Boy – the latest episode of the reality TV programme ‘Hospital’ really highlighted the NHS – warts and all. There was poor old Ron, over 90 years old, and bravely bearing the pain of a broken hip. Every time he was moved to go somewhere else to be treated, one winced as he tried not to cry out. After hours in A & E, it was decided to move him to another hospital, eager hands rolled him over onto a pat slide, and you couldn’t help wonder how much more pain he could take.
Surely pain relief should be staff’s first priority? Then the Dept. of Health deserves to get kicked in the proverbials for allowing the Carillion scandal to leave a brand new hospital empty. Reminds me of an episode of Yes Minister! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-5zEb1oS9A
Gossip tells me that the BBC had wanted to do a series on ‘Super Surgeons’. They approached a brilliant surgeon, who didn’t fancy being a TV star – but said he would do this if they promised it was going to be a ‘warts and all’ fly-on-the-wall documentary. The NHS agreed, the producer couldn’t believe his luck, the surgeon was surprised but delighted that the truth was going to come out, and hence we have this honest series. I sit there mesmerised, hardly able to believe that a hospital dares show what’s happening.
Latest episode proved what one suspected; Administrators didn’t know what was going on, money wasted everywhere, vital equpment packed away, a ‘lost-in-the-system’ patient and staff having to put up with incredible inefficiencies. By the end I was wondering will Boris’s promised 20 new hospitals be built then left empty? And are there any more multi-million pound Da Vinci robots packaged up and left in store? But then these machines only cost about £1.7 million – a drop in the ocean against the £300 million needed to bring Carillion’s empty hospital into commission.