NHS in crisis – 40 million more GP appointments

You’d be hard pushed not to have noticed the headlines over Christmas and New Year; the festive period has put a huge strain on the NHS across the board, the impact of which can be felt far and wide. It’s no surprise that the media has jumped on the bandwagon only to proportion blame to healthcare providers from GPs, A&E and nursing staff.

However, worryingly is an article from a doctor who has worked in the NHS for over 30 years, stating the “cracks in the NHS are beginning to show” and the “position of the NHS as the gold standard of health services is under threat”.

Let’s be honest, we all take the NHS for granted, it is a world class health care service, only last year it was named the best healthcare system in the world for both value for money and indeed patient care by the Commonwealth Fund.

Quite simply the NHS is struggling to keep up with the ever growing demand, services across the whole of the NHS are being drastically over stretched. Patients are now faced with longer waiting times to see their GPs, often a common complaint but when you consider GPs are now squeezing in 40 million more appointments than they were in 2008 it’s no surprise.

The A&E crisis has been big headlines over the last few days, the reported waiting times of over 11 hours is the worse in over a decade. Hospitals  having to call in staff who shouldn’t have been working to cover the crisis, which shows great dedication, but sadly tired and overworked staff make mistakes and can’t provide the level of care they would want to, another huge strain on the NHS is the litigation budget, currently accounting for a fifth of all NHS budget.

There is no doubt that the GPs, doctors, nurses and all NHS staff are working under a tremendous strain, flat out, trying their very best but the fundamental issue is the system itself which needs addressing. The sheer volume of patients coming through the door shows no signs of slowing down and staff are not able to offer the levels of care they would like due to workloads and time pressures.

Like any workforce, in order to be effective in their work they need to be motivated and see that they are valued, something not being offered at the moment and only adding to the recruitment, retention and overall NHS crisis.

I think we all agree, we’d be lost without the NHS, we need it and want it to survive but these issues can no longer be ignored or the whole system will fall apart. Many in the healthcare sector want the NHS to go back to basics putting clinicians in the driving seat before privatisation becomes a very real reality.