How far are your essential services from you?
Discussion
Sheets Tabuer said:
About 8 inches.
How did you measure that? 
Luckily have a major hospital / A&E & own GP surgery within 1 mile radius of home plus specialist heart hospital within 5 miles which am grateful for as fall under it for both my pacemaker and my cardiomyopathy care.
Police, fire and ambulance stations all within 1.5 miles.
Supermarket, off licence, restaurants etc within 1 mile.
Quite lucky really and not something I've thought too much about before probably due to the fact they are all so nearby. If I lived a distance away I guess I would have to think about it a bit more as to where accessible services are in case of emergency (when you need a pizza at midnight....
Edited by lastofthev8s on Sunday 26th March 19:08
Riley Blue said:
HTP99 said:
I'm confused, you are worrying about services which you state that you are unlikely to use any time soon, if at all, very odd!
How can you know when you'll need the emergency services?I'm trying to decide if I should have any sympathy for you or not.
If you're like one of the other posters who seems to live on one side of Southampton in the fairly expensive, heavily congested South East and would have to fight through City traffic to get to a hospital on the other side of the city, then yes, you have my sympathy.
If, on the other hand, you live in some rural idyll with glorious views, next to no crime, low property prices and oodles of space per person then tough! You've made a lifestyle choice, and the distance from a major hospital, lower speed broadband and less choice of restaurants is the trade off you're making for all of those lovely benefits.
If you're like one of the other posters who seems to live on one side of Southampton in the fairly expensive, heavily congested South East and would have to fight through City traffic to get to a hospital on the other side of the city, then yes, you have my sympathy.
If, on the other hand, you live in some rural idyll with glorious views, next to no crime, low property prices and oodles of space per person then tough! You've made a lifestyle choice, and the distance from a major hospital, lower speed broadband and less choice of restaurants is the trade off you're making for all of those lovely benefits.
Riley Blue said:
True but I'd like to be on my way to hospital without undue delay.
Worth waiting on a paramedic though. Proper pain relief and commonly bypass your local hospital for fast track treatment at a cardiac cath lab. Chest pain calls are high priority 8 minute response times
HTP99 said:
I'm confused, you are worrying about services which you state that you are unlikely to use any time soon, if at all, very odd!
In my circle of friends there's probably been a baby once a month for the best part of a year, One wasn't far off having the baby at the roadside, was treated poorly in the hospital and bleeding heavily, another (7 months pregnant) recently had a scare, rang local midwife lead hospital unit and was told to go to the full maternity unit 45 minutes away, rang them on route to tell them the situation and that they'd be arriving shortly and was told to turn around and go back to the midwife led unit only to find it was open for another hour when they got there. Luckily nothing serious was wrong. My Nephew was also born 3 months premature, luckily my brother has moved from our home town to Bristol and they were about 5 minutes away from a special care baby unit, if he was born in our home town he likely wouldn't be here today because of my concerns in the original post.
Kermit power said:
I'm trying to decide if I should have any sympathy for you or not.
If you're like one of the other posters who seems to live on one side of Southampton in the fairly expensive, heavily congested South East and would have to fight through City traffic to get to a hospital on the other side of the city, then yes, you have my sympathy.
If, on the other hand, you live in some rural idyll with glorious views, next to no crime, low property prices and oodles of space per person then tough! You've made a lifestyle choice, and the distance from a major hospital, lower speed broadband and less choice of restaurants is the trade off you're making for all of those lovely benefits.
Technically I do live in a place like this, but it wasn't really my lifestyle choice to be born here. The local hospital did recently (about 5 years) have specialist maternity service or at least something ran by doctors rather than midwives (taking nothing away from midwives). The new alternate unit in a different hospital isn't even in the same county, is linked by A&B roads not a motorway, on a route with a lot of ferry/heavy good traffic without great overtaking and constantly plagued with roadworks. Also to add that it is 45 minutes at best from my house and probably greater than an hour for more rural areas. I live in a fair sized town. If you're like one of the other posters who seems to live on one side of Southampton in the fairly expensive, heavily congested South East and would have to fight through City traffic to get to a hospital on the other side of the city, then yes, you have my sympathy.
