Share review of Diana Princess of Wales Hospital

Diana Princess of Wales Hospital 2021-06-10 Person 3 5 0

The NHS system for AF is a paupers queue for available healthcare. Queues are so vast that best option procedures become ineffectual by the time the patient deteriorates in the months awaiting their turn to receive relevant consideration. No care plan accommodates such delays. Professionals procrastinate repeatedly due knowing this endemic feature governs available options & patients are left to fight for themselves, acquiring necessary expertise & information by chance; about their own condition even as it worsens on the slippery slope of delayed feedback & how much poorer their health is becoming due the systemic delays. It feels like a game of one-upmanship with your own life. You will be told an expert is your next step contact, totally unaware this is a 9 month waiting list. Instead of timely treatment, you thereby flounder for months in worsening health with no idea how to self monitor or what to do with yourself. Clear , precise and comprehensive information that consultants know to be facts are not shared soon enough, in ways that help a patient know their status, self help strategies & to know what solutions are possible or that are not possible as a daily reality. This is very bad.

One major element of AF is that even many staff - in every department- think finger & wrist pulse is an accurate measure of AF heart rate. It is catastrophically NOT -as I learned to my cost by relying on finger pulse for months! One department after another is reliant on equipment that is incapable of accurately detecting AF readings 50-80 bpm above readings they are getting by pulse equipment. They even argue & dismiss patients knowledge on this as if anxiety is taking over the patients concerns. A patient might get 5 or 6 challenges within 24 hours to the same anomaly - none of them being passed down the line. It’s like a repeat loop for cognitive dissonance. Even the highest trained professionals are unaware of the patients reality; attempting to compensate patients by suggesting ablation procedures are future options which in fact have lapsed relevance due their condition having worsened their outlook. Ablation is now past its sell by date in my case. But consultants telling me various options exist- actually don’t! These patient details aren’t available to top professionals. One department is isolated from systems others seek information about. Patients repeatedly are met with outdated information on themselves & usually don’t know any better. >7 months in AF prior to any Cardioversion being highlighted as the single critical component of change & long term success, plus the extended - next choice - of ablation becoming inconsequential due to this -had led to my heart stretching badly in upper & lower chambers. I was going months > 160 heart rate with no idea , no advice & ineffectual medication & zero guidance information. Completely in the dark about what is going on with my heart and what to do to record reliable information about myself. Cardiology were complicit in this disaster by due process of their policies. NHS are in denial of this most comprehensively! They excuse complexity for perpetuating total ignorance & increasing health risk very dramatically. Then blaming the inevitable demise in heart health on the waiting lists and on the patients ill informed attempts to remediate this. There ought be automatic instructions for AF with any discharge notes - stating heart rate targets for sending home “informed patients” to at least attempt to work within certain ranges & ways of self monitoring to help them do this - as I did very belatedly with Polar H10 & Polar Beat & Polar Flow apps 24/7 for months - but alas 5 months later than relevant! It at least helped me not go cycling for hours unaware my heart rate was > 160 & I was actively committing SUICIDE with the full support of NHS advise that exercise is good for the heart & the hit & miss Holters every 2 months to eventually pick up on the disaster of this system in delaying patient information & the very nature of their condition. No wonder so many heart attacks ensue & are deemed due the condition rather than inadequate self monitoring & lack of guidance & critical care advice! What a complete oxymoron!!! Polar H10 became my personal Holter empowering the patient to know their own status throughout ( plus my SPO2 bp & 12 lead ECG) & to limit excessive heart rate escalation real time ; rather than the NHS system of months with zero clue & the Cardiologist drip feed of snippets of information like some carrot & donkey queue for casino odds solutions. The whole experience is like the ignorance of a gambling casino. It’s like a repeat loop of clueless feedback as to which hole you’ll end up in with a coffin at the bottom. The suicide one comes into focus as an equal odds option to all things on offer. It begins to feel more & more like there’s no difference!