The Perfect Stick With Which the Mail Can Use to Beat the NHS

Swine flu has had a great deal of coverage this past few weeks, and none more so than in the very tragic case of young Lana Ameen (3 years old) who died of the illness shortly after Christmas. This has led to some people including (understandably) her grief stricken parents to question the wisdom of the governments scientific advisers advice not to vaccinate children under 5 who showed no outwards symptoms of the illness this time around, unlike last years outbreak. (sadly Lana fell under this category.) There have also been reports of a shortage of flu vaccines (not always just the H1N1 strain. The media always fudge these kinds of technicalities) in some areas, either the result of bodged forward planning or people surging to be vaccinated after they have seen the new criteria for those who should be inoculated (i.e carers etc.) and reacting to the narrative string of deaths from flu that have been reported from around Christmas time, or by stories of left over vaccine from last year being handed out. Concerns about the reasons why the advisers changed the criteria have compounded the issue. The perceived "overkill" in response to the last outbreak (though there was nothing trivial about it to the estimated 457 who were believed to have died of swine flu) may have led to a "dropping of guards", or that some kind of herd immunity from last years inoculations should see this year through as well. Or that procuring massive amounts of vaccine for the under 5's was objectively economically unsound after it was estimated that only one in four under 5's had received the previous call to have the jab last time around. We still live in a society that has a fair amount of suspicion towards vaccination, another wonderful legacy of the MMR scare. Though there are reports of worried parents paying over the odds for private inoculations in the aftermath of Lanas tragic death.

It would be an invidious task for anyone to oversee. To decide how vigorously to respond to an outbreak before it has happened, with a finite amount of money to deal with the problem. If we had Star Treks replicators we could perhaps afford to magic medicine up for everyone with no need to bean count. But sadly we don't, and it is devastatingly hard to know where to draw the line. My own hunch is that under 5's should have remained eligible for the vaccine. But I don't have either the full facts about budget restraints or the medical expertise to really expand on this other than perhaps a theory of being over prepared than under. But as I said I don't have the medical knowledge to expand on that. Amanda Platell of the Daily Mail probably has less knowledge about medicine than I do (and that aint a lot), and probably thinks disease is spread by Satan farting in your face like 15th century folk believed. Unlike me she isn't afraid to make sweeping generalisations and give her uninsightful tuppenceworth;

"One can only imagine the courage it must have taken for Zana and Gemma Ameen to release a picture of their three-year-old daughter Lana in the final hours of her pitifully short life.
Lana died from swine flu on Boxing Day, and now Dr Ameen, a hospital registrar, has spoken out to expose the cruelty of a system that refuses vaccinations against this deadly flu to children under five. Had Lana been given the £6 jab, as her parents had requested, her father is convinced she would still be alive.

Not only does this needless tragedy expose the flawed reasoning behind who is entitled to the inoculations, it also highlights the shameful way the £110billion we now spend on the NHS is used. Or rather, wasted.

Where is the morality in a public health system that removes tattoos and performs boob jobs, yet denies children protection from a known killer?

In a week when we’ve learned that some doctors are getting £100,000 overtime pay, on top of their £96,000 salaries, and that nearly a thousand GPs are on salaries of £200,000, how can it possibly be justified?

The UK’s NHS system still allows wide, free access to patients from anywhere in the EU. Other countries, quite rightly, prioritise their own citizens. Why on earth don’t we?

The truth is that all political parties are terrified of admitting the truth — the NHS needs a complete overhaul. There must be priorities and surely a life-saving drug for a child is more important than vanity procedures and gastric bands for those who can’t control their eating?
Dr Ameen is right when he says the decision not to give children the jab is not about saving lives but saving money.

‘Everyone — from her health team to the Government, to me, her Daddy who loved her more than anything in the world — let her down,’ he wrote in this paper yesterday.
And until we stop treating the NHS like some sacred cow, and face up to its failings, children like Lana will continue to be its innocent victims."

