I was born in 1955. I am a child of the NHS through and through. My father worked as a hospital manager i was born in St Georges Hospital Hyde Park Corner in London ( it is now a posh hotel!). I have worked in the NHS for my whole working life. Am immensely proud of it and of the amazing things it does everyday. I have absolutely loved my career and have been so privileged to work with fantastic people. We are united by vocation and a deep and fundamental belief in the underpinning values of what we are doing. We are here to serve.
We don't get it right all the time. Remember reading the first report on mid staffs and was moved to tears by the stories of the suffering. How could this happen in our beloved NHS? I am fortunate never to have seen that kind of neglect and wrong doing. What I know for sure is that most of the nhs which is a huge and complex organisation is not that. My patients tell me of great care, high standards, kind people. Not every time. But most of the time. People going beyond what they have to do because it is the right thing to do.
Recently I was told about a young man who is having lots of problems and was admitted to a young people's mental health facility over 200 miles away for assessment. His family were not happy and brought him home. The local team provided round the clock care for him at home until a more local and acceptable place could be found for him. Some of that meant being there with his family keeping him safe through the night. They were not paid extra. They didn't do on call normally they did it because it was the right thing to do. I heard about it by the by.. They didn't do it for glory or thanks they did it without hesitation because they care.
The NHS is facing challenges much greater than those it has faced before. The future feels more uncertain now than at any time I can remember. We need, I think on this 65th anniversary to pause and remember why we are all here. I have been at a meeting of people like me, GPs who have chosen to take on the leadership of their local NHS from across England and what struck me about everyone spoke to was that they were motivated by wanting to make it better, wanting to sort out the difficult ,the complex, the things that have been left undone and unresolved by others because they are motivated to make a difference. As a group we don't have all the answers but we are determined. The word bravery was used a lot And I think we will have to be brave. Brave and open and honest with our public however challenging that may feel at times. W can't offer them everything they might want but hopefully we might each of us can find a way to make our little bit of England better and over time that should add to something better.
I think it is easy to forget the miracle that is modern medicine. My mother, who I have written about recently is 93. Until very recently she was living independently. She would describe herself as fit and hasn’t seen herself as a major user of the NHS. She has had both her cataracts done, a hip replaced and wears a hearing aid. She couldn't afford to do any of that privately. Without the NHS she would be lame, blind and deaf. Shut off from the world. She would probably be dead by now. All of those things are routine, un-dramatic but they make huge differences to our lives. I have close friends who have survived breast cancer.
I could go on. I often think that when we plan change we forget to include those fundamental aspects of the issue that we take for granted and sometimes that means we lose them before we consciously even know they were at risk. Yes the NHS needs to change but can we all please remember why is was created in the first place. My sister lives in the states and has insurance but her care does not in any way measure up to the care she would get if she lived here. I spent a while in France recently and my experience of care there was that general practice was very primitive and there is a complete lack of any domiciliary care for frail or palliative patients and people die in distant impersonal hospitals because there is no alternative. But that is another story. We must not fall into the trap of believing everything is better everywhere else.
Aneurin Bevin is quoted as saying:
THE NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it
As a child of the NHS I want to fight for it survival. We may not know how now to solve every problem but we can be united by a collective will to find those solutions whilst hanging on to the principles that underpin it. Will you join me?
