I was born two years before the NHS was established.
Since then the NHS has become the pride of the UK, and the envy of the world. Its claim to treat all UK citizens 'from the cradle to the grave', though a simple weekly National Insurance Stamp scheme, has kept us all feeling very safe in their hands.
They have taken-out my Appendix, removed my Tonsils, and even pulled a particularly badly-behaved Wisdom Tooth. Two of my children were born under their care, and my parents both ended their lives in NHS hospitals. In other words they have been very good to us, even though I haven't actually used their services for the past 50 years, whilst living abroad.
These days I carry a 'UK Global Health Insurance Card' that ensures my re-imbursed health care anywhere in the world should I fall ill.
I have always been aware that the NHS relies heavily on foreign staff, and I now hear that in fact ONE FIFTH of all NHS staff are 'foreign born'. Take away those workers and the NHS would collapse.
So, it is with huge regret that I keep seeing our young student doctors going on strike. They earn a minimum of £32,400 (plus extra for weekends and nights), until their final year when they earn about £63,000 (plus the usual extras). Once fully qualified they earn a minimum of £140,000.
What I find even more worrying than their disruptive striking, is that many say they intend to emigrate as soon as they qualify. Charming! Shouldn't they be made to stay for at least five years, to pay back some of what they've been awarded?
The NHS is now in crisis. Constant strikes are partly responsible for a huge build-up of patients awaiting treatment or surgical operations, poor quality (and expensive) management absorbs vast amounts of money that should otherwise be spent on treatment, and the government continues to pump-in a record £180 Billion to pay for it all. One can but wonder where it all goes.
So, it seems timely that we should re-think the whole concept. Keep what is good and get rid of what is bad. Give health workers a good living salary, and sack those over-paid so-called managers who fritter away money like confetti. We need our wards to be run by strict Matrons, get rid of time-wasting nurse's computer stations, and get back to doing what the NHS always did so well; looking after and caring for the sick.
If we don't act soon, the students will be responsible for the NHS's total decline, and they will get what I suspect is their aim; Privatisation. Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown began the process with his PFI scheme, and the Union led students could finish the job for him. They would, of course, blame the Tories.
p.s. And guess what! This latest development may seem unbelievable; but it's 100% true. NHS Chief Executives are finding all the student strikes so 'stressful' that they too want a wage rise. They mostly earn £202,277 pa, but need more to cope with the extra pressure. The poor wee darlings!
They are not young student doctors, they are misleadingly called "junior" doctors because they are below the very senior consultant level, but many are in their thirties or forties, highly qualified, with years of experience. On £62k (and a doctor we know works a 60-hour week on exhausting shifts for that) you would struggle to bring up a family when housing costs are considered, and is only the same as a train driver. If working in the NHS (and many other jobs) was not made so bloody awful by cost-cutting accountants, there would be plenty of takers and remainers, assuming we funded the training places rather than relying on overseas staff. Do you actually know anyone who works as a doctor or nurse in the NHS or are you just talking through your prejudices as usual?
ReplyDeleteI am simply pointing out that anyone who supports these striking students, is supporting the demise of the NHS.
DeleteThey are not students.
DeleteWhen they leave Medical School after 3 years, they have to do another 3 learning on the job. Of course they're students.
DeleteYes, 6 years at university as medical students, funded by student loans. They then qualify as doctors. Once qualified they are Junior Doctors. The NHS salary for a Junior Doctor has fallen by half over 12 years. I know a doctor who has been qualified for 3 years, who is about to begin training as a GP in London of £42k p.a. To keep these people we have to pay them properly. Strikes happen when they have no more goodwill to give.
DeleteIn 1947 the NHS worked brilliantly and for many years after. I'm afraid that now, so much has changed. We can cure so many more diseases than we could in 1947, we now have to buy MRI machines, CT machines etc etc that were not even invented before. It all needs a rethink. People say that we should invest more but we are throwing good money after bad and billions won't help if it stays as it is. I have always championed the NHS .... our daughter works in the NHS, my daughter-in-law and son-in-law work within it plus many in our family but, it is completely outdated now. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to lose it but, it needs to be completely re thought. Why oh why have they stopped sterilising things ...... they throw appliances like crutches and scissors away that get used once ! I was told that it's cheaper to do that than employ someone and to buy sterilising machines to do it but I can't see that. I complimented a nurse on her light grey uniform once and she told me they had got them a few months before but they were getting rid of them and giving them new darker grey ones ..... what a waste of money. Pay is an issue for some who work within it and, as much as it's unfair that a footballer is paid zillions and a nurse nothing like that { and most of us feel it should be the other way around } nursing etc. is a vocation and people do know it's not highly paid when they go into it. The pay side isn't fair at all considering what they do but, life isn't fair and the pay has got better. I wouldn't mind paying a nominal sum to see the GP. Something has to change. XXXX
ReplyDeleteI used to pay 28 Euros to see my doctor in France, and my monthly prescription cost about 100 Euros. I didn't like paying, but it was no big deal.
