Our Hearts In The NHS: The Real Life Support

The National Health Service was once, and to many still is, a revolutionary system that is synonymous with equal treatment and has been a place that promises respect and tolerance for those who (and this is perhaps the most important point ever made regarding the Service) need help.

In recent years, nothing but bad news has flooded from the NHS. Statistics dribble through every few weeks when journalism runs out of new stories to tell; ‘between 2009/10 - 2021/22 the UK health fund saw an underspend of £322 billion in real terms’ [according to the British Medical Association]. And this sort of information is vital to a politician, particularly nowadays ones polarising themselves on the opposition side of the Commons, but it reduces the humanity of the situation down to a percentage; a decimal point; a bar chart in a wooden room somewhere near Number 10 on slide seventeen of a PowerPoint.

I have been reminded of the people at the heart of this issue.

My hometown, Westhoughton, is a fruitful area regarded as a hotspot for generations of families who settle nicely into a tight-knit community. It’s rare that I walk down Market Stre

et without running into someone I’ve bought a coffee from, or for, or used to go to school with. The town thrives off of its people, and cares for its people. Which is why I was thoroughly appalled to read the details of an event that impacted one of my local peers, who reached out and reminded me just how real every percentage, decimal point and bar chart truly is.

Asking to remain anonymous, they detailed how their father (in his early 70s) took ill very recently and ‘taken by ambulance to Royal Bolton Hospital. He was kept in overnight but there were no beds on a ward and they kept him in the corridor of A&E (Accident and Emergency) all night.’

It's an account we sadly have to admit to having heard before, particularly during recent health crisis’s that have emerged and strained our NHS to its breaking point. But to have it confirmed that it is happening so close to home, to someone who I could be walking past every day, punctuates the issue so prominently.

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heir account continued with the detail that their father is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and emphasises that, ‘this was beyond uncomfortable for him, actually painful. Not to mention the lack of dignity.’

Where is the respect and tolerance? Presented with a patient who needs help, where is the hand to hold on the way to the ward for treatment?

It would be wholly unfair of me to point the finger towards the NHS as an institution, because it would mean disregarding the failures of the government of this country in providing the Service with the necessary tools to complete it’s duties to the public it tries desperately to serve. Because of this government, the doors to Accident and Emergency are seen as nothing more than an endless hourglass bleeding resources well below healthcare standards, and the corridors imitate the very wards designed to protect and provide for the most vulnerable of our society. So what is the solution – how can we bring the careful, helping hand back into the NHS?