At the age of 16, I started working for the NHS as an occupational therapy assistant. I later trained as a doctor because I was so proud of the NHS and the ideologies underpinning it. I have always thought of it as one of this country’s greatest achievements and over the 25 years I have worked in it, I have vociferously defended it.
This makes what I’m about to say all the more sad. I used to love the NHS but, increasingly, I feel my relationship with it is on the rocks.
I’ve never been so naive as to think the NHS is perfect. Far from it. Of course it has its faults. But I always argued that it was an equitable and cheap way of delivering healthcare.
Dr Max Pemberton says the NHS seems to be less and less about patients (stock image)
Yet I — and many others — are starting to question who the NHS is for. Increasingly, it seems to be less and less about patients.
At the start of the pandemic we rightly rallied round, protected the NHS from being overwhelmed and applauded the staff on the front line.
But 18 months later, the goodwill the NHS built up is quickly being squandered.
Despite it now having had two years to prepare, we are still being told the NHS is at risk of collapse if there is another Covid wave; and we face the possibility of yet more lockdowns. What has the NHS been doing all this time if not getting itself prepared?
But surely most galling of all is that so many GPs are still refusing to see patients face to face. It has become a national crisis. Yet still many of my GP colleagues refuse to accept there is a problem.
They insist that, despite all the evidence, they still provide an adequate service. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Do they take us for fools? They are in denial. Seeing a doctor in person has become nigh-on impossible lately. This after Greater Manchester’s senior coroner reported that lack of face-to-face assessment had contributed to at least five deaths and warned of more to come.
Statistics released last week also suggest a lack of in-person appointments may have led to an 88 per cent spike in stillbirths in England during the pandemic.
Just this week my mum called me in a dither about my auntie, who had an infection but had been unable to see a GP. She ended up seeing a pharmacist privately who prescribed antibiotics but was only allowed to give a few days’ worth — the rest needed to be prescribed by a GP.
Yet the surgery informed her she still couldn’t see a GP until long after the course of antibiotics ran out. Utter chaos.
Dr Max (pictured) said rather than spending our time wishing away the years until we retire, perhaps the answer is to focus our energies on finding a job we don’t want to retire from
Like many others, my aunt had to resort to seeing a private GP, despite not really being able to afford it. My mum was beside herself with worry in case something similar happened to her, and wanted to know what she should do. I felt profound shame in the NHS when I had to say she should go private.
My mum, a staunch socialist, was horrified: ‘Is this really what we’ve come to in this country?’ she texted me afterwards.
Then, just days later, a man who works in my local dry cleaner’s texted me in desperation, asking what he should do because his wife was unwell but couldn’t get hold of a doctor.
Don’t tell me this is all just a coincidence. It is getting ludicrous. There was the atrocious case last week of a woman being unable to get an appointment for her son to see a GP, so in despair she paid for a private GP . . . only to find that the private GP was in fact the NHS GP she couldn’t get an appointment with.
People will only tolerate so many stories like this before there is a mutiny.
Nye Bevan, the father of the NHS, set out his idea for the Health Service in a book entitled In Place Of Fear — because that’s what he believed the NHS was.
Before it, people were scared of falling ill because it could bring financial ruin on a family. What a noble cause to address.
People are scared once more —but now it is because they feel the NHS isn’t there for them. They are scared they won’t get the help when they need it, won’t know where to turn and, increasingly, will have to pay for medical help. And it’s not just GPs. Hospital services that effectively shut up shop at the start of the pandemic have been woefully slow in starting up again.
Waiting lists for life-changing operations such as hip replacements are spiralling out of control — and the only solution seems to be to go to the Government, cap in hand, and ask for more money. The whole thing just feels so disheartening.
This isn’t about bashing the NHS for the sake of it. It’s about it being exposed as an antiquated, creaking system that can’t adapt fast enough to the demands being placed on it.
It’s about an institution based on a hotchpotch of short-term solutions that have been imposed by politicians in a haphazard way on an anachronistic model over the years that is now at death’s door.
It’s about a society that for years has had high expectations and a sense of entitlement but whose citizens don’t appreciate the cost of what they receive.
It’s about watching something I loved slowly die — and wishing the end would come sooner, because it’s agonising watching the death throes.
EMMA’S PARENTS ACED IT TOO
Emma Raducanu attributes her success to her ‘very, very hard-to-please’ parents. She says she feels their tough parenting style gave her the mental strength she needed to succeed. They sound like my kind of parents.
We in the West tend to adopt a permissive approach in which we try to be friends with our children, expectations are low, there is little discipline and children are allowed autonomy. We convince ourselves this is better than stricter parenting — but the evidence doesn’t support this.
Emma Raducanu attributes her success to her ‘very, very hard-to-please’ parents. She says she feels their tough parenting style gave her the mental strength she needed to succeed. They sound like my kind of parents.
Overall, it seems that more authoritative approaches (typical in Asian communities) produce better outcomes for the child. Later in life, children tend to view their parents in a far more positive light than those who had a permissive upbringing do.
Kids need boundaries, discipline and rules. When they grow up, they’ll thank you for it.
DR MAX PRESCRIBES… NON-DIGITAL SLEEP AID
This clever device looks like an egg-timer but is in fact a nifty sleeping aid. The Morphée sleep aid (£79, evesleep.co.uk) doesn’t have a screen so there is no blue light, which can affect sleep patterns. Instead, turning the keys allows the user to choose from more than 200 different short, guided meditation combinations to help you drift off.
This clever device looks like an egg-timer but is in fact a nifty sleeping aid. The Morphée sleep aid (£79, evesleep.co.uk) doesn’t have a screen so there is no blue light, which can affect sleep patterns. Instead, turning the keys allows the user to choose from more than 200 different short, guided meditation combinations to help you drift off.
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