This article is revealing in many ways. Firstly it shows that Platell knows nothing about what she is spouting off about. You can't really make direct comparisons between such differing health care procedures such as how far a blanket vaccination program should go and providing gastric bands for a start. The second is that this article is not just an attack on the vaccination program, but a launchpad for a broader attack on the NHS itself, hence all the stuff about treating our own etc... This is perfect material to attack the NHS regardless of what it does. Attack them for being under prepared as this article does, or attack them for wasting money if they over prepare as Lidljohn did in this article . It is win-win for armchair pundits who can safely attack from the office, without ever having to face the responsibility of allocating funding for potential pandemics which no one can ever wholly predict. With this kind of story the NHS can be painted as a bloated incompetent socialist bureaucracy which either wastes taxpayers money, or lets kids die by penny pinching. This is the real point of these polemics, not any sort of insightful critique of the way our health care is funded. So forgive me if I won't be lectured by someone like Platell about facing up to the "failings of the NHS"

Militant Medical Nurse Blog

I was reading a story on the Mails website about the family of a pensioner who they accused of badly treating her in hospital, as she was dying of terminal cancer. I looked at some of Mailwatch's comments on the story, and the thread on the Mail vs the NHS (the right wing press love a bit of nurse bashing. And I use the word "bit" liberally.) I eventually discovered a link to the Militant Medical Nurse blog , written by a graduate nurse who goes by the name of "Nurse Anne." It is a passionate and extremely heartfelt rebuttal to all the popular misconceptions about nurses and nursing the right wing press like to put out. It is an angry blog, but angry in a good way, as only a passionate response to the endless lies and shit spread about a career the blogs author loves with a passion. It is simply one of the most compelling blogs I have ever read. I've virtually read most of it already. I was just disappointed there wasn't an infinite number of posts! Like all good insider exposes into a well known but badly understood vocation, we learn that what we thought we knew about [in this case] nursing was wrong, and the muckslingers know even less (but it wouldn't be fun then.) The blog utterly demolishes the old nursing tropes trotted out by journos who have never bothered to look in to how stuff actually works. Firstly we learn that nurses with degrees in the subject is a good thing. Nursing is a valued profession (corrected;- it should be.) recognition of this would help the public understand a nurses role for one. For another, a nurse is responsible for lives. For checking that those drugs are right, that that tachycardia won't lead to an arrest. Compassion must be married to experience and practical application. Being nice alone, won't save lives. Indeed, subjectively reacting to situations, without an awareness of the whole, is likely to be more harmful.

More disturbingly we learn that NHS business managers are in favour of using fewer qualified nurses and more health care assistants and cadets (teenage temps looking for paid work experience.) Both of these (and nurse Anne says so) do admirable work, but they have two drawbacks. Neither are qualified to any extent like nurses, and are not registered (so can't carry the can if someone dies) The latter are also not protected terms (this can be really frustrating if patients / visitors see them as equally qualified), so you can get a lot off chaff with the wheat. The duty nurses have to worry about poorly trained staff, and cadets who are just there cause it pays more than McDonald's. They are constantly having to monitor them (you have to, if you can get blackballed for something they did wrong.), and can't delegate them tasks with greater autonomy. It is also difficult when patients / visitors have little distinction between the roles of nurses /other ward staff, and see cadets as qualified nurses, and nurses as cadets.

The last point is perhaps the most devastating one of all. The reduction of qualified nurses, and inflation of auxiliary staff has had a terrible effect on curtailing nurses valuable rationed time. The patient to nurse ratio has increased drastically. This has resulted in the reduction of time a nurse can spend with patients (holistic care. How?), and enormous demands on a nurses workload. When a nurse is responsible for perhaps 15 patients a shift, every second is precious. Preparing pills can take all morning, literally any delay can result in backlog, and then more backlog. The stories of dirty hospitals, and pensioners being left in their shit are not down to wilful cruelty or neglect [on the nurses part]. They simply cannot be everywhere at once, all the time. Something has to give; and are going to fall by the wayside. The post where she says nurses are now too tied up to rigid schedules, that they sometimes have to avoid eye contact with patients / visitors, lest they fall behind even more, as time [literally] costs lives - is truly heartbreaking (the article "Nurse Anne's pamphlet for patients" should be required reading for all. It doesn't sound half as harsh in context to the articles.) The ghost of Florence Nightingale herself couldn't do better. This cost cutting deflation of qualified nurses on wards is downright dangerous, and it is insulting to say that they don't care. They do! They just need more resources, more time and more support. (more nurses.) God knows if it is just down to bean counters in management blinded by their narrow specialisms?

So check out Militant Medical Nurse. You'll never be able to stop yourself from flinching when you hear another pundit mouthing off about "too posh to wash, and too mean to clean." nurses. Especially nurses who have been out of the loop for 25 years (a lot has changed apparently.) I know I might end up punching my computer screen sometime soon.