Opinion

Claire Simpson: Health service cannot be allowed to fall over a cliff-edge

The Royal College of Nursing is balloting its members in the north for strike action
The Royal College of Nursing is balloting its members in the north for strike action The Royal College of Nursing is balloting its members in the north for strike action

WITH Brexit looming like a bad fairy at a Christening, every day is a good day to bury bad news.

While Boris Johnson - increasingly looking like an adult Draco Malfoy who’s experiencing some personal issues - argued with the Irish government, a nursing union was taking the most difficult step in its history.

Over the next month, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is balloting its members in the north for strike action.

The RCN isn’t known for its militancy. This is the first strike ballot in the union’s 103-year history. Nurses have managed to work in the NHS since its inception 71 years ago without going on strike, so no one could accuse the union of making a snap decision.

The RCN’s director Pat Cullen said staff were facing “unacceptable conditions”, including nearly 3,000 unfilled posts, which pose a risk to patients. The union, she said, had been left with “no choice” but to ballot its members.

Even the most senior health official has warned that the NHS is heading towards "a full-blown crisis" unless the system is urgently reformed.

Richard Pengelly, who warned earlier this year that eradicating hospital waiting lists in Northern Ireland could cost up to £1bn, said his department was getting "almost daily" demands for additional spending.

Without an overhaul of the system, he warned, the north's health service is "heading over the cliff edge".

A close relative has experienced poor health over the last few months. With three hospital stays in five months and endless trips to the GP, she’s seen first-hand how stretched the NHS really is.

The nurses at her local health centre worked through their lunch break to carry out blood tests and ECGs. The nurses who cared for her in hospital had to deal with hugely challenging conditions, including dealing with vulnerable patients - some of whom had serious mental health issues - alongside those with complex medical needs.

“Could you be a nurse?” she asked me as she lay on a trolley a couple of weeks ago. “No,” I said. Few of us have the resilience and mental strength to deal with ill and dying patients day after day while worrying about punishing rotas, staff shortages and a lack of available beds.

Every nurse I spoke to said autumn had already brought more ill patients, more pressure on available beds, greater need for more staff, and the problems were only going to get worse as we head further into winter.

While sitting in a series of waiting rooms, I re-read What A Carve Up!, author Jonathan Coe’s wonderful and funny dissection of the Thatcherite policies which chipped away at our society in the 1980s and 1990s. In one memorable scene, a doctor tells the main character - whose girlfriend is dying - why she’s leaving the NHS, saying over-worked staff and a lack of communication and resources were putting patients in danger. That scene was set nearly 30 years ago.

No one would argue that conditions have improved since. In fact, other writers have pointed out that the rot set in much earlier than the 1980s.

In his book The Compassionate Mind, psychologist Paul Gilbert argues that the "shift in Britain from the welfare-orientated politics of the 1950s and 1960s to the 'need to maintain competitive edge' politics of the last 25 years is as tragic as it is typical".

Professor Gilbert said the NHS used to work as a "complex, interconnected set of people trying to co-operate together; now it's been split into competing business units/groups".

He said successive governments have seen co-operation in the NHS as a bad thing; instead the service has been transformed into a competitive, target-driven environment which actually doesn't help patients or staff.

It is clear that the NHS has been run-down over successive decades. The warnings have been obvious for so long that health bosses cannot be surprised by the RCN's move. The fact that the union has taken such an unprecedented step shows how intolerable the situation in our hospitals and health centres has become.

With winter pressures only set to get worse, industrial action will clearly have an impact on patients.

But few of us who have experienced the sharp end of the health service this year will begrudge those looking after our loved ones the right to improve their working conditions.