The NHS was one of the greatest and most revolutionary projects to come from a "people's" government postwar. It showed what the common people could do in maintaining a system, based on equality. Yes--it was abused by ignorant people in the beginning--people who thought it wouldn't last--so grab what you can. It has survived--through no thanks to subsequent governments, but now it is truly under threat, despite the appeals of its very good nurses and doctors. Big corporations want it to belong to big business--and already the "Patient" is becoming the "Customer"--does anyone shop around for an illness?
The forceful foot of the US is already in the door with a stack of insurance protection policies from spots to spleens. Use democracy and oppose privatisation strongly--if don't use it--you lose it--and devil take the hindmost.

As a student nurse training in the current NHS climate, it is easy to see why people are disillusioned with what they see. From the patient's side of things, nurses and doctors seem to be forever "sat doing nothing" at nurses stations, or never have a free moment to attend to the basic care that is the very essence of the job. But from the other side, everytime you see someone "sat doing nothing", more than likely they're trying to catch up on the reams of paperwork now expected of nurses and doctors. The reason we're running around like blue-arsed-flies is because there are no resources to allow us to do what we entered the profession to do. The Government claims to be pumping millions into the NHS but it all stops with the managers. Minimal amounts filter down to the ground where we're struggling and letting people down, and this really affects moral because this is not what we want to be doing. Something needs to change in all sectors of healthcare - we need to be allowed to do the job we want to do, to the standard that we need to do it.

Reflections on the NHS in the UK formed part of a raw, recent experience, bits of which I’ll need to relate, if you’ll bear with me.

My pregnant wife and I flew to Greece a couple of weeks ago, with doctor's blessings. We'd had a 21-week scan the previous week, everything absolutely fine: a boy we'd decided to name Frederick George – he was in the top 20% for size (not "like father...") and very healthy. Our first, several years and much effort in the making.

Five days in – utterly glorious days till then – my wife had a spontaneous leak of amniotic fluid which, despite Greek doctors' best efforts, eventually led to waters breaking, death of Freddy and his mother having ten hours' agonising delivery through an unready cervix and with no analgesia (which might have delayed the necessary contractions). No food or water for her for three days, either; nil by mouth in case of surgery. Very bad.

After that (and with my wife stunningly restored to serenity after the torture), we had Fred to hold for half an hour; perfectly-formed. Now he's scattered over a hillside in Mitilene - Lesbos' capital, location of the hospital, where I was actually allowed to stay, on the ward, the whole four days.

My wife’s a nurse: she knew what was going on from the start. In the early phase of our arrival at the hospital (over an hour’s drive from the resort), we had a few communication difficulties, despite my smattering of Greek. Things got worse when I was forced to rush back to the resort the first night – I came back to find her sobbing that she felt like she was in Midnight Express (she actually did a good imitation, through the pain, of the guard in the film, saying that would make her “Veelliam Haiyiz”; one of the many reasons I married her).

A couple of mid-wives were soon allocated, each with a bit of English and, more importantly, a wonderful bedside manner, very competent, full of empathy. I was struck by echoes of how these people built a civilisation through character: authority, even ruthless, when required; but time also for the human, the aesthetic, as a necessary complement.

A dotty, superfluous woman from the Embassy turned up at some point. She carried her scrappy documentation in worn plastic bags and looked like she was along to do some knitting. The travel rep was also in touch with empty promises, insensitive comments and questions and nothing of any use (it was a Greek lady who fast-tracked us through check-in for the return flight). The Greeks, indeed, were fantastic; the owners of our hotel visited and were in constant touch, also working behind the scenes on translation, admin and so on. I got the Euro-health ID stuff sorted with a hospital IT bod who’d studied at Aberystwyth (!), whilst insurance was handled through great people at the Athens office of a firm whose UK agents have been singularly unhelpful in other trials.

The really big contrast, though, was in the medical staff. When they weren’t being firm for our own good, they bent over backwards to look after both of us. Unlike the UK equivalent, these people travelled in teams, full of democratic input (well, they invented it) from nurse and doctor alike. Back in the UK, only a week previously, we’d sat in a modern void where the odd disengaged admin-type would emerge from behind a window, shuffle off with paperwork down a corridor and return a while later, practically no medics or medical work on sight anywhere.

The Mytiline hospital, on the other hand, looked old-style NHS – you could imagine coming across a ward full of Charles Hawtreys – but felt busy, purposeful, clean, organised, welcoming. As I said, teamwork was visible all over (even the rather, er “Spartan” security gents joined in one ad hoc “case conference” on us, working out where I could be stashed overnight – in a bed next to my wife on a locked women’s ward, as it happened). Proper, patient-focused collaboration was in evidence throughout; there was much more medicine than management going on; morale and confidence were clearly high; oh, and these people worked long shifts – which they were clearly prepared to extend when needed (often turning up outside hours in jeans and civvies, coming in to check on certain people or join in with group efforts as needed).

Don’t get me wrong: we’ve had some fantastic attention, one-to-one, from GP, consultant et cetera over here. And I’m fully aware of a slight Stockholm dependency flavouring the Greek element. The short story, however, is that, if this horrible thing had to happen, at least it happened in a beautiful place and amongst people who made themselves into our expert friends. We had five days on the island for R&R after the ordeal, wonderfully attended by supportive Greeks, loads of TLC and a deeper bond than ever with the place and people.

Now home, we do wonder how this experience might have played out in the local hospital (scene of more than a few traumata in recent years, including an ectopic last year over the course of which the nursing care – in terms of what they did and the way they did it – was lamentable). We felt the difference over there; and we’re sadly certain that the UK version would have lacked many of the human touches we found pretty healing.

