We see it on TV, we read about it in the papers, we hear people talking about it on the bus, and we ourselves can’t deny having moaned about it at some point in our lives.
The NHS is quite possibly the nations favourite subject to moan about.
All right, so it’s fair to say there is a bed shortage in hospitals, we know this and the hospitals admit this. Although it has been suggested the NHS are using the excuse of a Flu epidemic to explain the shortage in hospital beds. It’s constantly in the news and if you haven’t been affected by it, then chances are someone you know will have been. I am pleased to say I have never had the misfortune of being admitted to hospital; therefore I have never experienced the problems with bed shortages first hand.
The second point I’d like to raise is the so-called nursing staff shortage in our hospitals. It’s being talked about constantly, and seems to be a real problem. But an article from the BBC says the NHS has employed 40,000 new nurses since 1997. So why is there still a shortage. I think it’s exactly the same reason there aren’t enough beds. There isn’t enough money to pay nurses.
I have a friend from the Cheque Republic who moved to England a fully trained nurse. But she can’t get any work over here, because there are no vacancies for nurses in Hospitals at the moment. She is now working in a restaurant and improving her English. But it seems sad that someone with the right training cannot get a job in their field, especially when it seems to be a field where there is an alarming shortage.
Hospital hygiene might be what the population complains about the most. Five years ago when my Nan went into hospital for an operation on her arm, I remember being disgusted at the state of the ward she was staying on. There was a bloodstain on the bed sheets, and everything was grubby. I have, of course visited people in hospitals since then. Most recently last October in the very same hospital, and conditions had improved dramatically. Figures released by the department of health say that 60% of hospitals had good levels of hygiene. It would be better is it was nearer to 100% it is a hospital. But it is an improvement on the 44% in 2001. So what is everyone still moaning about?
Many people complain about the level of care they receive from nursing staff during their stay. When I went to college I caught the same bus as the one that went to the hospital as it was next door to the college. I lost count of the amount of times I sat behind a couple of elderly women who were moaning about the poor care they experienced when they were last in hospital. But a recent survey by the Healthcare Commission revealed that 92% of patients were happy with the care they received. But I think more than 8% of patients are still moaning about it. Are people just jumping on the bandwagon? Have these people who moan at the bus stop even been admitted to hospital in the last year?
My sister has been in and out of hospital all her life. Along with this I have paid many hospital visits. Not once have I found anything to complain about. A lot of the time my mum has been left to do her general medication, but she does that at home anyway. Four months ago my sister was once again admitted. During this time her condition deteriorated and a few weeks before Christmas things were at an all time low. As you can imagine it was a hard time for the whole family. But the people who made it easier were the nursing staff. They took over full care and for once let my Mum be a Mother not a carer. This took so much strain off the family and it was still an upsetting time, but the support we received was well above my expectations.
As far as standards of care go in hospitals, I think our nursing staff is constantly improving and people who complain have quite obviously never been in a situation where high levels of care and support are needed. At a time when a family needed support the most, the staff at Evelina Children’s hospital at St. Thomas’s was exceptional.
The general public of Britain need to get off their high horse and start taking note of the positive things, and stop searching for the negatives. Because walking into any NHS hospital these days, you will have to look very hard to find something to complain about.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
althoughu make some good points i will have to disagree, the nhs stillhas many problems and the government figures that 92% of patients are satisfied makes me laugh, how is it that i know of noone who is satisfied with treatment given by the nhs? also u have to look at how large a number of patients were included in this research? and also, sadly, which parts of the country were they from. in my opinion the nhs has sadly become part of the north south divide, better facilities and waiting times in some parts of the country where others are faced with hospital closures and ever lenghtening waiting lists. the truth is tht the nhs may have improved in certain areas but that sadly, it is still found lacking in many other important areas. you say tht 60% of hospitals have a good standard of hygiene, 100% of hospitals should have a good standard of hygiene and would if the staff were doing what they were paid to do. people do not expect to go in for minor surgery and come out with mrsa. at the end of the day peoples opinions of the nhs will differ greatly with personal experience, but to take government figures as accurate and true is wrong,we can't exactly trust Mr. Blair's labour party can we.
I like this post - good argument, excellent use of links to back up your points. Perhaps you could have linked to some of the anti-NHS stuff you get in the Daily Mail and other papers as an example of the kind of criticism aimed at hospitals.
On the subject of MRSA, there's some really interesting reports from The Guardian's science reporter, which cast doubt on how much we can trust some of the testing that's been done to detect MRSA - I'll try to find it for you in class - but basically the problem is that a private firm does a lot of the MRSA testing, its credentials don't stand up to scrutiny and it earns more money the more evidence of MRSA it discovers - as a result, it has an incentive to 'discover' more problems, most of which don't stand up to real scrutiny...
Sorry, I'm rambling - but it's because this is really interesting. I like the way you've used personal experience and set it in a larger context. I think there's a few things we could do to improve the flow of your prose, but we'll talk about that in class.
It's no surprise to me that you drew a comment - have you responded yet?
Post a Comment