Is The NHS Doomed?

Collecting together the main sections of the Sunday newspapers to take into work last night I was struck by The Observers headline "Lib Dem peer plunges NHS reforms into fresh turmoil" and read with joy that Baroness Shirley Williams is expressing new doubts – although appearing pacified by changes to the bill over summer – having re-examined the proposals.

The article also mentions emails released yesterday following a freedom of information request by Spinwatch detailing exchanges between senior health officials and private companies regarding the handing over of between 10-20 hospitals to international companies.  One message from McKinsey to a senior DoH official reads 'international hospital provider groups' would want certain conditions taking over the hospitals, such as 'a free hand on staff management' – adding that the NHS would be allowed to keep real estate and pensions.  How kind.  

"Let me make clear: there will be no privatisation," now sounds a bit hollow David.

Please read 'German Company involved in talks to take over NHS hospitals.'

I fear that Shirley Williams is possibly quite alone as this article states:

 "Sources close to Clegg said the leadership had already "used up a lot of political capital" by halting and then recasting the bill earlier this year."We expect MPs to vote with the government. Otherwise we won't last very long [in power].""

The response I received from my latest email to my (Labour) MP wasn't very encouraging at all, purely focusing on the revised Clause 1 of the bill still proposing to weaken the responsibility of the Secretary of State to provide and secure NHS services.

No specific questions posed were answered nor did MP X state that he/she planned to vote against the bill.

This is not really a very well constructed post folks (as I should be in bed) and in reality it is all over the place, but I guess what I am trying to say is "I think the NHS is doomed."

Sad, very sad.

Anna :o[

Links: http://cockroachcatcher.blogspot.com/2011/09/nhs-reform-shirley-williams-south.html

Melancholia

Melancholia

I can see you,

I can see you coming. 

Your dark shroud

hides you not from me. 

You look at me,

weigh me up

From every angle,

every corner.

I see you,

I see your mean thin smile

split your loathsome face –

Not grey, worn or lined

with the ready burden

that you carry

(and dispense with eagerness,

malignant pride

to those to vulnerable to resist).

Instead

like some awful alien sun

your face glows, cheeks puff,

eyes glint and draw me in. 

Your court me easily,

embrace me in

your malignant charm,

embrace me close

to your awful malformed chest,

your parasitic heart

roots into mine

feeding on its frightened rhythm.

Your deep dark thoughts attempt

to penetrate my flesh, my mind 

and nauseated by your

rancid breath,

oh how I try so hard to resist,

to fight you off

to save my very self.

But your gloom drip, drip, drips

like some eternal icy shower

and protection down

like some collapsing umbrella

rent asunder

by your perfect, perfect storm,

resistance done

you finally penetrate,

penetrate my very heart and soul

and saturated, drowning

in your gloom I descend,

down
into a deep depression.

Red Umbrellas, Christopher Shay

This time

you have worn me down

and won

but then you always win.

Anna :o]

With thanks to the good folk at Magpie Tales and dVerse for the inspiration.

The Death Of The NHS

Read  this and weep.  Cry your bloody eyes out.  You were warned.  You did not listen.  Apathy is easy.  Murdoch provided an ideal opportunity to bury bad news - and buried it was.  I totally missed it.

Your future in health provision is to be changed.  You will allow it as it hasn't touched you yet.  It possibly/probably will  in the future when you are needy - and your needs will not be met.  Visit NHS Support Federation, read all and act.  It is up to you.  Only you can effect the halt of privatisation.  Do something for Gods sake!

Anna :o[

The Painter

He is gone now,

The slick artist

Who painted my dreams,

Coloured my vision,

Decorated his intentions,

Papered over the cracks

Of his little sick schemes. 

He has stripped me

Bare of my ego,

Left my heart bare of trust,

And scraped the hope

From my soul

As my dreams turned to dust. 

Yet I still love him,

My faux painter,

My forger, my faker

And I gloss over his faults,

For he is etched deep in my psyche,

My handsome heart breaker.

Anna :o]

With thanks to Tess at Magpie Tales for the inspiration.

What is this?

What is this?  

What is this that ails us? 

This malady,

This malevolence,

Which infects us easily

When wounds laid bare

Become easy hosts

To societies ills,

This sickness sweeping

Disaffected youth, hotheads,

Pyrexial with adrenaline

Light bonfires, bonfires

That fan the flames of racism,

Burn bright the beacon,

The bloody beacon that

Lights the way to bigotry.

How easy

They succumb to stereotype,

The looters, the arsonists,

The bigot's fodder;

The bigots dream gifted,

Gifted by the very underclass

They wish to further

Marginalise.

