Nurses for Reform Blog

This appalling story speaks for its self.

A sad indictment on a service that nearly sixty years ago promised that  all medical, dental and nursing care would be provided for everyone.

Life in the Evans household has been a little fraught of late.  Basil, the eldest of our cats, and in truth the person in charge of the family,  prolapsed his bowel three weeks ago.  He was rushed to the vet, had a small procedure and some biopsies taken and then hospitalised over the weekend.

The following Monday we had the diagnosis of bowel cancer.  However, the good news was that it was operable.  On Tuesday he was checked out for secondaries (no three month wait for a CT Scan!) and was given the all clear.  On Thursday he had a bowel resection and was then hospitalised for a few more days – in 24 hour intensive care like facilities – he then came home on the Tuesday.  During his stay the vet telephoned me twice daily to discuss Basil’s progress and if I wanted to call them there was always someone polite, helpful and knowledgeable ready to talk to me.  At no stage did I have to ring back when his nurse gets back from coffee/lunch etc.

Thanks to Tesco’s pet insurance Basil is now back to normal and, hopefully, has may years ahead of him lazing in the sunshine.

The interesting comparison here is with the care that the human population at the mercy(!) of the NHS recieve.  Basil was in hospital for 10 days, had 24 hour nursing, had an ultrasound scan to check his surgical site for infection and the staff going out to buy him fishy flavoured cat food to tempt him to eat post-op.

How many people reliant on the NHS would recieved that standard of care in that short period of time?

I am sure that you will have noticed that activity on this blog has been somehwhat light of late.  However, that does not mean that there has been no NFR activity.

I have spent the past few months editing a major piece of NFR research that will be published later this year by the Institute of Economic Affairs.  This report is the centre piece of a major NFR campaign that will coinside with the sixieth anniversary of the NHS.

I have also been made a health fellow at the Adam Smith Institute and will speak at one of their major bi-annual Independent Seminar on the Open Society conferences on 1st July.

Finally, as part of the NFR transatlantic programme I will be participating in some recorded interviews that will be used to describe to American opinion formers the real problems of the NHS.