Tech has benefited the NHS most but can’t replace the nurse and doctor
SIR – Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary (“Use extra funding for tech if NHS is to survive”, report, May 28), like many others seems to think there is a single answer to saving our NHS.
I began work as a junior doctor in 1960, retiring 35 years later as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon. Year by year there would be reorganisations to deal with problems in our beloved institution. Most were a waste of time; some were positively damaging.
Margaret Thatcher’s administration blamed overspend in the hospital service on its management by the medical profession. As a result, lay managers, answerable to the Government, were introduced.
Their numbers have grown and represent an enormous increase in expenditure, which could be acceptable if they had solved the problems. Unfortunately, their presence seems to interfere with what should be the smooth running of the service and delivery of care to patients.
Ironically, in view of Mr Hunt’s recent suggestions, the only real advance in the efficiency of the service has been in science and technology. It has been considerable in efficacy but also in cost. Even here, the impact of information technology on the training of doctors has not been without its problems, often placing them in front of a computer screen rather than at the patient’s bedside.
I am of the firm opinion that no machine will be able to replicate the all-important presence of a welltrained, compassionate nurse and doctor at the bedside of a suffering patient Nigel Dwyer
Solihull
SIR – Why have successive health secretaries failed to appreciate the blindingly obvious reason why the NHS appears to have insufficient resources?
The service is ludicrously overmanned with bureaucrats, and overburdened with unnecessary bureaucracy. No commercial organisation would tolerate such a proportion of staff who do not produce the end product, or who obstruct rather than facilitate workers who do. David Nunn FRCS
West Malling, Kent
SIR – Is it not removing “tick” rather than increasing “tech” that the NHS desperately needs?
We need to develop innovation, but unless an individual or organisation profits how is that to be promoted?
Two years ago I discovered and published a simple method of managing anxiety based on secondyear medical school anatomy.
The only “tech” part of the treatment is a Youtube video (Babygaze Anxiety Relief), but getting an NHS “tick”, with the expensive randomised controlled trials it requires, is beyond my budget, so benefits are restricted to my patients and unlikely to save the millions spent on anxiety medication for the rest of the population. Dr Andy Ashworth
Bo’ness, West Lothian