Ten years ago, virtually every doctor or nurse I met was a committed supporter of the NHS. Now, increasingly, doctors I meet are sceptical about the NHS or downright hostile.
You are correct in noting this, there has been a appreciable change of opinion in the staff that I meet. I have been a doctor for 18 years &, when I qualified, expressing an opinion about the inadequacies of the NHS would have been met with scorn & hostility; now such opinions are generally agreed with.
Posted by Thersites at September 3, 2005 11:34 AM
It's entirely accurate, and it's probably fuelled by the quite outrageous lies that the Trust PR department throws out.
Ours (Norfolk & Norwich) is "decorating" the wards which involves closing them in rotation, conveniently. They've omitted to mention is the Nursing staff levels are being cut from 8/7 to 6/5 though.
There's a line in the webmaster's book about "having given up trying to improve the service and now trying to improve the perception of the service".
I do not know of *any* public sector organisation to which this does not apply.
The ones I know something about (Police, Health, Education) are all the same, near enough. Staffed by people who do their best, run by complete morons obsessed with the latest government junk who handicap those trying to actually do something.
Posted by Paul at September 5, 2005 08:27 AM
This sounds like typical whinging and scare-mongering from the medical profession. This has remained fairly consistent in the twenty years since I took up my first NHS post. Of course the NHS is far from perfect, of course there are examples of sillyness - find me any large, complex organisation where this is not the case.
On the whole, the NHS works - and no amount of wishful thinking from certain doctors is going to sweep it away so they can profit from people's illness.
Oh, and I don't believe he or his colleagues would work for free for the peasants either.
Posted by Mats at September 19, 2005 03:08 PM
Good mix of opinions - I'm sure the consultant wouldn't do the operations for free but why should he/she? The NHS is fundamentally a very good model, but it isn't much fun for most of us who work in it:
www.gettingcaned.blogspot.com
The number of broken bones is going to rocket with all this ice around. Fingers crossed....
Posted by Vegas at November 20, 2005 01:52 PM
Twelve broken bones? Put them to one side and do some hip replacements.