ICU staff are knackered. People who normally work in theatres such as scrub nurses and anaesthetic nurses and anaesthetists have all been working in ICU (ours has doubled in size and the ‘cold’ ICU is actually situated in a theatre recovery area).

    When this starts to get better you can;t ask all the people who have been putting in a massive shift on ICU to suddenly start back in theatres at full gas to deal with the backlog.

    You can’t use the private sector for a lot of the cases becuase they are too sick. We do hip and knee replacements on some quite ill patients now and most of the private sector does not have good out of hours cover or any critical care facilities.

    I am working nights and long days, backfilling the junior doctors from the anaesthetic rota that are on ICU.

    The staff are generally knackered. It’s not that they do not want to do the other work, but there is just too much of it and not the support or physical space to do it.

      Sounds like the only answer to to dismantle and flog the NHS and get a private/proper company in to get it all guns blazing.

      Once a tranz, always a tranz

      benson
      Thanks for explaining the why Benson.

      It’s not about what’s acceptable but what’s possible in the circumstances.

      I had a bit of a chat with my GP yesterday, basically thanking him and the team for supporting ’routine checks etc and he was expressing frustration that they wish they could do more. And he acknowledged that he’s not even at the sharp end like you.

          Is this to do with you shifting some of the ole timber MC?

            Happy to confirm that MC is an absolute clown from a message board perspective.

            • -si- replied to this.

              Smallman1 Happy to confirm that MC is an absolute clown from a message board perspective.

              Ed, i think i know what’s wrong with your neck, mate. Like Pinocchio’s nose when he tells lies, your neck stretches out a bit further every single time you post this sort of shizzle without the slightest hint of irony!

                  Lol. A believable theory actually.

                  -si- Ed, i think i know what’s wrong with your neck, mate. Like Pinocchio’s nose when he tells lies, your neck stretches out a bit further every single time you post this sort of shizzle without the slightest hint of irony!

                  You carry on like this and you might find yourself at the TT Si!

                    Martin Clunes is back on ITV with a new series of Doc Bantin

                      -si- Have I told everyone my Martin Clunes on pingers story?

                        Think you have Dan but lets hear it again!

                        Martin Clunes has the face for ol’ gurners. Just as Men Behaving Badly was about to hit the screens he was a bit part actor so he was known but not yet massive. Anyways, I’m at Spirit at the old SW1 Club (which went on to become London’s Pacha) for a bit of pre cheese Judge Jules, Harvey, Roy the Roach etc. It was the days where you’d have 4 different types of DJ on the same bill.

                        Anyway, I shared my bottle of water (as you did back then), and a rave conversation), with a dribbling wreck that was Martin Clunes. Great story, fun times.

                        Christ the thought of Martin Clunes gurning