The NHS is unfair, why should it remain sacrosanct?

Crooked Crocodile

“Leaders and policy makers cannot take up a post outside the system and shout directions at it - trying to do so can produce exactly the wrong results.” (Plsek 2001:2)
An environment in which health service organisations do not feel intimidated by targets and are encouraged to identify new opportunities is more likely to encourage positive outcomes of complex adaptive behaviour, leading to improved standards and health outcomes.
This can be contrasted with a system built around a multitude of performance targets which encourages complex adaptive behaviour resulting in outcomes which may be to the detriment of patient care. Such a system also alienates professionals as it labels complex adaptive systems among clinicians as resistance to change, rather than appreciating that their energies could be harnessed to encourage innovation.

Verity

Revolutionise the system, which is torpid, lazy and greedy and has way too many non-English speakers who should not be employed in such a critical area as health.

Strip out the thick wadge of middle management.

Only admit people who are entitled, by way of contributions, or citizenship, for free treatment. Anyone else should not be admitted without showing proof of ability to pay.

Or, in the American way, if it's an emergency, admit them until they're stabilised (but not cured), then send them on their way.

Better yet get a top level management team in from France or Singapore and adopt either of their first class systems. In both these systems, the money follows the patient, who chooses where to be treated. Those hospitals, laboratories and clinics that provide excellent service get chosen by more people and make more money.

I would also suggest giving preference in employment to British doctors and nurses who understand the nuances of the language and facial expressions of the Brits. I include Canucks, Ozzies, Kiwis and Indians under "native Brits",

Oh, and bring back matrons. The hospitals in Singapore have matrons and those wards are spanking clean and efficient and the nurses hang on matron's every word of instructions.

Stuart Beamish

My daughter was sent away from A&E after 4 hours despite being numb down half her body and having such a bad headache she couldn't stand up. When sge asked for pain-killers she was told "go to a pharmacy."
Fortunately she was in London and so could go to another hospital, but after 24 hours they dishcarged her too.
She'd run into the dreaded target - 4 hours in A&E ? No idea what is wrong ? Send them home rather than miss a target.

SUSAN HILL

Of the many many things wrong
1. Too many managers and sub layers of sub managers.
2. Doctors encouraged to follow the money not treat the patient.
3. Nurses being trained off the wards to take degrees and regarding routine nursing jobs as beneath them.
4. Too many managers.

Austin Barry

"But care is hindered by a lack of resources and facilities."

And compounded by an increasing population, particularly immigrants with pre-existing Third World conditions. But we can't talk about this, can we?

Holly ......

Well now's the chance for the MSM to GET BEHIND anything that improves the outcome of people like your neighbour.
Support him when he tries to get over these
'obstacles'and get across the message properly to us 'idiots' out here.
Maybe if the MSM had held Labour to account more about where ALL the extra funding was going and how the targets were working out for the patients,your neighbour would have been treated as they should have been. We will never know.
This situation is EVERYONE'S FAULT.
Hopefully,in the future you will listen to us when we are screaming at you.
It took eighteen months for mr Holly to be taken seriously and that was only because he could no longer swallow.His weight dropped to about seven & half stone and he was a horrid greyish yellow colour.Then it took many X rays & FIVE biopsies to diagnose what type of cancer he had.Then during his chemo/radiation therapy he was summoned to our local hospital to collect notes to take with him to St James's in Leeds,only when I complained did he get treated with any respect he deserved by the system.
The nurses are fantastic.
McMillan cancer support are amazing & I can never thank them enough for their support.
The system is in turmoil.
David Cameron Knows what the front line staff have to deal with, has talked to them, probably while at his lowest ebb,so he knows & fully understands the changes the nurses and doctors are crying out for.
He may not be Maggie,but he HAS experienced the cruel side of life and that for me makes him more able to understand what some of us out here go through all the time.
Cameron is NOT perfect,NOT weak, he is compassionate,caring,bright and has a vision of where the NHS needs to be.
The same for Britain.
Cameron has amassed a massive amount of information about what is wrong with
Britain today,maybe I am wrong, but I think he has a much better,realistic idea of how to begin to put things right.
On the other hand,I may just be right.
My gut instincts tell me I can trust Cameron to do the right thing.Not the popular thing,not the buy the electorate
off thing,not the appease the natives thing,
the right thing,to help us all to have better than we do now,who want to be better than they are now.A government does not have to be sat on top of us all the time,
throwing money at things that have failed,
in the blind hope money will 'fix it',if they do not first find out what is making it fail in the first place.
Unlike what Labour would have us believe you don't have to be rich,heartless or nasty to vote Conservative.
I totally trust David Cameron with the NHS.

