The health service that employs you is under more scrutiny than ever before, with shocking cases of bad care, ‘never events’ and serious lapses crawling out of the woodwork. The regulator that was supposed to keep an eye on all of this is under attack, not just for missing it, but also for apparently deciding not to publish what details it did know, and then deciding to withhold key names implicated in a ‘cover-up’. So what, in its eternal wisdom, does the trade union representing you do?
The British Medical Association, which has always managed a veneer of respectability over and above many other public sector unions, today passed a motion of ‘no confidence’ in Jeremy Hunt as Health Secretary. A motion proposed by the Islington Division of the BMA reads:
‘That this meeting notes with disgust the Secretary for Health’s attack on hospitals, accusing hard-pressed NHS staff of ‘mediocrity and coasting’. This meeting observes that the current Secretary for Health appears to be denigrating the NHS at every opportunity and since his appointment to the role his performance has been mediocre and coasting. This meeting calls for a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt.’
It could almost have been written by one of the two major teaching unions, couldn’t it? And the strange thing is that this motion doesn’t seem to talk about patients at all. Forget whether Jeremy Hunt has shown evidence of mediocrity in his job: this motion is entirely about poor ‘hard-pressed NHS staff’ resenting being told that in many hospitals or individual specialties, the status quo is not good enough. It doesn’t even bother to critique this government’s reforms to the NHS.
It would be a great deal easier to feel disgusted with a Health Secretary criticising hospitals if the nation wasn’t still reeling with disgust from hearing tales of patients drinking water out of flower vases or lying in their own faeces at Stafford Hospital, or after learning about the culture of an organisation supposed to shine a light into every corner of the NHS allegedly binning a report that did just that.
Perhaps the conference wanted to underline that most doctors and other healthcare professionals are intensely committed, compassionate individuals who sacrifice vast stores of energy and time to the NHS. That is a given. Many of the failings are not specifically the fault of doctors. But it does not mean that Hunt, or indeed any Health Secretary, cannot pinpoint rotten cultures that lead to disasters like Mid-Staffs, or secrecy at a regulator. To pussyfoot around doctors for fear of upsetting them leaves the most important figures in this whole debate, the patients, with a rough deal. Good on Jeremy Hunt for upsetting the producers of healthcare in the name of a better experience for those who use the system. If this vote comes from doctors who don’t want to see the health service that they work for changing, then it’s excellent news: who wants to have the confidence of opponents of reform anyway?
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