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To save the NHS, listen to frontline staff, patients and carers

Bev Fitzsimons 05 July 2023

Patients and their families are an untapped resource for improving services, not a burden to be reduced. Bev responds to the Guardian’s ‘A future worth fighting for’: five health experts on the state of the NHS at 75’.

Topics

Compassionate culturePerson-centred systemsQuality Improvement

Perhaps one reason that successive attempts to “turn the NHS around” have failed to deliver is the nature of the experts consulted, and the absence of the greatest untapped expert resource of all – the people using services, and the people supporting them to do so. I have the greatest respect for the individuals quoted in your article (‘A future worth fighting for’: five health experts on the state of the NHS at 75, 3 July). But the absence of patients’ and carers’ viewpoints means a huge amount of knowledge of what is going on in the system now is lost: there is nothing like a lengthy hospital stay to provide an anthropological insight into the workings of a hugely complex system.

I have no argument with the solutions suggested. Of course prevention is vital. And of course technology is important, from the simplest – access to decent wifi (though I might add for people using services as well as people working in the system) – to the most complex robotic procedures. But the essence of healthcare is care, which is a profoundly human interaction. Looking after the humans of the NHS is the key to saving the system.

That includes people using services: they are not a burden to be reduced or a problem to be solved, but people who need the support of others and who are entitled to receive it. To do that, the humans working in the system need care too. Clare Gerada is right when she talks about burnout and needing more time to care, and not just for GPs.

Getting it right means more attention being paid to the experiences of those closest to the action (frontline staff, patients and carers who are also experts), and then their proper involvement in the design of the solutions.

Originally published by the Guardian in ‘To save the NHS, listen to GPs and Patients‘ on 05 July 2023.