Every day in my job I see failings in the NHS. I see people juggling too few staff, too little money and too much stress. I see patients; each of them people; dealing with huge failings in the administrative beaurocracy (today, for example, people arriving to be admitted to a ward that had closed).
I see people suffering because the money isn’t there, or the staff, or the equipment; but most of the time I see ‘health professionals’ doing their damnest to make it all work; and most of the time, people get the treatment they need. Mistakes are made, but they’re generally rectifyable. Even today; probably one of the most stressful days of my career so far; in the end, it all seemed to be coming together; the team seemed to be pulling it back from the brink of chaos into caring and getting people seen.
And then, yet again, I watch my friend be failed by the very same group. How anyone can treat any individual so badly and with such unashamed self-protection I do not know; I suppose I’ll be the one who ends up getting sued, because I’m honest; but watching people defend their own mistakes, and cover them up, and claim they never said things (either my friend is totally irrational; or they said things they now either claim they didn’t say, just don’t mention, or for which the notes mysteriously go missing. I suspect the latter.); it makes me sick.
The health profession is meant to helppeople, but these people, all they’re interested in is maintaining their livelyhoods. No matter that they’ve destroyed and wasted years of someone’s life; and in fact, in some cases it was just a change in policy which meant that their work became useless and she needed re-referring; they have just tried to sweep it all under the carpet. I hope to hell she sues them, they damn well deserve it.
