DOC WAS THERE AT START
HIGHLAND DOC WHO JOINED NHS ON FIRST DAY
SEVEN decades ago, a newly qualified doctor was about to step in at the start of the National Health Service.
Ian Morrison, 92, graduated from Edinburgh University as a doctor in June 1948 – just a month before Nye Bevan’s NHS would transform the way health services were delivered throughout he UK. That August, Ian joined the health service, which he served for almost 40 years. Back then, GPs would be on-call 24 hours a day and thought nothing of sparking up a cigarette between appointments. Ian, from Currie in Midlothian, had a 15-a-day habit himself before “common sense” took over 40 years ago and he quit smoking. He said: “Everyone smoked in those days. We knew there were dangers with things like emphysema. We knew it aggravated it but we never knew it caused it and there were no cancer concerns. “But when we became aware, we had to set an example. There was no point puffing away on a cigarette and telling patients to stop smoking.” Ian still enjoys a dram. He said: “I have one small whisky every day between 4pm and 5pm and that’s all. I never was a heavy drinker.
“It’s a different world now. From a medical point of view, it is better. But from a social point of view? No.”
The attitudes to smoking and drinking are not the only things to change since the advent of the NHS.
After graduating, Ian took up a six-month residency in SOPD – the surgical out-patient department, the predecessor to A&E, at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary – followed by a six-month surgical residency at Leith Hospital.
He said: “Before the NHS, consultants interviewed their own staff but when the NHS came in, you were no longer employees of the hospital, you were a civil servant in a sense. Doctors would get up to mischief in those days but then we had to toe the line.”
After his two residencies, Ian did national service in the Navy before taking up a post in orthopaedic surgery at Peel Hospital near Galashiels.
From there, he went north to become a resident medical officer at Ross Memorial Hospital in Dingwall, where he spent “18 happy but busy months”.
In 1954, he was offered a trainee GP post with a local practice and grabbed it with both hands.
He said: “I never regretted the move – you played a useful part in the community.
“We covered a huge area. I did 60 home visits in one day during a flu epidemic, transport wasn’t so readily available.
“In the 50s, 60s and 70s, we didn’t have the range of medicines we have now. For cancer patients, we’d go in two or three times a day to give them morphine and then sedation at night. There were no oral medicines. You got to know your patients very well.
“My original car was a Morris Minor and it coped surprisingly well with the roads. But you carried a shovel with you in winter. I’ve seen roads with snow five feet high.
“Once we had to get a door and put a patient on it to transfer her into the back of a van after a crash in the snow because the ambulance couldn’t get anywhere near her.
“Home visiting is not the norm now and I don’t think that’s a good thing. You can see an awful lot by seeing a person in their own home background. You can assess the family tensions you don’t see in a surgery.”
In the infancy of the NHS, childhood epidemics of measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever and TB happened regularly and polio was still common. But the development of vaccinations has changed everything.
GP numbers are dropping, with a likely shortfall of 915 by 2020.
Ian said: “It’s hard to understand why young doctors have taken such a dislike to general practice.
“The local medical committee in Ross and Cromarty used to appoint doctors to practices in the area. West coast places like Gairloch or Applecross would have 10 or 15 applicants but now we can’t get anyone. Very few GPs do a 24-hour service now.”
While Ian understands the reasoning behind the move away from 24-hour care, he believes it prevents people from phoning for a doctor at night.
He said: “When you get old and infirm, if you need a doctor out of hours you’ll get someone you don‘t know or you’ll phone and have to explain yourself.”
Father-of-five Ian, who has 14 grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren, said: “My family said to me many times ‘We never saw you, you were never there’. I think they are exaggerating but we were called out a lot.”
Ambulance services have also changed radically.
Ian said: “In my young days, the ambulance service was run by the local garage owner. There were no paramedics. It’s incredible how highly trained ambulance personnel are now.”
But he isn’t happy with all the changes in the modern NHS.
Ian said: “For many years, the NHS was a model of medical care but the system has changed and I don’t think for the better.
“Look at Raigmore. It’s bursting at the seams as there has been a 20,000 increase in the number of patients over the last few years.”
Ian had heart surgery in Glasgow 13 years ago. He admitted his “legs are going” and that he should have had a knee replacement six years ago but added: “No one is cutting me up.”
Retired medic Ian Morrison recalls what life was like before the NHS, how everything changed after it was set up and what he thinks of the system now Home visiting is not the norm now and that’s not a good thing DR IAN MORRISON ON CHANGES FOR GPs IN THE MODERN-DAY NHS