Barbara

Has a former nurse I have first hand knowledge of the NHS, it can work well, and does in most cases and their are patients who would not have survived without it are many. Not all can afford to pay that should be noted. What we really should be saying is NO MORE patients coming into the country for FREE treatment they should not be having. Time to make all thoughs who have no NI or paid taxes to not have a right to treatment. To make people work for five years before free treatment is earnt in fulltime employment. Tough but it has to be done its only fair to those who work and pay the bills. We, has a country can no longer afford to be the benevolant country we once were when we borrow to furnish our own survival. We need to wake up and smell the coffee, times up on the freebies.
On the question of foreign staff, I agree they are poorly trained, have no moral leanings to patient care, we should train our own and go back to the old way where one trained on the wards, then you have availabel staff and they learn as they go.

THX1138

Tories mess with the NHS their peril especially as new Telegraph poll shows Tories more trusted than Labour on NHS 43% vs 35%.. But new Sun ICM poll (taken after failed coup) show Tory lead down 1% now seems to be hovering permanently around 9/10 % it ain't enough and it it's game on..

Andy Leeds

NHS is a disaster, and always has been. Time it was broken up and privatised. For those who take issue with this idea there is a question: why does the State need to own a Hospital ? Answer: it doesn't.

Walsingham's Ghost

Yes, vast amounts of money have certainly been thrown at the (still unreformed) NHS – but woe-betide if your Hospital happens to be in an area with a Tory MP or Council.

The Hospital you refer to in your post (St. Richards’ in Chichester) is my local Hospital and despite delivering award winning levels of service, was recently inexplicably designated by the Government to lose its A&E Dept. It only managed to overturn the decision thanks to a hugely popular local campaign led by, among others, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones (a very human individual in real life, far removed from his more popular image).

I’m sure the fact that we have both a Conservative MP (Andrew Tyrie MP) and Council had nothing to do with Westminster’s decision to leave us bereft of A&E cover.

Then again...

Simon

You suggest a voter friendly way of removing the state from health provision then. Its so easy for the "intellectuals" here on Heffer House to slag off Dave for not doing more on health provision but you lot dont have to win an election. I have yet to read a single sentence from any of you suggesting a politically sensible way forward on health. Until you lot come up with voter friendly health policy you wont be taken seriously. Please tell us how to reduce expenditure on health and win an election?

THX1138

Susan Hill you're always going on about too many managers in the NHS, any evidence?

Many on this blog seem to think like Daniel Hannan that we should adopt the ultra free market US American insurance system that consumes 16% of their GDP- twice as much as ours- for hardly any benefit and the number of managers is legion.. Can I suggest that you watch David Cutler the noted Harvard health economist explain the myriad levels of levels of bureaucracy in the US healthcare system

http://ow.ly/SC5H

Makes the NHS look like a model of efficiency.

barry

Wakey, wakey, chaps...this is the result of the mad, target driven culture which has been imposed on the NHS. Managers are sacked if the 4hour A and E "target" isn't met, and they would rather patients are left to die than the targets breeched.

See my SAVE BEDFORD HOSPITAL website www.vote4barry.blogspot.com

chris as usual

My Grandson's room mate at University collapsed one evening and he called an ambulance and they arrived at hospital about an hour later. They were discharged an hour or so later with no transport or diagnosis and had to call a taxi. As he left, a senior person at the hospital told my grandson to think twice before calling an ambulance in the future; the episode had cost the NHS several hundred pounds.

His friend died less that a year later from a brain tumour; the episode above was the first symptom. He collapsed again 3 days later.

Dorothy Wilson

David: I could tell you some equally appalling stories about the NHS. I'm not sure whether my friends and family have been particularly unlucky but between them they seem to have experienced some pretty unfortunate incidents.

And Barbara is absolutely right. No more people coming into the country for free treatment they haven't paid for. There should also be a return to the link between paying NI and taxes and the benefits available so people are aware that the NHS isn't actually free. It is paid for by the taxes of people who work.

Another suggestion would be for the tightening up of the issuing of student visas to include a requirement for them to have health insurance before they enter the country.

Wight Tory

Having been diagnosed with a Kidney Stone the day before Lord Longtitle, I'm still Waiting...

