NHS Reform

The NHS, say GP's doesn't need reform. Well, actually they aren't saying that, just that the entire reform package currently proposed is wrong. Can that really be true? Bearing in mind the stunning rate at which the NHS is now killing people, has some reforming zealot MP only come up with things that will make it worse?

Despite being very careful to recruit large numbers of Managers, who are constantly in receipt of helpful advice in the form of reports about how exactly they managed to kill a specific person (or group of people recently) and how they might avoid it in future, management ineptitude in the organisation trundles on at a high level. GP's say the reforms will damage joined up healthcare, but it doesn't exist now so what are they wittering on about?

At the base of it all, you get the distinct impression that all of these objections to change are about money. What did GP's do when offered a massive pay rise by Blair? Took it and voted for him. Bonuses to do the night cover you have always done? No thanks, they said, what with the doubling of my salary I'll forgo the bit extra and all the hassle (work) that goes with it.

Recently, courses were run using first year medical students to teach GP's resuscitation techniques. Personally, I would have hoped they would have been up to speed on such stuff, you know, joined up heathcare -sick people come to see you, possibly collapsing etc. I wonder what else they are a bit hazy on?

We know that an unworkable bureaucracy has been allowed to thrive within the NHS and this needs fundamental reform, but also the attitudes and functioning of the medical class has also gone awry. Doctors seem to make a lot of mistakes these days, nurses having been given higher levels of training no longer remember how to feed people, or that hydration is important. Patients are not treated as people with medical problems, they are paperwork in a process.

My own experience of the compartmentalised approach to medicine that is practised in our NHS is that, if they think you have cancer they will spend months trying to prove it is, then finding it isn't they will pass you on to another specialism, to let them have a go at finding what is wrong with you. The patients welfare, let alone life are irrelevant in this system, as the only interest is in going through the motions.

The reform that is really needed is radical and at a fundamental level; we must address the culture of the organisation. A culture that now opposes reform stating patient care, but is actually solely motivated by self interest. The NHS is not a bad idea, just a very bad organisation from its roots.