DeleteThere is something wrong with the whole system of pay. Not just in the NHS. I read in yesterday's Times of somebody 'struggling' on £60,000 a year. I know often this comes about because of mortgage rises and suchlike but anyone delivering our post or emptying our dustbins must shudder in disbelief.
ReplyDeleteI heard recently that a new born baby will cost about £10,000 in it's first year. I'm sure it could cost that much, but it could also cost nothing! It all depends.
DeleteIt's like so many other services, it has been underfunded for decades, instead of ensuring our services thrive, we have had moneys spent on other unnecessary stuff and too many tax cuts, through the recent years of low inflation and interest rates, money could have been put into services not tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteIt's still costing us £18 Billion pa for Brown's privatisations. They sure know how to spend our money!
DeleteHow about a windfall tax on increased asset prices? Or a transaction tax to circumvent super-rich companies moving funds away unfairly? Not only could that fund services properly, it could also remove the need for income tax and all the admin that goes with it. You only get what you pay for.
DeleteThere's plenty of money there, it's simply a matter of how it's spent. They might start by re-using perfectly good kit, that is otherwise chucked.
DeleteI saw the answer in your post....Gordon Ramsay.
ReplyDeleteHim, and maybe Clarkson together.
DeleteHere , here....imagine, people with common sense!
DeleteMy wife was a nurse within the NHS for forty two years and two of my best friends also devoted their entire working lives to the NHS. Though never perfect, everything was hunky dory until Thursday May 6th 2010. That's when things started going downhill and soon, after all that has happened in the last fourteen years, Labour have a mammoth resurrection job to do. People like Cameron and Osborne and Sunak and Hunt don't even use the NHS.
ReplyDeleteI worked in the NHS through the Blair and Cameron years, and the rot set in much earlier than the date you highlight. Brown's PFI off- balance sheet financing has been an horrendous financial millstone around Trusts, Blair's National Programme for IT was a £15billion disaster that delivered nothing meaningful to operational efficiency, his revised GP contract was responsible for the destruction of much of the 24hour care delivered by GPs, and resulted in a move of many to part-time working for the same or higher pay. And Cameron and following governments have loaded ever more box-ticking nightmares onto front-line staff, and and introduced ever more complexity, management oversight and meaningless quangos into the mix.For an insider view of current NHS see some of the writing of Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
DeleteFor all that it is trumpeted as some kind of fantastical model of brilliant healthcare, no other country in the world has chosen to follow it, and it's outcomes are at most mediocre in comparison to other development countries, and at comparable cos are a fraction of GDP.
You can hardly blame Cameron Osborne and Sunak for not using the NHS; they'd never get seen! Unless they wished to be refused treatment on the pavement by strikers!
DeleteI was an NHS management trainee in 1981. NHS management was rotten to the core then and I abandoned my position after 12 months.
DeleteSadly, one can see that, and hear about it, on a daily basis.
DeleteI blogged about my experience of my year as the management trainee a few years back. I received a lot of comments from present day NHS workers, with no political axe to grind and many who had never commented before, who told me that in 2018 or whenever it was I wrote the post around about then, that nothing had changed and my experiences of 1981 in the NHS would be similar today.
DeleteUS has healthcare issues as well. Our doctors are earning $200,000 to $400,000 per year. This seems legitimate to me. We've had no strikes among doctors but nurses have been on strike over salary and number of patients assigned. In Massachusetts, Stuart Healthcare operates several hospitals and they are $50 billion in debt. Hospital management raised money by selling off assets. Yet the cash raised did not solve their problem because expenses continued to exceed income. Where did the cash go? Management is to be faulted. 9 hospitals might well close and the question is where will people go for care? Can other hospitals take-on large numbers of patients? A neighbor of mine, needed extensive dental work and he went home to India for care. He said a US dentist wanted to provide his care for equivalent to 3 M-class Mercedes Benz and in India he found a US Harvard Dental School trained dentist to do the work for one Benz. MD's and dentists can a do get their training in the US and then leave to start a lucrative practice overseas.
ReplyDeleteDentists in the UK is a whole other business. There are hardly any NHS dentists any more, and the private ones cost a fortune. Dentists here earn even more than doctors.
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