If, on the other hand, you live in some rural idyll with glorious views, next to no crime, low property prices and oodles of space per person then tough! You've made a lifestyle choice, and the distance from a major hospital, lower speed broadband and less choice of restaurants is the trade off you're making for all of those lovely benefits.
briangriffin said:
Technically I do live in a place like this, but it wasn't really my lifestyle choice to be born here. The local hospital did recently (about 5 years) have specialist maternity service or at least something ran by doctors rather than midwives (taking nothing away from midwives). The new alternate unit in a different hospital isn't even in the same county, is linked by A&B roads not a motorway, on a route with a lot of ferry/heavy good traffic without great overtaking and constantly plagued with roadworks. Also to add that it is 45 minutes at best from my house and probably greater than an hour for more rural areas. I live in a fair sized town.
Nevertheless, there is a finite pot of money, despite what successive governments over recent decades have tried to make us believe.If they shouldn't be reducing services in sparsely populated areas, where else should they be making cuts to pay for it?
briangriffin said:
Technically I do live in a place like this, but it wasn't really my lifestyle choice to be born here.
It is however your choice to *continue* living there. I don't live where I was born or where I grew up. Likewise, my parents, who lived in the same house for 35 years in a rural idyll, moved to the outskirts of a city when they felt they needed decent medical services nearby. They have since needed them and benefitted from having York hospital and its attendant ambulances and paramedics 10 minutes away.As someone else said, there isn't enough money for us all to have Papworth or Guy's at the end of the road. However even in rural counties you can mitigate the effects. Move out of darkest Devon and nearer to Exeter/Plymouth, or leave mid-Wales and venture nearer bigger towns in the W Mids. We all have to compromise with housing, I'd live in the sticks but I need access to motorways for work, so I choose suburbia.
We live about 8 miles from our nearest hospital, which over the years has been downgraded by the NHS and had services cut, including SCBU, so we would be forced to go 20 miles to the next hospital.
However even if you have somewhere good nearby they may not have enough beds/cots when your time comes. When we had the twins our local hospital didn't have enough room so we were moved by ambulance to the hospital that was further away as that had the capacity. This was while my wife and the twins were in a critical condition, then we had to wait while she was stabilised before they could perform the emergency C section. The twins spent 2 weeks at that hospital in SCBU before the local hospital had room to take them for another couple of weeks before they were well enough to come home.
It could have been worse, she'd been sent to hospital two weeks prior for a week due to the same complications and due to lack of room at our local hospital and the one that was 20 miles away, to one 60 miles away!
However even if you have somewhere good nearby they may not have enough beds/cots when your time comes. When we had the twins our local hospital didn't have enough room so we were moved by ambulance to the hospital that was further away as that had the capacity. This was while my wife and the twins were in a critical condition, then we had to wait while she was stabilised before they could perform the emergency C section. The twins spent 2 weeks at that hospital in SCBU before the local hospital had room to take them for another couple of weeks before they were well enough to come home.
It could have been worse, she'd been sent to hospital two weeks prior for a week due to the same complications and due to lack of room at our local hospital and the one that was 20 miles away, to one 60 miles away!
Kermit power said:
Nevertheless, there is a finite pot of money, despite what successive governments over recent decades have tried to make us believe.
If they shouldn't be reducing services in sparsely populated areas, where else should they be making cuts to pay for it?
