Public sector employees everywhere treat their clients as barely tolerated irritants

28 November 2009

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

I watched Shadowlands again the other day, Richard Attenborough’s film about C.S. Lewis’s relationship with Joy Gresham, and was struck by one scene in particular. Anthony Hopkins is sitting beside the hospital bed of Debra Winger when suddenly she takes a turn for the worse. He leaps from his chair and runs out into the corridor. ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ he cries and almost instantly a nurse comes running and darts into his wife’s room. Shortly afterwards, a doctor appears and he updates Hopkins on Winger’s condition in a tactful, solicitous manner.

For any middle-class person who’s spent time in a hospital recently, this seems laughably out of date. Apparently, there really was a time, not so long ago, in which the social hierarchy of modern Britain was preserved in the NHS. If you were a professional person of some standing — an Oxford don, say — nurses would show you a good deal of respect. Even more remarkably, you could expect doctors to treat you as an equal. Incredible, but true.

To give you some idea of just how things have changed, consider a recent trip I made to visit a friend in hospital. He was semi- conscious and hooked up to a drip, having just come out of surgery. Various bits of detritus were strewn across his bed — a half-eaten sandwich, a banana skin, an old newspaper — as if someone had tipped up a wastepaper basket. When I pressed the button to summon a nurse, a short-tempered woman appeared and explained that the button should only be used in case of emergencies. Later, a consultant came by and, speaking very slowly and loudly, told my friend the operation had been a success. ‘You get better now,’ he said, smiling and nodding as if addressing an educationally sub-normal child. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my friend had recently been appointed a British ambassador.

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