Polish people are happy with the UK health care system

Dear all,
I am an italian student, Chiara. I am studying how foreign people looks like the health care system in UK. In particular I am curious to know the Polish one.

I am looking forward to hearing from us

Best,
Chiara

In two words? Total mess.

Maybe if foreign nationals had to pay to use the NHS, then maybe it's possible it wouldn't be in such a state ?

Essentially, too many people are using a free service and not enough money is coming into pay for it. There are also too many people at the top of the tree on huge salaries who aren't doing their jobs properly.

I'm sorry if our health service isn't good enough for you, what would you suggest we do to improve it ?

Come down, please... First of all - I pay for the NHS. With every bloody payslip.
And about improvement - I mean - how much it cost to keep a hospital clean?

Yes, we know, Polish people pay taxes - thanks for the update.


For a start, they should stop employing cheap and nasty contract firms who pay p*ss poor wages to push a dirty mop across the floors.

Cleaners should be NHS employees and on decent money.

Hospitals are dirty, access to doctors are limited- How long visit 10-15 minutes max?, access to drugs also limited, Waiting for treatment( not dangerous for life) 1 year ? Dentists? It is complete nightmare. I go to private one- don't even try to NHS.

I am emigrant so it was my choice to come here but I sometimes feel sorry to British people-they have been born here,work here and deserve proper treatment.

I think that the there are few reasons for it:
doctors are overpaid
lots of money is wasted by NHS
some people come here from abroad for free treatment.

Most docs working in hospitals get around £50 - 60k.
I would say most are worth it considering the study they have put in, work related stress and knowing you could get sued at any time.

This is turning into a silly thread. The NHS is far too complex to sum up in just a few posts on a thread. And opinions will depend on individuals' experience.

Apart from periods when I have lived abroad, I've had NHS treatment all my life. Some aspects have been great - I went to A&E in a big central London hopsital with an asthma attack a couple of weeks ago, I was seem within 20 mins, and treated pretty much straight away, and on my way home within 2 hours. I should add that this was in the wee small hours of a Saturday / Sunday when the hospital should have been full of stabbings and shootings. I really couldn't fault the system on that occasion.

But my father-in-law has had problems with his kidneys and has had terrible experiences with getting treatment on the NHS. Won't go into too much detail here, however it is really disgraceful how he has been treated.

Here in London, I sometimes have to wait 2 weeks for a GP's appointment - but sometimes I can get a same-day appointment, and when I do get seen, some GPs are keen to get you out of the waiting room the minute you arrive, whereas others have been brilliant and gone the extra mile.

As for dental treatment, forget it - I get my teeth treated at private clinics in Poland :D <- lovely Polish smile!!

So you see, the NHS is rather complex - you can't give a black or white answer.

Most people who criticise the NHS dont seem to have negative experiences themselves but base their opinions on newspaper headlines(true as these may be).

Every Polish person I've spoke to has had better experiences with the NHS than with the Polish healthcare system. They're always really surprised by this though are probably just happy that they dont have to carry a wedge of cash into the hospital to bribe people with like they do in Poland.

You're right, it is a very complex subject and I doubt if we will have the NHS as we know it in 20 years time. Private health care will become much more the norm.

My experiences of the NHS vary from an NHS dentist who checks I still have teeth, pokes about for a bit and then tells me to come back in two years - all in under 10 minutes. If I saw him as a private patient, I think he would take longer with me. This is often an appointment I've waited weeks for.

Even though I get seen as an NHS patient a recent wisdom tooth extraction, which took about 15 minutes, cost me over £45. I complained to them about this and the whole NHS dentist situation and the receptionist said I was an "in-betweener" as I didn't have enough money to be rich enough to go private and I wasn't poor enough to get everything for free.

My GPs are very nice people, but I feel that they start a stop-watch the minute I sit down and they don't give me enough time to explain stuff. One of them has a habit of putting my symptoms into something that looks like a GP's version of 'Google' which is rather unnerving.

I think the NHS will end up just being available for the real dregs of society.

i must admit that nhs isnt all that bad, although there is a lot of messing about going on. i think all the gp's ive seen were ok and i was always helped when i needed it, in emergency or not. i've been going to the doctors more often in UK than i used to in Poland, because even if i don't really have a health issue and just wanna talk to the doctor about something they will not make me feel like i wasted their time, and Polish doctors are a bit like that. as for the dentist, i had very bad experience with them here and i get my teeth done privately in Poland, cheaper than nhs and much better service. so yeah apart from the dentist i think i get what i pay for every month, have no issues with nhs, but then i never had to stay in a hospital to have an operation or anything, so i haven't seen it all, and hopefully i won't do anytime soon!

Exactly - sure, the government can say that £x millions are being pumped in, though I am aware of a few instances where money is just squandered, and surely these instances are just the tip of the iceberg.

I am probably this exception.
I have allergy problems- In Poland I was properly diagnosed, treatment was offered to me ( special vaccinacion- injections). I Uk I asked Doctor to recommed me the most suitable medicine for my allergy - I found one which helps ( easy access to buy at tesco but was not sure if I can take it so often) Doctor haven't heard about it and couldn't find it in his drug-book???

