The Daily Blog

The 'new' NHS vision

30th January 2006  Post a comment

The National Health Service or, to those outside of the UK, is the free healthcare system offered to every citizen of the United Kingdom. For a long time it has needed more and more extra money to bail it out of difficult situations (lack of doctors, MRSA etc), to no obvious positive result in my opinion.

The most recent development the Labour government have come up with is to start up community hospitals to bring patients treatment closer to their lives, so it becomes much more convenient for them. Having once worked for a short period in the estates department of an NHS hospital myself (as an intern) I found that the general feeling of the workers and most senior management is that their are way too many unrealistic and impossible targets which needed to be achieved, otherwise funding would be cut in an attempt to make people work harder to get the funding back (yeah, I don't see the logic either). Some very high up managers I talked to believe that the care of the patients was being adversely affected by the constant pressure put under staff to work harder.

These latest changes are, as in the case of most of the governments schemes are done with the best intentions and we will have to wait and see how this works out 'in the end' - I say that because there always is a debate going on about either transport, education or healthcare because of the political gain that sorting it out will no doubt bring.

- David Longworth

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