14months later, on Morphine and 6 unfulfilled treatments (long story of lost notes, cancellations and inappropriate treatment) The last Op date on Thurday 7th has been cancelled, which has effectively driven the final nail into my business surviving, all being well, we might save the house from repossession. The NHS is a sham, it needs the rot removing from the top down, it will cost less and deliver better, if not more.

Letters to the CEO of the Trust are ignored in there response to the problems highlighted, other than a thanks for pointing out the issues and that they'll address these for the benefit of other patients. This presents 2 problems in themselves.

1) I'm all for an improved services and other benefiting from failures, but how does that help me exactly?
2) How can I prove they've done this? and mores the point, is anybody likely to follow up this after they've finally been discharged and hold the Trust to account?

I do wonder about the spending commitments made by the Tories, please,please, please do so with re-organisation of the running of the blasted thing upper-most in mind, anything else is wasted money and a wasted opportunity for the people of Britain

AAE

I have a german friend, a neuro-surgeon, who for the sake of his english wife took a job as an NHS consultant, but lasted here only six months because a majority of his patients were being presented months after the point where his skills could save them. And this was at the NHS flagship, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital!! He has now gone back to Munich to watch his patients live rather than die.
As with the economy, it's time to finish with the platitudes (lies spoken only to provoke that naive feel-good audience reaction) and face realities, including filthy hospitals, operating theatres and other treatment resources lying unused for much of the week, neglectful bad-tempered nursing, arrogant and downright second-rate consultants who know you can't go anywhere else, and close ranks like the best of 1970's trade union brothers if someone makes a complaint.
There is another thing which is also long overdue for re-thinking, and surely I can't be the only person who finds it totally unacceptable that we pay such a huge proportion of our earnings, rich and poor, in all forms of taxation but there is no contractual agreement between the taxpayer and the state?
How come the NHS escapes the attention of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? The universal provision of food is done very well by Tesco, Asda and the corner shop, so suggesting that multiple suppliers could far better supply our health-care doesn't make one a "bad person". Billions upon billions are being wasted to fulfill a long-failed ideology when it could be doing so much good, but it takes courage and real vision and intellect to stand outside the consensus, and who on either front bench has got that?

Derek

The NHS remains a 1940s solution to a 1930s problem, and no government has either the balls or the brains to fix it. Brown hosed it with stealth-tax money and, predictably, even such a resource-hungry operation couldn't usefully consume money that fast. Like the public education system, from policy-makers down to the manager level, the system is more for the benfit of the Salariat that derives a nice middle-class income and life-style from it than for the lowly-paid front-line staff and the service user. Having said that, the idea that the front line-staff are oppressed angels is a fallacy. Or, maybe I've just had too many coincidentally unfortunate experiences in the last few years.

emil

Bizarre. Any opposition party going into a general election promising to break up the NHS would get slaughtered, whatever the merits of the policy.

I'd love to play poker with you lot, you'd be dying to show your cards before the betting commenced.

Frank P

Has anyone ever really analysed just what the PFI/PPP has already cost the NHS, what it will cost as infinitum and what impact the 'services' have had on NHS efficiency?
Even Gerry Robinson only looked at front line services and departmental liaison, rather than the financial dealings and ducking and divings during his TV menderings; not the political rewards of those that have played the game with a series of governments.

The kick-backs in cash and kind were only the start; it was what was facilitated by the kick-backs that has crippled and will continue to cripple the NHS. Will Cameron be able to do anything about that Holly? One hopes your faith in him will at least make him try. He sure has a mammoth task ahead of him. He had better be as good as, if not indeed better than, you envisage. Remind us to discuss in say three years or so.

Stephen

Whoever wins the next Election should wake up to immense challenge of the State within a State that in reality is what NHS is. It's probably the biggest challenge/threat to the State since Henry VIII dissolved the all powerful monastries! Even Thatcher probably would not have the guts to take on this Sacred Cow let alone our Dave!

Snowman

I’ve said so often it pains my fingers hitting the keyboard with the same message again.

The NHS set-up is akin in every respect (ownership, funding, resource allocation, failures and stuff) to the totalitarian monstrosity of the now defunct communist east. No system, never ever, can work on the these tenets well.

I know it pains to admit the NHS has turned a failure after decades of being proud of it. Sooner or later, however, the NHS will collapse not unlike the communist regimes unless it abandons the ‘free at the point of delivery’ anachronism. There ain’t anything ‘free’ in this world, the resources must come from somewhere.

