Future of healthcare.

[Jamesey1981]

Also, when a private clinic is performing surgery (liposuction, implants or whatever) and something goes wrong they call an ambulance to take the patient to an NHS hospital, I'd like the clinic to receive the bill, the NHS shouldn't be providing a free failsafe to a private business, businesses have to pay for their own bin collections, it shouldn't be any different when they cause problems performing surgery for profit.

[Deeps]

We seem to be going wildly off topic here. As Lil says, keep it prepping and away from the politics please.

[medicmark]

as was said previously by my friend with the family member suffering from cancer, in a SHTF situation where there is no NHS it may fall on family and friends to provide that care. prepping is not all about emergency, its resilience and longevity.
Not everyone will have gunshots blunt trauma etc, most people with chronic illness will need care, in your prepping plan is this acknowledged and prepped for.

Depending on the incident will obviously dictate health care functioning, preventative medicine will need to be at the fore front of this for 2 reasons, firstly you have limited supplies and you have to do the best for the most, secondly someone with d&v can contaminate everyone and will stop your community dead- no one to look after the sick, cook, gather food and water, be your security team potentially slow horrible death for everyone.

It will be impractical and unrealistic to have a hospital and be trained to do everything, however networking with like minded individuals must be the way to go.

love your thoughts/ ideas.
Mark.

[sethorly]

If d&v means diaorrhea & vomitting, what would you do in a SHTF situation if a family member suffers from this? Choose a carer and isolate both the carer and the patient?

[ParamedicPrepper]

What about the simple things that happen everyday such as appendicitis? I worry about the simple things that's pretty routine surgery but becomes life threatening in a SHTF situation as who will take that out? That's when we realise our own mortality I think

[Mortblanc]

Why do you folks think that the "end of the world" preppers have always maintained the expectation of a 90% die off rate in the first year after their expected "fall of society"?

I would not expect even a major disaster to have that kind of impact, but if separated from modern medical treatment there are going to be deaths and there are going to be sicknesses from unexpected sources, like the rapid spread of disease we do not presently deal with.

We often forget that D&V was the norm a couple of hundred years back and no one knew what caused most of it. Bad food, bad water, lack of refrigeration, preserved food that had "turned" but went unnoticed, water unexpectedly polluted.

And D&V was a big part of the 50% death rate of infants. They died of dehydration within a couple of days back then, where OTC meds, electrolytes or an in hospital IV save them now.

[medicmark]

sorry to be a downer, but I hope my ideas/ observations are realistic.

Sethorly- I think it depends on the severity of the person with diarrhoea and vomiting. You definitely need to isolate the person, instigate barrier nursing best you can and just try and rehydrate the casualty the best you can.

This does pose a big dilemma do you put your medics in there to care and they potentially get sick too, or their family members? or if in a community your little team.

Barrier nursing is very resource involved, every time you go in to them, new gloves, gown, facemask, overshoes and bags to dispose of them, also clothes and bedding for the patient. I hope this gives you a little idea of our potential difficulties with even such a simple issue.

As Paramedicprepper said it makes you realise your own mortality.

I think we can only do our very best.

Mark.

[SooBee]

I'm going to attempt a home nursing answer here based on personal and family experience.

I nursed my first husband through to his final year of Huntington's Disease and these are just some of the problems I met.

Firstly, many psychiatric illnesses are now helped with medication very successfully but if that disappeared the patients would become much less manageable in a home situation. My husband was a big man who developed a fierce temper and was able to put his fist through a door long before he was diagnosed. This breeds fear within a family and a community and does not usually set a scene for care within the home. Often the ones who stayed to nurse such a sick relative (before medication was available) were either hurt by the patient or by other fear-stricken family members. No wonder so many families were inclined to take to drink! I am proud of my ability to care for a man I loved for as long as I did but I am honest enough to wonder if I could have done it without the medication that helped him so much. My conclusion is that he would not have lived for as long as he did and would probably have died from an accident.

Secondly, there are a lot of illnesses that people are genuinely ignorant about. I had my first intimation of the disease that was about to hit my family in a woman's magazine that my daughter was reading. She was quite upset for the girl in the article who was facing the prospect of inheriting her mother's condition. My daughter eventually inherited her father's condition. How do you prep for that? My answer is to read everything you can lay your hands on and don't be frightened of what you find in some of the books you read. Find your own on/off switch and learn the joys of drinking tea rather than alcohol. Life is a story and we all write our own.

Obviously most people who nurse (in whatever capacity) have to learn to manage themselves as well as the patients. Florence Nightingale once said that if you don't look after the nurses, who looks after the patients? So this too should be part of our preps.

[SooBee]

I know I just brought the problems of the Cinderella of the system into play....no-one ever knows what to to do with the difficulties of mental health.

Physical health is less of a stigma and is always easier to talk about. The number of times I was told that the only way to deal with hereditary diseases is to stop having babies is really beyond belief. I had to tell a clinical nursing lecturer that telling my children that they should be sterilized is morally the same as telling my husband that he should never have been born...(far too much 'telling' going on there)....(not enough understanding)

People with psychiatric problems get physically sick too and they are harder to barrier nurse. It is not cut and dried and straight-forward as it might be in a well-staffed hospital. The best way is to have a quarantine area with restricted entry and exit. Staffing this at home is well nigh impossible but a tough cool-thinking nurse can do it....that and a lot of bleach!

[sethorly]

the difficulties of mental health.

Totally with you.

Prepping helps with the "easier" parts of mental health, such as acute stress. After all, "stress is the perceived inability to cope" (with the emphasis on perceived). As preppers we will have replayed various scenarios over in our minds so the shock to the system should anything happen would be much less. Preppers will know what the main factors to consider are, and what our priorities should be, in such a situation. We will have thought through our possible actions. We will know that we can cope. We have a plan for whatever-t-f happens.

With the "harder" part of mental health from depression upwards, it's yet another reason to kick smoking, bad drinking habits, marijuana for non-medicinal use, etc, which are all triggers. And get mentally and physically fit by walking/exercise in nature. For controlling mental "episodes" though without drugs.....no idea - I've filed those in the scary bottom drawer with diabetes and asthma and allergies.