Red tape, unnecessary jobs, ridiculous wages paid to directors etc, charge for Alcohol/drugs related injuries, don't supply drugs such as paracetamol as part of the service as they can be easily be bouth in Tesco for 16p a packet and you can bet the NHS doesn't pay that for them. recently hear of NHS paying for thousands of Dyson hand driers when there were alternatives at a fraction of the price. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3091294/hospital-chi...If they shouldn't be reducing services in sparsely populated areas, where else should they be making cuts to pay for it?
battered said:
It is however your choice to *continue* living there. I don't live where I was born or where I grew up. Likewise, my parents, who lived in the same house for 35 years in a rural idyll, moved to the outskirts of a city when they felt they needed decent medical services nearby. They have since needed them and benefitted from having York hospital and its attendant ambulances and paramedics 10 minutes away.
As someone else said, there isn't enough money for us all to have Papworth or Guy's at the end of the road. However even in rural counties you can mitigate the effects. Move out of darkest Devon and nearer to Exeter/Plymouth, or leave mid-Wales and venture nearer bigger towns in the W Mids. We all have to compromise with housing, I'd live in the sticks but I need access to motorways for work, so I choose suburbia.
Moving isn't really an alternative as I work in the oil industry, even if i moved to another facility i'd be starting at the bottom of my pay grade again so taking a £20-30k pay cut. As someone else said, there isn't enough money for us all to have Papworth or Guy's at the end of the road. However even in rural counties you can mitigate the effects. Move out of darkest Devon and nearer to Exeter/Plymouth, or leave mid-Wales and venture nearer bigger towns in the W Mids. We all have to compromise with housing, I'd live in the sticks but I need access to motorways for work, so I choose suburbia.
We did have the service in our local hospital but it has been downgraded, my reason for starting the thread is to wonder if there are many other people in the nation in a similar position. I.e. being 50 minutes / 35 miles away from what I would deem an essential service. Families shouldn't be in a position where they have that time frame to get to a suitable hospital.
For example say my friend who is due to go into labour any day now, with no suggestion of any issues in the build up did as recommended and went to the local midwife led unit (20 minutes away) and then suffered complications she would then have to travel 45-50 minutes to the specialist hospital in a situation which may be time critical. No family should be placed at that level of risk.
Ambulance depot, 10 minutes by car, although when my daughter was choking and couldn't breathe they got here in 3 minutes from dialling 999!Thankfully she coughed up the sweet as they ran to our front door, but she had gone blue and her eyes were rolling back into her head!
Big A&E hospital 10-15 easy minute drive, modern hospial
Had loads of planned and unplanned hospital visits over the last couple of years so being close has been a godsend!
In the past ive had a 45 minute fiddly drive to an old fashioned hospital so really appreciate where we are now
Big A&E hospital 10-15 easy minute drive, modern hospial
Had loads of planned and unplanned hospital visits over the last couple of years so being close has been a godsend!
In the past ive had a 45 minute fiddly drive to an old fashioned hospital so really appreciate where we are now
Quite lucky in that respect I guess as we're only about 10 minutes drive from the hospital. Came in handy when my second kid decided to enter the world, the first was a bit rushed so we thought we'd make our move a bit earlier this time, even so was only in the maternity unit for just over an hour before she arrived. They'd just about managed to fill up the birthing pool and allow my missus to climb in before the big push began 
Felt glad with the first kid as well as it was bit traumatic, emergency C section was on the cards but in the end the wife was able to push him out with a little bit of assistance from the surgeon / midwife. Might not have gone so well with a midwife lead maternity unit or a home birth.
Despite all this our local hospital only does a limited amount of surgery meaning I had to traipse all the way up to Wolverhampton three times (pre-op, op, results/check up) when I needed a biopsy. Okay for us as we both drive, have cars etc. but I could imagine it being a right PITA if you didn't.
Felt glad with the first kid as well as it was bit traumatic, emergency C section was on the cards but in the end the wife was able to push him out with a little bit of assistance from the surgeon / midwife. Might not have gone so well with a midwife lead maternity unit or a home birth.
Despite all this our local hospital only does a limited amount of surgery meaning I had to traipse all the way up to Wolverhampton three times (pre-op, op, results/check up) when I needed a biopsy. Okay for us as we both drive, have cars etc. but I could imagine it being a right PITA if you didn't.
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