Black, brown, white –

The underclass,

United by deprivation,

Divided by difference. 

Hooded they roam the streets;

Pack mentality

Supersedes rationality,

For rationality

Has no business here

As they scavenge

Like hungry primeval beasts

On looted goods

And feed on the

Adrenaline rush of anarchy.

Oh how this anarchy,

This pleasure

Of fleeting power

Runs fast through veins

Infecting systemically
The very body of
Our nation,

Its fever flares

In new hot spots

As hooded youth

Copycat, mimic

The initial opened wound

And light fires to their freedom,

Their awful new found freedom

Where death has become

Its awful victim.

Yet not all this underclass,

This nations poor of hope

Run riot

And watch instead,

In utter disbelief,

As seemingly abandoned
By enfeebled,
Directionless police

And the distant leaders

Of our troubled state, 

They attempt to

Comprehend

The incomprehensible. 

Soon the infection

Will be treated –

Yet the patient

Will not be cured. 

The virus will hide

Under its own hood,

An opportunist,

Watching, waiting

For a fresh new wound

On which to reek its

Destructive qualities,
The qualities of a sick society. 

It will come again.

Anna :o]

The Letter

It
Sits behind the old clock,

An elegant timepiece,

A retirement gift

That declares its existence

As it chimes on the hour,

Breaking the silence, the quiet denial.

It,
The letter,

Has sat there for decades,

Yellowed with age

From time and tobacco,

Its envelope hiding – no,

Refusing its contents.

The words

No longer read

Are fading
As are memories,

Memories of him,

Their first born, their angel,

Who proudly,

For King and for Country

Donned the colours of war.

He will return one day,
Of that they are certain.

He will walk through the front door,

Older and wiser,

Matured by the terror,

The conflict of battle;
He will battle no more.

They will embrace him,

Their first born,

Tears streaming down faces,

Hearts full of elation

And they will glance at the letter,

The Missing In Action,

In quiet jubilation

And breaking the silence

Will declare

“We knew you’d come home!”

Anna :o]

With thanks to the good folk at Theme Thursday  for the inspiration

Tubby, Or Not Tubby: Fat Is The Question

About the NHS

"Since its launch in 1948, the NHS has grown to become the world's largest publicly funded health service.  It is also one of the most *efficient, most egalitarian and most comprehensive.  *(Erm, this can't be right – thinking of the present Health and Social Care Bill and the reasoning behind it?)

The NHS was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth.   That principle remains at its core.   With the exception of charges for some prescriptions and optical and dental services, the NHS remains free at the point of use for anyone who is resident in the UK.  That is currently more than 60m people.  It covers everything from antenatal screening and routine treatment for coughs and colds to open heart surgery, accident and emergency treatment and end-of-life care."

The above can be read at NHS Choices.

Of course good healthcare is no longer available to all – some excluded from elective surgery in specific health care trusts (e.g. Kent, North Yorkshire) as they are smokers or/and are obese.  It is true that all surgery involves risk and this risk is said to be increased in those who smoke or are obese.

Research would suggest that smokers have a higher incidence of postoperative lung problems caused by increased mucous production and decreased ability to clear it.  A smoker's blood is less oxygenated (through inhalation of carbon monoxide and nicotine) and blood flow to the wound is reduced, increasing healing time and the risk of infection.  Giving up the weed a few weeks before surgery does appear to be beneficial.      (On a personal note and as a smoker I can state that my habit has never appeared to have a detrimental effect after surgery – but maybe I am lucky?)

The obese - research here shows that surgery is more complicated in that incisions have to be deeper and  surgery takes longer and is therefore more expensive.  Post operative complications centred round longer healing time – due to a decreased blood supply to the wound and an increased risk of nosocomial (hospital acquired) infection, particularly surgical site infection and that morbidity – not mortality – is increased after surgery.

However, and this is a big however – no pun intended – research here and here show that "… withholding surgery based on the BMI is not justified" and "The regressive attitude towards general surgery in obese patients is no longer justified."

Interestingly, if you read here you will see that bariatric surgery on those with a BMI of 30 or more "appears to be a clinically effective and cost-effective for moderately to severely obese people compared with non-surgical interventions."  This will be a poser for some NHS trusts then – can't have surgery with a BMI above thirty – so you lose a little weight and then no longer qualify for bariatric surgery!  How frustrating that will be!

If you read this article in Pulse you will read that (some) GPs have decided that it is okay for those who are obese and/or smoke to be discriminated against and are backing NHS Hertfordshire to block same denormalised, stigmatised individuals from elective surgery unless certain conditions are met.   So the right to healthcare is no longer available to all and this principle (no longer) remains at its core then?

