Keir Starmer has failed the NHS (Image: PA)
Wearing pants that felt more akin to netting than underwear, and a delightfully chic hospital gown, I sat up as straight as I could as five people in maroon hospital scrubs asked me questions. One of them asked how I was feeling the morning after my operation, and I replied that I was feeling optimistic for the future. The faces of the group looked baffled as I gave my answer, almost as if I’d spoken a language not heard for thousands of years. Recounting this story to one of my GPs a few weeks later, she helped me understand their confusion.
While she recognised that feeling that way was massive for me, she explained that what they were looking for was a number between one and 10. It’s what I’ve now recognised as being the NHS pain scale. Now I’ve learned to incorporate the NHS numbers into my own statistics. Today is, give or take a few days, the third anniversary of when I was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer. Supposedly, I only have an 11% chance of living longer than five years, so I’ve now got two years left.
I count the devastating disease as my eighth near-death experience. It’s highly likely to be the thing that kills me, unless I get stabbed on the way home from hospital next week.
During my time as a cancer patient, I’ve had thousands of pounds of NHS cash spent on me. And, I think, got a fairly good idea about why it will die unless fundamental changes are made.
For clarification, the NHS won’t die as quickly as me and, unlike me, its death isn’t inevitable. It can be saved, but only if fundamental changes are made.
I’ve joked in the past with my two GPs that they’d make a good detective duo on a Sunday evening drama, healing illnesses by day and solving crimes by night. I’m right, though, aren’t I? “Perren and Tavares” could definitely be on your TV in the autumn.
But really, I think their time would be better spent if the NHS used them as examples of what good patient care looks like, and somehow all medical staff were brought up to their standard.
I say patient care rather than healthcare because I believe the NHS is still getting healthcare right. It is still packed with astoundingly brilliant medics who save millions of lives every day.
But it is also packed with staff who have forgotten that healthcare is about caring for patients. It shouldn’t be solely about what the test results say. It should be about what patients say.
They may have forgotten because they have been jaded by the long hours, the lack of investment, and the stories of how the doctors they trained with are getting so much more money in Australia and Canada.
They may also be disillusioned because many NHS trusts seem to have their fair share of people wandering about in suits without any real purpose. They earn a lot, but do they really add anything to society? Some of them have clipboards but don’t seem to have a purpose. Imagine how many nurses and resident doctors could have a pay rise if the NHS streamlined these other roles.
Medical staff may also be disgusted with the Labour Government, which seems to be trying to do healthcare on the cheap, with less-skilled physician assistants working in roles where I believe doctors should be.
What many of them seem to lack the ability to do is what my two GPs, Dr Perren and Dr Tavares, do every day at Stovell House Surgery in Croydon, South London.
They’ve got me through three of my near-death experiences (the first four happened long before I knew them), and although they can’t cure my incurable cancer, they have managed to make me function while I’m battling the pesky little bugger inside of me.
They’ve done this by asking questions, by making me feel human, and by supporting me through a very scary time. And they are naturally curious and try and find solutions for issues instead of passing the buck.
The suits at the top of the NHS, Keir Starmer and his cronies, and others need to do the same to stop the healthcare service from dying.
They need to make it about patient care by asking people questions and letting them speak about what could have been better about their treatment. And then, once they have this information, they need to act on it.
They need to stop with ridiculous policies like stopping GPs from issuing fit notes.
They need to ensure that hospitals act on complaints quickly, so people like me aren’t left waiting more than 30 months for a response.
And they need to support medics in improving the patient experience by ensuring patients are treated like people, rather than just a pin cushion for blood tests.
Doing all of this won’t be easy at a time when they also need to focus on rebuilding dilapidated hospital buildings, sorting printer issues, and ensuring CT machines don’t break down in the heat – all at a time when the Department of Health and Social Care thinks all of the problems can be solved through the badly designed NHS app.
But they must do it because if they don’t, the national healthcare service will flatline quicker than I do.