We all are buyers of cars, and not all of us can afford brands that cost tens of thousands. But even the cheapest brands on the market today offer by far superior quality, reliability and comfort than the most expensive brands of eighty years ago. It was the ability of the few in the money to buy cars in the past coupled with the unlimited hunger of the car makers to make consistent returns by enlarging the market segments that has brought about the widespread availability of comfortable cars to virtually all of us at an affordable cost.

Maintaining health ain’t the same as buying a car, but the same principles of lowering costs and boosting overall satisfaction apply in the delivery of health, too. It may be that by bringing the service under the spell of the market forces will put some at a disadvantage. Many of us, as David’s friend demonstrates, are already being disadvantaged anyway, and more of the same is to come as costs escalate and demand will have to be rationed even more.

The key point remains, however. Not unlike democracy, the market mechanism is bloody awful, yet it has been proven to be the best conduit for delivering noticeable improvements in the standards of life for all.

Under a proper and well-tuned oversight, and with help for those who genuinely cannot afford even the basic cover, a largely market driven health delivery service cannot be beaten.

michael

Those on the boards of trusts purchasing services and equipment, also so sitting on the boards of respective suppliers.

Privatisation Westminster style.

Every angle!

Wishfulthinking

The sooner the NHS drops its 1971 'prevention is better than cure' policy the better. The job of the NHS is to 'cure' and, when left to get on with the job, is usually quite good at it.

Get rid of Public Health, the 'prevention' arm of the health service. They haven't done anything really useful for the last 30 yrs, IMO and have more political power than is healthy for a bunch of people in white coats.

Dump targets, obviously. Why do you need so much information? Surely, if a hospital isn't performing adequately this would be known by the local MP whose business it should be to 'do something about it'. He's answerable to how our taxes are spent, after all.

And why do nurses need 'degrees' for goodness sake? It used to be a popular option for lovely, caring girls who weren't much interested in an academic career. They just wanted a respectable job with a decent wage, and one that they could return to when the children grew up.

As this is turning into a bit of a wish list, I'll add bring back cottage hospitals, too. I can understand why teaching hospitals need to be vast, and those specialising in certain areas, but for routine tonsils/hips/etc do people have to endure the added stress of complicated journeys to distant hospitals? And some kind of grant/start-up system to get more GPs out there. And bring back nit nurses.

Turn the clock back, I suppose. To when the NHS was a bit of a nanny, but before it turned into a bully.

Verity

But as I and others have mentioned, a similar concept, but intelligently and efficiently run, works extremely well in France and Singapore. Why not adapt either of these intelligent, efficient systems and bring over a seasoned team from either country to run it in for us?

I think there is something distasteful about the entire concept of the NHS. I don't even like the communist-style name.

Teck Khong

Being both a patient advocate and a doctor for the past 30 odd years, I can tell you that although it is a major task to implement a new health system, it really is not difficult at all.

The problems are easily identified. But there are two major requisites. Firstly, that section of unenlightened public has to understand that our rickety NHS barely survives not because of policies but because of dedicated nursing and medical staff at the front-line, and the more these people are frustrated and diminished, the worse the health service becomes.

The second requisite has two elements, the first of which is that the remit of our health system has to be redefined in terms of its scope; at present, it is far too diverse and unfocused. The second is that it needs to be steered without deference to interest or pressure groups.

Bring forth a modern-day William Beveridge.

JohnPage

If politicians couldn't run a whelk stall (Patricia Hewitt, anyone?), what chance of them gripping one of the biggest organisations in the world? (After the Russian army and Indian Railways, I think?)

The unaccountable layers of bureaucracy insulate almost anyone inside from accountability, certainly to their patients.

So free healthcare needs to be provided by more than one monolithic organisation.

But no party saying so will gain power. So you need a ruthless strategy surrounded by total secrecy.

If Lansley gets the job, forget it. Trying to tweak the organisation will never hack it - it's FAR TOO BIG!

Olaf Rye

Before we are so quick to adduce the cost of health-care in the USA as an example of the exaggerated costs of a private system, let us bear in the mind how much of our medical costs are passed on to departments other than the NHS. In the US, the cost of preventative medicine is quite high which is something that we have no tradition of in the UK. Many tests that Americans request are not offered here, chiefly because of short-sighted budget considerations. To balance the books in the next fiscal year, the authorities are willing to countenance expensive cancer treatment later. Also, there are aspects of US medical coverage that we pass on to the DSS such as home visits and and so forth. Moreover, bear in mind the number of charities involved in providing nursing care to cancer patients and so forth. This is all besides the moral argument of rationing the newest and most effective treatments for many afflictions.

