So: I woke up Tuesday morning with chest pains and I was struggling to breathe properly, but being a typical Brit I thought "ah its probably just a pulled muscle, I dont want to bother anyone, im sure itll get better". Well, it didnt get much better, the pain diminished slightly but by Thursday I was really struggling to breathe. A quick call to NHS Direct led me to the point that, yeah, okay I really need to get down to A&E. I got down there at 6.55pm and the A&E process began. Since I had chest pains I was seen by the triage nurse really quickly (within 10 mins) ahead of other people - first rule of triage: treat the most serious cases first - I then had a quick ECG with a second nurse. By 8.45 pm I saw the doctor who had my ECG results, listened to my chest, and suspected a pneumothorax (or collapsed lung as we laymen call it). This is where things got really impressive IMO. The Doctor himself wheeled me down to X-ray (yeah, i got my own wheelchair! :P ), I had a chest X-ray, and within 5 minutes they had the picture up on screen and yep - I had a collapsed lung! 70% of the left side of my chest cavity was full of air - bloody hell!! The same Doctor then wheeled me down to the Resuscitation ward, hooked me up to the monitors and everything and handed me over to the Resus Doctor. It cant have been much after 9.15pm at this stage. I was hooked up to heart monitors, blood pressure monitors, oxygen supply, a line into my arm for meds, ECG wires the works! then I was informed of the treatment - a large needle through the chest to extract the air! Again within 5 minutes I had a Dr and a nurse with me, performing the procedure. I wont go into the details of what that felt like, but they pulled out 2 pints of air from my chest! Another chest x-ray half an hour later to check that it had fixed the problem showed that it had infact worked and i was back to normal. Another half hour of monitoring without the oxygen and that was it - you can go home! It was about 11.30pm. So in less than 5 hours I had been admitted, tested, diagnosed, treated, tested again, and released! Fantastic service!! It also made me think of our American cousins - the same thing would have cost a US citizen many thousands of dollars. I had seen 4 nurses, 3 Doctors, an x-ray technician, had an oxygen mask, had my own bed, had two ECG's, 2 chest X-rays, blood pressure monitors, and an invasive procedure - all for free! Personally, I think we are quite lucky to have the NHS, even with its faults, when it comes down to it, they know what they are doing and can do it very well tl:dr admitted to hospital with a collapsed lung, saw 4 nurses, 3 Doctors, had my own bed, two ECG's, 2 chest X-rays, an invasive procedure, and discharged all in 5 hours and it didnt cost me a penny on the day. The NHS may not be perfect, but it should be remembered just how good the system can be. EDIT: thanks for the comments guys. It also seems like Ive started a bit of a debate about the efficiency of the NHS system. This story is just my personal experience that i felt needed to be shared because the media loves to concentrate on particular cases of poor performance. I am not claiming that the NHS is perfect. maybe i got lucky......who knows. Either way, im just glad to be cured and no longer in pain. This is one of the many reasons that socialized healthcare is simply better. Sure, for non-urgent things it's not all that amazing, but for the most urgent cases; it's -blam!-ing fantastic. Why doesn't your country have social healthcare, Flood?