Written by Maia Pace (Health Correspondent)
Edited by Ena Saracevic (Social Affairs Editor)
During a recent hospital stay, I was startled by the frequent presence of stickers bearing the slogan ‘Safe Staffing Saves Lives.' As I stood waiting at the ward door to be buzzed in, the stickers meaning ‘unsafe staffing kills’ sent a chill through me. I’ve spent 12 years being caught in various rotating doors of hospitals, and I do not ever remember being an inpatient on a safely staffed ward.
Health care workers have stated, “It’s horrific, I’m a second year student nurse and I’m not even sure I want to go into third year because I’m terrified of being newly qualified and being responsible for over twelve patients on a dayshift.”
Other healthcare workers have empathised with chronically ill patients by saying, “This is why
many people are having traumatic healthcare experiences too. We literally don’t have the
time to do the bare essentials.”
The NHS’s own data shows that the service has 38,972 unfilled nursing vacancies and a further 8,016 for doctors. Nevertheless, these figures have been criticised for being inaccurate and downplaying the real total, which could be as high as lacking 50,000 nurses and 12,000 doctors. Strangely the Nuffield Trust has developed an NHS staffing tracker, a ‘tracker’ as a countdown which will end the NHS as an institution to be proud of.
I have received these responses from multiple healthcare providers;
“The Nursing and Midwifery Council say the maximum is ten patients per nurse but if you report it you just get told that the ward has to stick to their budget, as if patient safety is a compromise”
“I was a healthcare assistant with only two weeks of classroom training and was put on a ward of twelve alone, I was terrified and buzzers were going off everywhere.”
“It’s terrible. I don’t work in general health, but I work in an acute mental health ward and it’s so dangerous for both staff and patients, but we are just never fully staffed.”
The Independent reported that over 220 nurses attempted to end their lives in 2020. The Laura Hyde Foundation produced a shocking graphic that showed that mental health absence in the NHS costs the service circa £500 million every year. This proves the systemic problems within the NHS go far past simply pumping funds into it.
The crisis hinges on the NHS’s inability to retain staff. Hospital structures are crumbling; maintenance staff are overworked. Working conditions are inhumane, with numerous reports of doctors being sent home from day shifts and told to return for the night shift. Staff are blamed for systemic failings, which leads to a burnt-out, and underappreciated service.
The Queen Elizabeth hospital in Kings Lynn, Lizz Truss’s constituency, is literally falling down! Built as a temporary hospital in the 80s, it was only designed to have a lifespan of 30 years, yet it is still being used today. The ‘I’ newspaper captioned an article, “Nurses at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn have to put buckets out to catch the rain as it desperately seeks more funding to fix a roof which currently needs 1,500 props.”
The RMT union has declared its support and solidarity with NHS workers, stating that if NHS workers are cornered into a situation where they must take strike action they will present at the picket line with them. When we have healthcare workers at food banks, the answer must be collective action.
Healthcare is a human right, and access to a quality service must be protected from political bias, stigma, and opinion. We are facing the reality that as a result of privatisation through stealth, causing the institution to haemorrhage money for a decade in combination with a burnt-out and abused workforce, the end of the NHS as we know it could be rapidly approaching. There is a fear that it will turn into a parallel situation to when one travels abroad and is advised to not go to the state hospital of a country and always go to a private one or the widely criticised and ineffectual American provision Medicaid.
However, this has a possibility of being avoidable. Government action on the social determinants of health centring around the best cure is prevention. Competitive pay for all, which starts with a living wage for those on the lowest salaries, would heavily help healthcare workers, especially through the Cost of Living Crisis. Action like introducing fewer hours, lighter workloads, investment in hospital structures, less unnecessary red tape, and bureaucracy founded on an evidence-based patient and provider centred efficacy approach. With this recipe, the NHS could once again become a hub of innovation and national pride.
We have moved a long way from the opening ceremony of the UK-hosted 2012 Olympic games, where the NHS was positioned as the pride of Britain. Poor health does not discriminate, it is a lottery of chance, and while many in public may not need the service currently, it is nearly impossible that one will go their whole life without it.
This is particularly relevant with the Coronavirus, the new pandemic of Monkeypox and significant levels of Polio being found in both New York and London. Finally, let’s not forget that poverty is one of the highest avoidable causes of public ill health; pandemics and the cost-of-living crisis are both in their own rights mass disabling events.
Sources:
Comments