Of course, the US system has many faults and shortcomings, one of which is management in the insurance companies. What is necessary is an honest appraisal of the costs of our system and its overall results. I must confess that my experience of the NHS is that the doctors and staff are more concerned with following guidelines and securing their careers than the best interests of the patient. Sometimes you hear the weasel words that the decisions by NICE and other bodies are in the best interests of the patients and society, but try to tell this to a man dying of cancer that is denied treatment because of a board apportioning cash based on budgetary considerations. We have a massive amount of waste in the NHS and much of it relates to management and a slavish devotion to the edicts from the chain of command. This is partly the fault of doctors, partly of patients and the electorate, but more an expression of the British mentality to protect their jobs above all else. As I like to point out, when people were dying at hospitals in Kent from viral infections, none of the staff raised concerns. It took the statisticians to identify problems and then the nurses and doctors said they knew of the problems but were worried about losing their jobs and punitive actions if they blew the whistle. If they will not show some courage when people are dying around them, how can we expect these people to effect changes ? We did not accept that argument at Nuremberg, but the 'I was following orders and would have lost my job if I didn't' seems perfectly reasonable to modern Britons.

Frank P

emil

"I'd love to play poker with you lot, you'd be dying to show your cards before the betting commenced."

You've hit the nail on the head. The politicians are playing poker with the taxpayers money. You must be a politician.

General Zod

Don't you get it yet, Speccie writers? If the Tories say anything other than that they will protect NHS budgets, Labour will launch an all-out assault using the "Don't let the Tories kill the NHS" line.

In the pre-election period, the Tories have no choice. Once they are elected, they'd better get on with some serious reform.

2trueblue

The headline says it all. The NHS is unfair. When you are working you pay 11.5% + and your employer makes a further contribution of 13.5%, and frankly it is not value for money. I never understand why those who just show up do not have to produce any residency or similar details.

Nick

There is just not enough time, resources or political capital for a future Tory government to deal with the economic crisis, a radical restructuring of education and a radical restructuring of the NHS in a first term.

Quite sensibly, therefore, it appears the Tories have chosen to concentrate on the economy and education for a first term government. The NHS will just have to wait.

SUSAN HILL

THX1138. Managers. Did you ever watch Gerry Robinson`s programmes where he was trying to change a hospital embedded deep in layers of management at every level ?
One tiny example. Local PCT. I went to a meeting and was afterwards approached by someone who said she was 'a deputy Press officer'. I asked how many there were. Five she said. Why does an area PCT need FIVE people in a Press Office. Why does it need a Press Office, period.
Ask my GP about Management. They are bombarded daily by reams of paperwork about incentives/best practice/Health and S/prescribing/referrals to hospital, every one of them from a different Manager. I know because I have seen them.
I am sure if you went to either the office area of a large general hospital or your PCT you would see how many managers there are. Of course some are needed.But not the numbers that exist. Look in the jobs pages of any NHS journal too.

TrevorsDen

"One shouldn't extrapolate that this represents standard NHS care" -- so why do you and why do your correspondents.

emil is right - tories would be massacred if they suggested abolishing the NHS. its here and its what we have. it must like all mother institutions be made to work. And mostly it does.

Verity praies France. And how is that paid for? Compulsory insurance. Does anyone think such a process in the UK would be cheaper/
In germany its the same - but people can 'top up' for better treatment. they are now finding this hugely expensive because the problems of the NHS are the same the whole world over.

Some people make me laugh. they think they and their families are some how immune from the huge burden of serious illness and old age and infirmity. just how do these numpties plan to deal with nthese problems without the NHS. Are they really goiung to fully insure themselves are they really going to do the necessary savings.

One day and for some of us one day soon we will be glad for universal health care free at the point of service. of course we shoult take an interest in seeing it is delivered as efficiently as possible and we should be aware of the limits of health care social care and our own responsibilities for ourselves - but we should also talk talking bollocks about it.

