Finally it has snapped, with Frank Dobson, Secretary of State for Health,
admitting that there is now a crisis in the NHS.
The NHS was once a fine example of a British institution which the rest of the
world looked up to and sought to emulate; the fine ideal that healthcare should
be free for all, as and when required, paid for by direct deductions from the
salary of the work force was something which Britain was once proud of.
But not any more.
Running the NHS has never been cheap and, like other nationalised industries,
it has not always delivered the best value that it could, but, in terms of its
ideology it came pretty close to delivering what the public wanted; a first
class healthcare system.
With changes in business attitudes, especially driven by consecutive
Conservative governments' desires to de-nationalise public bodies, to make them
more self sufficient, profitable and to shift the onus of healthcare provision
from The State onto the individual; the NHS has been re-organised and
has undergone severe changes in the way that it works.
Whilst some changes are desirable, maximising the use of public money and the
reduction of wasted cash being the most obvious cases, many changes have caused
knock-on effects which have reduced the NHS to a pale image of its former self.
The closure of hospitals, with services being concentrated in one hospital which
serves a wide geographical area, the shortage of nurses and the cut-backs in the
number of ambulance and paramedic staff and the coalition of services into
single units has finally taken its toll in the winter of 1998/1999.
Britain is, once again, and it's not uncommon, suffering a severe outbreak of
influenza which is putting a great strain on the NHS as it stands today.
The current flu outbreak is, apparently, not of epidemic proportions but even
so it is putting a strain on the NHS which is bringing it to its breaking point.
Because hospital services have contracted, with wards closed and the number of
emergency beds ( which, when there is an excess, are unused most of the time )
reduced to make themselves cost effective; there is very little slack
in the system when an inrush of patients is seen.
On the 8th of January it was reported that there were no emergency beds
available at all in some areas and, at one point, it seemed that there were only
two or three emergency beds available in the whole of the south of
England.
Reports of elderly patients being left in corridors for want of a bed became
commonplace and some hospitals were bringing in refrigerated lorries to use
as makeshift mortuaries as those in the hospital filled to overflowing.
People, unable to walk properly or only half recovered, were being thrown out
of their beds in the early hours of the morning to make way for more deserving,
and urgent, causes.
Trauma specialists have explained, time after time, that there is a Golden
Hour, after injury, within which the treatment of a patient provides a
greatly enhanced chance of survival.
Leaving patients lying in corridors or packing them in an amulance and shipping
them a hundred or so miles to the nearest free bed does little to increase
their chances of survival.
Hospitals were flying in nurses from the Philippines and other places to get
their staffing levels up to cater for the increased number of patients and
to compensate for the number of nurses who have left, or failed to join, the
NHS for financial or other reasons.
And all because the stupid ideals of the current and previous governments have
taken every ounce of slack out of the NHS in order make it competitive in
financial terms.
Yes; having a whole ward of intensive care beds is a waste of money
when those beds are unoccupied, but they are the insurance which protects
against the situations when they are urgently needed.
Taking out the slack is much like not having house insurance; short sighted and,
with hindsight, a disastrous decision when one realises that it was probably a
bad move not having it.
For years now, many inside the NHS and plenty of ordinary citizens have
indicated that they have not been happy with the changes being made to the NHS;
these people clearly saw that the reduction in funding, poor nursing salaries
and other ideologically driven changes would eventually result in the
situation which has finally arisen.
Whilst the politicians sought, in real terms, to minimise the expenditure on
NHS services they lost sight of what the NHS was in place to do.
Every death which occurs under the current circumstances, because a bed is
unavailable for the treatment of a patient or a lack of nursing staff means
they cannot be attended to, is a direct result of the British government's
policy on the NHS.
Given that winter flu is a predictable and regularly occurring phenomena, yet
it can bring the NHS to the brink of collapse; how exactly is the NHS expected
to cope with a major traffic pile-up or a plane crash ?
It makes me seriously worried when I think that, despite all the efforts of
a paramedic team, if there's one available, I could subsequently pass away,
lying on a trolley in a corridor whilst someone, in blind panic, phones around
the country trying to find an intensive care bed.
The NHS was once a institution which the British could be proud of; not any
more.
The Doctor in the White Coat
If I am ever rushed to hospital, because of illness or accident, I would
expect to meet a nice doctor who diagnosed my problems, offered reassuring words
of advice and got me on the road to full recovery as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the best on offer would be a poor
junior doctor, probably already alcholic or on prescription drugs, half dead,
having done a 100 hour shift with little sleep, who is finding it difficult
enough to cope with their own life let alone the saving of other's.
The thought alone frightens me, and probably frightens everyone else who has
ever seriously looked at the plight of those working within the NHS.
But there are still those, especially in government, who don't seem to see the
stupidity of the situation.
And these are the people who can't understand why there's a shortage of doctors
entering the health service.
I've said that the UK is a Third World Country many
times; this is yet another example of just how bad Britain has actually become.
