By Samantha Wathen, Press and Media Officer for Keep Our NHS Public
Government neglect and underfunding over the last ten years has contributed to a situation that is untenable and the actions of those in power continue to make working in the NHS extremely challenging.
The widely held idea perpetuated by the government that Covid is now much less of an issue and more akin to a cold, does not help healthcare staff in doing their jobs either. This ideology comes courtesy of the government’s inept messaging and affords staff no allowances for the fact they are still working in a system constrained by infection control measures, a system that was already working flat out before Covid hit, a system where in reality the ‘winter crisis’ has long been a spring-summer-autumn-winter one. Public perception matters, as it has an impact on the wellbeing of staff and their desire to carry on working in a health service we all rely on.
NHS staff are patients too. The same factors which upset and frustrate patients are shared by them, yet they have the additional burden of responsibility to make things better, even though the overarching factors needed to do so are completely beyond their control. At least with the pandemic has come a softening of the culture to finally see doctors, nurses and other frontline clinical staff as human, to recognise that their mental and physical health can be just as fragile; but it has not changed on any fundamental level the long-held culture of putting up and shutting up, as staff are still expected to turn in every day regardless of the working conditions, still contractually silenced from speaking out to the media/wider world over issues that affect patient safety or their own wellbeing.
Teetering on the edge
I was asked to write a much-needed positive piece for this blog, and to be honest, I stared at the page for a long time. The NHS is teetering on the edge, after over a decade of successive governments running it into the ground it's now extremely fragile, and the only things holding the pieces together are its truly amazing staff who, from I know not where, somehow manage to find that inner strength to come in and face the enormous challenges posed day after day after day.
Over this past two years, I've heard people I love well up when trying to articulate the horrors they've witnessed on the frontline during the height of this pandemic, read distressing messages from healthcare workers clearly at the end of their tether, and been no use in counselling their fears. I hear and read a lot, talk to people almost daily about their experiences, yet I don't pretend to know for a second what it's actually like to work in this enormously depleted system.
Life-changing acts
What I can offer by way of hope though is that from my vantage point I see the outside too.
I know there are hundreds of acts committed by NHS staff that make life-changing differences every single day. Quietly, without fanfare, and against all the odds, the staff in our health service are somehow still continuing to do extraordinary things.
My own mother was in hospital for the whole of the Covid first wave. She underwent a successful major emergency operation for cancer. Since then, she has had more follow-up surgery which has again gone well, and her care throughout has been excellent. Even during the darkest days of the pandemic, the staff at her bedside or on the phone home to us always maintained such care and professionalism.
Over the same period, my elderly grandmother suffered a broken hip and underwent emergency surgery and rehabilitation. Even more recently, she was rushed into hospital following a heart attack and I am so happy to say that she is now home again. There are thousands of such stories one could tell happening up and down the UK and across all areas of our NHS. The difference healthcare workers on every level make to people’s lives still matters every bit as much as it ever did, and the vast majority of people are still just as grateful for it.
Ordinary people
During the course of my job in NHS campaigning, I also see ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds all around the country with no direct relationship to NHS staff, standing in cold town centres and hospital car parks for hours on end distributing leaflets and talking to the public about what is really happening in the NHS, because they care. I have conversations with high profile members of the press who tell me how grateful they are for our healthcare staff, how they want their journalism to reflect this, how they hope workers won’t think the whole media is against them. I listen to and support courageous NHS staff who put their own careers at risk to speak out to the media in defence of their colleagues, I work with a truly inspiring group of people who will always go beyond their hours and job titles in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with NHS staff at pickets or on demonstrations. In my role, I see those who devote so much of their time to trying to make the health service a better place both to work and be cared for, people who arrange and hold meetings with politicians to advocate for better pay, working conditions and patient safety.
The need for continuing support
The NHS may be battered right now, but it's not gone. NHS staff, many of whom have been battered too over the last two years, have nevertheless shown throughout all of this, a genuinely remarkable capacity to recover, but this is a long road and they need the continuing support and understanding of all of us in what lies ahead. So many workers are leaving or taking early retirement, and not one of us could blame them for this under the circumstances, but if we lose them; we lose our NHS entirely.
If you know someone who works in the NHS, be there for them now and in the months to come. Be mindful if they go quiet or their behaviours change, reach out without expecting a lot back in return. So many people are overwhelmed, but just knowing you are there ready to listen without judgement will help. If they do want to talk, listen. If they don’t talk, ask. Inspiring though so many people are in dealing with these circumstances, they are humans, not heroes, and until the NHS is in better shape, we all need to remember this.