Olaf Rye

Trevor,

I appreciate some of your points, but the notion that the NHS takes care of us when we have a serious illness or become old is untenable. Look at the NICE guidelines on their web-site--there is a formula for deciding whether treatment to keep you alive is financially justifiable. Hence, we have a Potemkin medical system where you pay but ultimately do not receive the services when it is necessary because of edicts from the government. We can take, perhaps, Australia's model or even conceive of a new one ourselves. If people can afford to drink every weekend, have satellite televisions and mobile telephone contracts, they can afford the private medical insurance in Australia. This, of course, does not address the problem of the exorbitant cost of private medicine in Britain. In principle, public medicine ought to work, but in practice it does so quite poorly because of meddling by politicians to win over certain sections of the electorate to whom they cannot say no.

Frank P

Trevor'sDen.

Free at the point of care? Free for whom? Even though I have now reached the age where I need medical services and indeed by and large get excellent service from the dedicated front-line staff, I paid into the system for a lifetime, through National Insurance, direct taxation, and private insurance too when I could afford it. I would like to think that all those who now exploit the 'free' service have contributed, or will, contribute in a similar fashion. If I was to suggest that that is indeed the case I would indeed "talk talking bollocks".

Indeed I know that the 'free' service has been exploited not only by malingerers and self-harmers, foreigners and freeloaders, but by an avaricious top-heavy management, greedy multi-national Pharmas and bent technology firms that have ripped of the taxpayers with promises they knew they couldn't keep for systems that they knew wouldn't work.

The NHS has been a bigger scam to date than the curreent AGW scam: but give the latter time, they are catching up by leaps and bounds. Btw Lord Stern has been a bit schtoom over the festive period, hasn't he? Probably avoiding snowballs and ice-hockey sticks.

Austin Barry

The Times, 16 March 2009:

"The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse female circumcisions, with experts warning that each year more than 500 British girls have their genitals mutilated. Despite having been outlawed in 1985, female circumcision is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as 5."

The barbarians are inside the gate.

michael

Hey diddle diddle
pfi's such a fiddle,
for giggling trustees a real boon.
Gordon's wry smiles at more tax payer piles,
for the cronies a new silver spoon.

Augustus

I think that David Cameron is right not to be thumping the rostrum about a new wave of Tory organizational change to the NHS, if that is indeed his strategy. All this continued reform is costly, and God knows, there's been enough of it under Labour, which generally speaking has been rather a circular process, ending up back where they started, with the impact on front-line clinical staff or patients being negligible.
Paradoxically, with the NHS, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It's been a fruitless political search for a way to manage the unmanageable. The answer
of course is to cease trying to think up ways of political intervention. There are countries where the state plays just as large a role in funding healthcare, but where central government wouldn't dream of trying to run it in the way Whitehall has tried to do here.

THX1138

Susan-Yes I do remember the Gerry Robinson programme and it would be great if the NHS could employ managers like Robinson, however I would imagine that you and many others on this blog would baulk at the £1 million plus PA salaries these super managers command in the private sector. It's good to see Robinson giving something back after all his Company Compass, providers of junk food to the masses has done so much to provide the NHS with customers..

Noa Zrk

Olaf Rye and others touch on the core problem a future government faces with the NHS; where it starts and where it ends.
Its budget seamlessly into social services, incredibly, allowed and encouraged under Brown to grow into a sprawling and unreformed disaster area in need of even greater reform than the NHS.
Open book accounting in a genuinely reforming government is an imperative if it is manage properly and be held to proper account for fiscal incompetencies on the scale committed by Brown under New Labour.

TGF UKIP

THX 1138, first Verity and now Susan Hill kicks your leftie arse to kingdom come. Can guess who wears the trousers in your house.

Liby Brown

let me tell u all. you are all beating about the bush in this issue. the problem was ans is still being caused by u all and i will tell you why and how. when did we start expereincing major problems from nhs and about healthcare? we have to tell ourselves the truth and not drift away froom reality. we must call a spade a spade. everything started since the accession of the eastern europeans and healthcare professions from those countries, now according to eu rules, have to just take up british healthcare jobs without undergoing any standard training.how can you expect for instance, a romania trained doctor or nurse to practice competently in English speaking UK? Impossible.i went to an nhs hospital to see my doctor. in fact I became ashamed that the doctor that was to see me could not speak good grammer!!!A doctor in the UK!!the doctor is from romania. and some of his nurses from bulgaria. so you see, we watered our system. period. reversing this is the only way we can save the system. subject all outside-UK trained health workers to the same standard tests. believ you me, i am a native english, i have link with asia or afroca or any other continent, well trained healthcare workers from english-colonised african and asian countries are 80% better that eastern european nurses and doctors. a word is enough for the wise. may we are shying away from this issue because we want to say we are for and under eu and we are lowering our standards