Mr Lansley Does Not Understand

Dear Ones, I am tired. That is is not something I would normally say. Normally, I would grin and soldier on. What brought me to this admission was a phone call this morning.

I awoke at 06.30,went to the bathroom then returned to bed. I dozed for a couple of hours, then sat up in bed and played Sudoku on my iPhone (OK, so I’m sad that way!). Later, at about 08.00, I realised I was still tired and lay down for a catnap.

When the phone rang, I was irritated: how could someone ring this early on a Saturday? But I was too polite to say so. I grabbed the phone and sat up in bed. The friend who was calling and I had a pleasant chat, but I was slightly bemused that he didn’t apologise for phoning so early. I reached across to my iPhone: it was 11.45!!!

I have come home with a mountain of work that needs to be finished this weekend. This is routine work that I just have not had time to get through during the working week. Yet the Government tells me that I am a wastrel, that I am over-paid and under-employed, that I am a burden on the tax-payer (a class to which I belong!).  All of us in the Health Service have been told that we are a burden on the tax-payer, that we do not earn our salaries, that we are parasites. This is particularly true of those of us who work in Primary Care Trusts. Yet I look at my colleagues and see only those who are doing their best, who want to ensure that we serve the public to the best of our ability.

Andrew Lansley says that he knows the NHS. Maybe he does. But he certainly doesn’t understand those of us who have given our lives to it. I have worked for years with people who have given their all in the cause of the public good; I have been impressed with a Finance Director who was prepared to consider Public Health issues before finance considerations; I have commiserated with patients for whom we could do nothing further.

Health is not a commodity to be bought and sold at a Supermarket. And health care demands a very different set of skills: it requires empathy, understanding, caring, absolute commitment. My job does not finish at the end of the working day: it comes home with me, and I continue to think about it and, often, to work on it. Please Mr Lansley, do not under-estimate the commitment of the NHS workforce – you would disadvantage the country,