Another example you phone for appointment and can get week or two to wait. After week someone can get Ok again or already get dead so no problem one more patiens for NHS.

That is true about bribes in Poland- i know it is awful and unethical- but person with average salary can afford it. In UK you have to use NHS( waiting for ever for any treatment) or private healthcare which is so expensive that only rich people can afford.

It is my personal opinion and experience.

And I agree NHS system is complex but patients are not interested in its complexity but effectivity.

yeah, they do love MRSA.

and with all the stories about the soldiers who came home from Iraq/Afghanistan, SHAME ON YOU NHS! SHAME ON YOU! HOW DARE YOU NEGLECT YOUR SOLDIERS!


excellent! i'd like to do that too!


i think that you should not include sick children in this issue. children who are unwell should be checked by a doctor - immediately. you should never ever take risks. or hang on, maybe we should just wait until they're blue.

Here we do again, NHS bashing. As I have said before, a friend of mine died in Polish hospital because they couldnt read his british case notes.

In Wales, we receive free medicene and the waiting lists are not very long.

It pisses doctors off when they get people taking up their time cos they have a cold or a cough and theres nothing they can relly do about it. My uncle is a GP and he told me that since the wave of Polish immigration to the UK he is swamped with Poles coming to him with colds and coughs, and bringing their children who have a cold.

This is why the NHS is swamped.

blame your government. if you dont want them in your hospitals, then your government should've made that clear and drew the lines long way back. they should've passed a law in the past specifically saying that eastern europearns are not welcome in the uk hosptals. then these helpless people would already know before they even plan to fly here - that nhs does not want them.

oh but wait: no incentives = no skilled people = no skilled workforce.

I think welshguy has a valid point. GP surgeries only have so many appointments a day and if you keep booking appointments for such things as coughs and colds then it is clogging up the system.

Something Justysias said made me wonder if the difference in cultures may be to blame also.


Basically if you don't have a health issue it is far better not to book an appointment with your GP , thus freeing the appointments for someone who is sick ?

Do people pay for GP appointments in Poland ? Just wondering why you would go to see your GP if you don't have a health issue ?


I don't think most people think like that and of course if you are working in the UK longer term , you are of course entitled to similar benefits. But we have been actively discouraged from going to see a GP for non health issues, minor ailments etc etc. So I wonder <as I said before> if it is a cultural difference ? Like in Poland people are used to going and chatting to their local Doctor , whereas here we are not encouraged to take up a valuable appointment if we do not have a health issue that needs looking at.

Just a thought!

There are some horrific cases, such as where doctors are being recruited from abroad and two sets of recruitment companies are creaming off a decent part of the money offered by the NHS - how is this in any way cost effective?

But the whole system needs all political parties to cooperate and change the entire system - from top to bottom. Putting an end to middle management in hospitals would be a start, as would eliminating many non-jobs. Likewise, eliminating the current system of GP's being quasi-private and instead introducing fixed salaries for GP's - it still amazes me as to how utterly screwed the Government was with the new-ish contract for them.

Shut it you :)

There was a case of a Polish doctor who travelled from Poznan to Aberdeen 4 times a week. You've probably heard of it, delph. He drove down to Wrocław and got a flight to Glasgow. He then got a bus up the road. The flight route was cancelled so I dunno what became of him.

I think it comes down to the ailment, if you have a serious condition such as cancer or heart problems the NHS is a pretty safe bet for proper treatment.

Abortions, a taboo subject but many Poles travel to the UK for this procedure.

NHS dentists are virtually non existant and if you have a minor problem getting past the GP to the appropriate specialist is time consuming and annoying. In Poland its so easy to take the private route and sort the whole issue out for around a 100 PLN.

It was once a week and the BBC made it look much worse than it was, In reality travelling from Poland to the UK by air takes no longer and is no more stressful than driving from say birmingham to london to work at the weekend which a lot of uk based doctors do.

Once a week :) I should have said, 'distortion effect added by author' ;) ;) Thanks for the correction, dnz. True that, you just kick back and enjoy the flight. You don't need to negotiate whopping great spaghetti junctions and awkward drivers.

I recall that you live up there in Poznań, dnz. Cheers for the info :)

and this, my friends, is the reason why the British health service cant cope. I was home for 3 weeks recently and I have a recurring muscle problem in my leg so i went to my GP to get some medication and lo and behold in the reception were 3 polish families all waiting to see the doc. I got talking to them and asked what was wrong, one told me her son had a freckle inbetween his toes, the second told me her 10 yr old son had a bad cough and the third said he son told her that he has a bad head. These kids were all playing happily in the play area.

All the brits I know dont tend to go to the docs if it is a minor ailment, whe we were little my brother and I were given lemsip (for kids) and calpol. We were never rushed to the doctors surgery.

Who was the poster who commented a runny nose in Poland is automatically assumed to be snot cancer?? that post has stayed with me.

gp surgery? or just a gp? isn't it that a general physician and a general surgeon are two different things? does this mean that you're putting your specialists in the front line? that's saddening.

A GP's surgery is simply where a doctor sees his/her patients. No actual surgery takes places there.

What happened to the thread about jobs ?