A patient's plan for the NHS

Reading the media over the last year or so, you cannot fail to have noticed all the chatter about the state of the NHS, how it is going to fail soon with the stress of workload and lack of funding. Then coupled with that all the articles about 'eat this' 'don't eat that' 'miracle cure for this' and various scaremongering stories. Also people seemingly routinely choosing to go to A&E to get seen quickly rather than using their own GP surgery or the 111 NHS phone service. I really don't know what to believe from stories in the media, and I can see how the general public must be completely confused over what to do or not to do, and whether or not the NHS really is in the level of crisis suggested. But as the old saying goes "there's no smoke without fire", I'm sure at various levels things need fixing, but on a day to day basis can things really be THAT bad?

I think speaking as a patient, I can only comment on my experiences which have been generally good, or very good with just the odd gripe here and there. But at an individual level, every NHS worker I came into contact with has just had the 'will' to care and look after patients at their very core. Whether I'm talking about my local GP/surgery, the people that diligently cleaned the hospital wards I was on, served the meals, the nurses, the doctors and the consultants....all showed the will to provide that care.

I went to our local hospital open day recently and had a tour of both the radiotherapy dept. showing off their amazing machines used to treat cancer and also the mortuary. Speaking to NHS staff in the radiotherapy dept. they spoke with expertise and passion about the job they did and how they put plans in place to treat patients and how precise the treatment was. The accuracy and effectiveness of the treatment available was incredible to understand. But what really stuck in my mind was the mortuary tour and not for the reasons you might imagine.

One of the staff who did the tour still referred to the bodies they receive as "patients" and how what they do is still part of the treatment, the last thing they can do for that patient in their journey, compassion was evident in abundance. The person who really impressed was Brett (Lockyer, I think) the Pathologist, he explained in detail what his job was and how long he had been in training to do that job - 16 years training in fact! He had been through doctor training and then a doctor in various departments including A&E leading up to the job he is doing now (classing all this as 'training') and his ambition to become a forensic Pathologist. How lucky are we that there are people like Brett who are prepared to do the job they do, and spend so much of their lives dedicated to doing it, to wanting to do that job. I can never imagine doing the job Brett does, but spending some time listening to his passion could even persuade someone like me to want to go into the medical profession (not now, I'm too long in the tooth). It strikes me that if the NHS really is struggling to recruit GP's, then the NHS needs to talk to young people at the right age, spread that passion that I witnessed to impressionable young minds. If that passion was infectious to me, it surely would have been to a 14 year old me. As with any organisation, its strength lies in its people and they will be the saviours of the NHS.

Yes, that is a simplistic view, politics and money have to come into play. But I don't think it will matter which political party sticks its oar in, I don't think any of them have a true grasp of how to fix a problem like the NHS. In reality it is a complex myriad of things. With the population generally living longer maybe we should all be prepared to pay just that little bit more out of our salaries each month, I'd willingly do this if there was a robust plan in place to spend it wisely.

So here's my plan for the NHS:

Make good models standard