Fellwanderer

A big thank you to Nye on the 60th anniversary of the greatest achievement of any British government of the last 100 years.

Raise your glasses to the doctors and nurses of the

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Briant

Yes indeed! We all owe them so much! The Best of British!

batman

Why thank you very much!

I wish I had claws.

MB

Oh yes, absolutely I will agree with that.
There are programmes on this week - I believe - celebrating the work of the NHS.

e.g. 'Life and Death on the NHS' 9pm Thursday ITV.

Lord Brett

If it's not the envy of the world, then it certainly should be. And if there has been one positive political development over the past eleven years, it's that politicians have realised how much the NHS is valued by us lot, and that anyone who tried to privatise it would seen be booted out of office.

Happy Birthday!

narabdela

By all means raise your glasses to the doctors and nurses who struggle to keep the NHS afloat, despite the best efforts of administrators who are doing their level best to destroy it.

I also have attained my sixtieth. I spent thirty eight of those years working in the NHS, and ended up frustrated, disillusioned and very, very angry at the billions(yes billions) of pounds that has been wasted on useless levels of administration at the expense of patient care.

There is no way that the NHS will survive another sixty years unless decision making is returned to those who know their arses from their elbows.

Apologies for the rant, but this is a subject that is very close to my heart.

hankoler

I hope it rewaches well beyond pension age , but by succesive governments it is slowly having the life squeezed out of it .

EHV_Emmetts

Before my current job I briefly worked as an administrator in the NHS. The job involved administrating other administrators I thought at the time that this was somehow wrong and not right. Taxpayers' money should be spent on medical services NOT funding consultants and the army of administrators.

charliekane

Oh dear, here we go - everyone knows what's wrong with the NHS

As I presume you are advocating returning decision making to medical staff, then who ? In my experience there is more than enough political animosity between medical and surgical staff to ensure that agreement would never be reached - they are not all Doctor Kildares

batman

I speak from the 'front line' so have a pretty good idea of what both narabdela and EHV are talking about. Using the forensic secure unit where I work as an example ...

1 the nursing staff has recently been culled by about a quarter
2 the reason for this was financial
3 they are replaced by agency staff who cost more
4 the nurse managers who lost their jobs have been replaced by 'business managers'
5 these business managers are paid more than the clinical staff they replaced
6 overtime has been rationed
7 these shortages are made up by the aforementioned agency staff
8 nursing staff are no longer able (unless exempted by 'family friendly' laws) to do long days as it is possible we may get too tired to function at the end ofthe day
9 agency staff are booked in for long days on a regular basis
10 these measures have caused widespread resentment and low morale
11 the current working conditions are more dangerous because of these decisions
12 this danger is a direct result of inexperienced agancy staff not being competent to perform the job required of them

... I could go on and on with similar examples.

The NHS is a wonderful organisation but it is being crippled by nursing and medical staff being unsupported and undermined by incompetent administration.

I wish I had claws.

Marky B

My sister in law was a nurse for many years and she always the NHS was top heavy. I can understand why you are fed up with your job. It is a measure of our times that most industries are run by suits,and not by people who know the job. Unlike this little squirt,who got 150% pay rise in February of this year:
Anger as health chief gets 150% pay rise - Hartlepool Mail

Anyway,all the best to the hard working staff of the NHS.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

narabdela

Madness, pure bloody madness, yet still it goes on. Your example of nursing staff being culled to save money and then being replaced by more expensive agency staff, is typical. It's soul-destroying for those who have to cope with this incompetence.

DB7

It's extremely annoying that Bevan can push through the whole NHS but modern politicians can't even remedy the farce that has become the dental service. Not that I blame the dentists and their astronomical charges, they're on a good screw so why stop it.

Mark O

Yup, Happy Birthday NHS, I had a couple of Full-Anasthetic Operations in my pre-teen years........without them I wouldn't be the Man I am today!

Mark

EHV_Emmetts

The purpose of the NHS is to provide citizens with proper free health care and as such should be treated as a social provider NOT as a business.