Where did I state that managers were perfect
My point is, that government and media, try to put all the blame for NHS troubles on admin staff. It's a lot more complex than that. There are a multitude of issues, that nobody seems brave enough to tackle, they'd much rather just try and patch things up because the NHS is such a politically sensitive subject.
Government departments set targets, which supposedly are an indicator of how well the system is coping, but they become so obsessed that the meeting of targets (by whatever means) has become more important that actual patients.
I have a number of close relatives (including my sister and her husband) all of whom would totally agree with you.
From a regular outpatient point of view my contimuing treatments and clinic attendance have all beem seamless. I badly broke my leg 20 months ago necessitating a few operations on both bones and knee issues all done very well. The staff are dedicated though stressed as more and more statistics are demanded to the point on some cases that, for every clinical hour of work, up to half as much time again can be paperwork of both needed patient notes and then 'stats'. As a former management consultant turned environmental consultant I have seen similar practices in industry. In dealing with the 'discovery' of waste and inefficiencies, such processes of data collection rarely find actual waste but become 'self fulfilling prophevies' in themselves. Within the NHS the scale of the whole business, client expectation, tightened budgets, a growing range of clinical expertise etc is by its nature bound to have a band of failures. I contend, however, that given the in and out patient footfall that the success rate is far in excess of the failure rate. In the case of MidStaffs there is, and will continue to be, a range of issues to be revealed in its overall mansgement and where the pinch points are. The detail so far are not yet bottomed out IMHO.
Finally, for now, as users, are we in danger of having too high an expectation of our medical services? Sadly it may not be possible to save everyone. I am humnled by my experience I detailed in an earlier post. I will alwaus marveol at what was done for me and still is. I am passoonate about our NHS but there will be natural limits on mamy levels. Multiple conditions, age and timeliness of medical intervention alwat will be factors to successfil outcomes for patients. What we do not need is the political interventions based on social selectivity. We as consumers must always be condiderate clients. I have been to an A&E department on a Saturday night in a major city. It can resemble a war zone with a mixture of unwell people, accident victims and, sadly the bell ends that binge drimk themselves into oblivion and fight each other, pass out and bash into solid objects, have mixtures of alcohols and find themselves very unwell etc etc.
I enjoyed my early drinking years and the weekends were great, my university years were tight on money but we still had great parties. Never went to hospital ftom it.
I am not going to suggest banning Saturday nights out. What I will say is the clogging up of A&E departments by semi comatose half wits who see 50 + units of alcohol im an evening as a badge of pride is playing right into the hands of politicians with agendas who want the privatisation of as much of the public sector as they can. Not for the beterment of such service provision but purely for profiteering.
Lets face it, the privatisation of the energy sector with the promise of cheaper energy bills really worked out to the consumers benefit (not), Rail privatisation brought lower ticket prices (overall not but a few anomolies here and there but in the main matket forces on popular routes ticket prices climbed).
So, like any organisation, there will be failures but overall, and utilising my experiences from living and working in other countries, visiting on holiidays etc we in the UK are very luvky to have the best range of services in public healthcare across the world. It can be improved and in my 58 years it really has been. Don't lose it to lies and innuendo. Hidden agendas abound on the future of the NHS.
Steve
