How prepared are you for your summer holidays? 

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A number of the casualties in the Westminster Bridge and London Bridge terrorist outrages were foreign visitors to the UK. Their families and their embassies were full of praise for the speed, efficiency and quality of treatment they received from the NHS ambulance, paramedical and hospital services. It was universally considered to be top class. Indeed the NHS is so excellent that it is overwhelmed by demand for its services and the private hospital sector is currently having to advertise heavily in order to attract enough patients.

I have seen no evidence of any government plans to sell off the NHS, Duncan, so it would be helpful if you could provide a source for such a statement. As it happens, there is in existence an extremely up-to-date Conservative Party manifesto, and I won’t labour the point but it does promise retention of the NHS, investment in all necessary resources, and, fundamentally, protecting its three founding principles [including care to be free at the point of access]. In the aftermath of a bruising election I cannot see the current government proposing any detrimental changes.

Incidentally, in America, “downtown” refers to the city centre, not the suburbs or outskirts.

I believe that the NHS does very well in the circumstances but there are numerous problems. For example, dirty wards and toilets are fairly common and this has been blamed on outsourcing cleaning. Ignorant administrators have decided that nurses should launder their own uniforms, which could pose a health risk to themselves and their families. Consultants and other senior staff are working under continuous stress – certainly the ones I know. One of my parents was killed by a careless mistake that would not have happened if the registrar had checked the records.

I have no knowledge of how the quality of our NHS compares with other countries but when taking holidays in the UK, I don’t need to worry about communicating in a different language.

I agree about the shortcomings of the UK’s NHS. I can’t believe other countries don’t have similar problems. Unfortunately a lot of them come down to management inadequacies. I remain to be convinced that throwing a lot more money into the system would eliminate that. Luckily I have never needed treatment abroad so I cannot compare and I have never been hospitalised in the UK, but as a visitor I would say there is a scruffiness and casualness about our public hospitals that used not to exist. I always say you can tell an NHS institution by the number of notices plastered up all over the place, especially on the entrance doors.

As for communication in a different language, in the UK it’s the staff who often have the difficulty!

A very common management problem is leaving patients in wards under the care of a team of nurses without a single person being responsible for a single patient – even if a named nurse is given this role. In one case I expressed my concern to various nurses that a family member was not drinking adequately and was becoming dehydrated. I informed a GP friend to keep an eye on the situation because I had booked a holiday and had to abandon my holiday when the GP visited and found that the patient was so dehydrated that their kidneys may have been damaged.

On another occasion when the same relation was in hospital, I crossed out an inappropriate drug (after consultation with a GP) after two requests to pass on information to the relevant doctor had failed. I should have acted sooner because shortly after the medication was discontinued, relation suffered gastric bleeding.

I have seen numerous comments, including a few on Which? Conversation, that suggest that there are problems in other countries too, John. If I did require emergency treatment on holiday I would be happier to be in the UK. It’s easier for visitors too.