That’s our experience, in any case. Quite happy to hear others with either a corroborating or contrary tendency. And what matters to me, of course: Fred and mother were well looked-after, in the (horrible) event. The boy himself had a beautiful, short life: bitter-sweet. In his last days, he swam in the Aegean, ate heartily and heard us laughing a lot.

Yes, there is some validity in the thought that our society gets the medical service it deserves. It demoralises me to walk into our local hospital past the chundering, smoking unwashed, so Christ knows how it affects the staff. And these are just the people to shriek about MRSA, even as they emerge from the bogs with hands unacquainted with the soap provided – seen it happen frequently.

Still, I don’t think it’s the proles who have undermined the team ethos, so much as demarcation, jobsworthiness and the like, which have become ingrained and subsequently exacerbated by excess management, targets and the rest. Back in Greece, it was often difficult – in a good way – to distinguish between nurse, auxiliary and doctor (and I don’t mean through acquaintance with the slight variations in uniform). What united these people was simply “getting” the mission: which is not about compliance and all about the needs, physical and emotional, of the patient.

My comment is that we have seen record spending increases on the NHS over the last ten years or so. However recent reports in the broadsheets (Guardian, FT) rate the UK amongst the worst providers of healthcare in Western Europe on the basis of statistics, regarding for example heart disease, cancer, hospital acquired infection etc. Yet at the same time our doctors are paid substantially more than elsewhere in the EU. For example I believe GPs. earn around twice as much as their counterparts in Germany, and this for a nine to five existence, since for the most part they have shrugged off their duties for out of hours services. I believe that for the most part these spending increases have ended up in the back pocket of the providers. I would like us to move to an insurance based scheme such as they have in France, which I believe has an excellent record for healthcare on all measures. I firmly believe that it is essential to ensure that patients pay a bit, according to means, prior to seeing the doctor, in order to relieve pressure on services, and ensure that the most needy are not deprived of treatment due to rationing. I'm concerned that some patients just view the doctor as a means of securing benefit. We currently have a glut of junior doctors, and I believe it is high time that medical salaries are rationalised to bring them into line with the rest of the EU.

You are silly to expect the government to run a health system. The people in charge intrisically have no idea how to do so and their motives are questionable (e.g. convincing people that certain things are important over other such as wait times in A&E) This is actually the least democratic system one can have (socialised medicine [ post code lottery etc]). The best system is one where taxes are low, (governments waste billions through inefficiencies as they have no incentive to improve as taxes will always be there), people pay for things on their own and goverments provide a legal framework which is fair and ethical (what they do not have in US). Poorer people could be subsidised by others, or if alcoholics/gambling addicts would not get treatment unless life saving etc.

My 56 year old cousin a accountant division leader in London had a cardiac arrest mid 2006 this led to brain damage peg feeding and tracheotomy. He was then placed in paliative care at a central London teaching hospital. He refused to die and no longer fit the criteria for palliative care and was taken out of it by a very humane young Doctor.

My cousin then had to be transferred for NHS 'funding purposes to his West London Hospital (waht a joke this turned out to be) he was there for four months and treated like a non person patient. Immediately I saw the NHS Consultant about his rehab, she ignored this and went into a speech about lets have info about his propery/finances and give these detaisl to West London NHS PCT Continuing Care, so he can pay for himself to go into a really good elderely local nursing home.

I was so glad I had another cousin with me to witness this discounting of his obvious medical needs.

Thankfully I had seen the Panaoram programme and knew this was illegal and fought it. I fought it for four months to get a proper neuro assessment of capacity, my cousin was aware and smiled sometimes. In the end with threats I made to go to the Evening Standard, a team was dispatched from Regional Rehab Unit NHS Northwick Park Middx.

My couisn passed because he shook the hand offered to him by the team leader, albeit 8 seconds later, this is what they thought that my cousin was 8 seconds behind everyone else.

I had a chice of two neuro rehab private NHS funded hospitals, far flung both from London and visitors. He has been there 18 months and not given recently a properly carried out assessment of capacity that included everything he could do capacity wise.

Bingo for the NHS private outsourcer contractual service provider, he was down graded nursng only. Guess what one of this private hospitals specialities 'quality nursing' they did not even have to advertise for the patient to fill a bed.

Like Oliver Twist I 'asked for more, a properly carried out neuro assessment of capacity stonewalling from the hospital and stonewalling and denigration for me from the West London NHS PCT. Grandstanding by the RRU NHS Northwcik Park

You guesssed right the men and women in grey suits formed a grey thin baatle line line.

Instead fo the original 'hand of Mengeles' it re: morphed into the West London NHS PCT Trust appointing an Independent Professional Advocate for my cousin, to go take witness statements in his best interests, from the rest of the family even friends, got the picture divide to conguer and shuffle about with time. Some who advocated the palliative care earlier on.

I wanted with other involved cousin, for my by now 58 year old cousin to be transferred to a residential nurisng home with all age groups and excellant medical care to, somewhere where he could socialise with other residents daily.

Poppings of fiscal clogs happened from the NHS PCT and the NHS private outsourcer, my cousin was deemed too ill to be moved; he is in robust health up against two years ago when they wanted him to be without proper medical care and rehab.

I had they read the recent MECAP led July 2008 Inquiry Report, no, just protestations about 'cancelling contracts with service providers, now in this current scenario. These guys are number one, lets not take business away form them, lets warehouse my cousin so Aregular buck can be made.

Still fighting, at least now I have the Inquiry Report to do with patients with learning disabilities as my bible and its legislative framework.

Don't let the wotsits who don't respect human life get away with it , in the 1930's in Europe there was a proper name for the grey suits.

Keep saving lives and quality of life out there!

Joyce Kelly