You will see from the comments in the above mentioned article that all GPs do not condone the rise and rise of the 'Health Police' and indeed this criminalisation of the obese and the smoker is not new.   Poor GPs will also get it in the neck regarding (none) referrals for other newly specified (none) treatments as PCTs add more procedures to the list of 'low clinical priority.'  These measures are of course implemented in cost cutting exercises as trusts need to tighten their financial belts. 

If you visit here - Page 16 (pdf), you will see the Croydon list of low priority treatments.  I find it a little worrying as without one of those specified procedures – I am a 100% certain that I would have been 'on the sick' for over twelve years as I certainly, certainly would have had a greatly reduced quality of life.  It is a sure bet that those folk that made up this little list have never experienced some of these conditions.

So there you have it folks – the NHS is being slowly privatised – believe me it is (!) – and patients are already being selected out of the assurance of 'good healthcare … (being) available to all' and the 'core principle' is no longer the core principle and as you were warned here, there and everywhere in blogland, GP mags and indeed The Guardian the NHS as we knew it is slowly but surely becoming a distant memory.

You were warned…

I wonder why sports injuries aren't excluded from treatment…? 

Competing interests:  I smoke and am overweight although not obese and I just love my imperfect NHS.

Anna :o]

Six Hour Anger Resolution Session = Cure?

The Institute of Meridian Psychotherapy

She sits

With time wrapped                                                                    

Round her wrist

To count the seconds, minutes

Of the six hour session. 

Above her, displayed

The (achieved online) certificate

Of her profession;

Anger Resolution Therapist,

The therapist who amateurishly

Probes the minds of those

Who come to her for frank confession.

They confess to her unbounded rage

And hope that she through therapy

Their smouldering anger will assuage.

But she plays with her online learned

Anger shafting mumbo jumbo;

(Her self perceived psychology diploma)

Her self importance well unearned

She talks of Freud's oral, anal stages

Mechanisms of repression, thought regression

Goals achieved and thought suppression

And all the other dangerous 'knowledge'

Gleaned from the spurious pages

Littering the path to her
Worthless online paper.

They come to her, her lab rats,

In hope that she might be the one

To set them free from their injurious rages

That bleeds red into their tumultuous lives

Of battered husbands, battered wives,

Lost hopes, lost jobs, lost dreams, lost friends.

And as she plays her dangerous game

Tearing their minds to raw emotion,

She has this ridiculous, egotistic notion

That her therapy will set them free

While the whole disaster descends

Into some horrific exposure of sorely damaged souls,

She sees this as success and realised goals;

Insensitive to the damaged reeked she seeks not closure

And blind, she is not the least bit curious

Why her 'clients' leave without grateful thanks

But with raped emotions and darkly furious.

This post was inspired by Maffick Mondays prompt – Anger management classes – and as usual I let the prompt take me where it wanted.  I researched anger management classes and was not surprised that anyone in the USA (sorry USA) could become an anger management therapist – however I was surprised that this applied to the UK too.

Sites will suggest that courses are aimed at professionals – but then add that anyone with a personal interest in anger management can take the online course too.  Professional or not – I would worry re any so called qualification earned on distance learning.

One of the sites I visited was the UK College of Holistic Training and for £225 and a recommended training period of three months or less – you will receive (I'm quite sure you will) a Diploma in Anger Management, be accredited with The Institute of Meridian Psychotherapy and the world will then become your counselling oyster.  All this on line – no face to face with a real person; no checks to see if you are able to deal with the can of worms you might open up, are psychologically suited to the task in hand, nothing.

Counselling, if carried out by amateurs is a dangerous thing and indeed those who are professionally qualified, really professionally qualified, may not possess necessary skills, can become complacent, fail to recognise opened wounds and thus do not close them.  People are left damaged by the very thing intended to aid them.

Some years ago I attended a course in bereavement counselling – discussing death poses no problems for me and I wanted to help those who were 'stuck' in the bereavement process.

The course consisted of ten one hour sessions and at the end I would be a bereavement counsellor.  I never became one as the course worried me, all of it screamed at me that I would be playing with peoples minds as there was no clear instruction, no learning of potential pitfalls or the wounds that I might open up and the skills, the knowledge base for closure.  The course consisted of mere role play and an awareness of bereavement stages and to me that was not good enough.  Although several of us raised this concern – it was never addressed.  So does it still continue?

The poem itself may be a gross exaggeration of the potential for damage, damage of those unfortunate souls who enter, eyes open, to therapy, but unknowing that their therapist may be an individual who completed an on-line diploma course and have absolutely no idea of the dangerous games they are playing with peoples lives – but it may not be.

Anna :o]