Читать книгу In Stitches - Nick Edwards, Dr. Nick Edwards - Страница 22

The Prime Minister says here is some money. New A&E nurses are employed. A senior nurse is appointed to monitor their progress and education. Patient care is improved and everybody is happy. No interference occurs from politicians. There are no massive overspends so brakes do not need to be applied (obviously only after an election). So, in summary, we can keep our nurses and let them do the job they were trained to do in the way they see fit. Oh! How I dream.

How does a government that has put so much money into the NHS (and it has), given pay rises and improved many services, still manage at the same time to piss off just about everyone that works in the NHS. It is an amazing skill. What it has done wrong is interfere so very badly in the micro-management of the NHS, arrange ridiculous targets aimed at winning elections and not long-term improvement in patient care, and disengage clinicians from involvement in management. Then there is the problem of pointless involvement of the private sector making profit out of the NHS …

What also pisses me off is when the Tories have their ‘NHYes’ campaign and say that they are the saviours of the NHS. Remember, they very nearly completely buggered it up. Don’t forget the perilous state they left it in 1997.

What it seems to me is that neither party can be trusted to run the NHS. The NHS needs policies designed to look after health now and in the long term. It should not be used as a political football with short-term plans introduced for when general elections are due. We need the politics taken out of the NHS. Make it a semi-autonomous organisation, where management input comes from frontline medical/nursing trained staff and not management accountants (I am not so sure what they actually do). It needs to be run along the lines of the BBC – with guaranteed funding and an independent management board. Whichever party promises that, then they will get my vote.

P.S. Just had to let all the anger out – I just read in the local paper that my hospital was about to make lots of nurses redundant and I got upset.