Time has come for debate on NHS

HE NHS is used as a political football; it has always been thus. Week in, week out in Holyrood our politicians trade statistics and insults with their opponents.

The public invariably gets fed up of the white noise and switches off – who, after all, can we trust to tell us how it really is?

If we can trust anyone surely it’s those at the front line, and when they tell us all is not well, we – politicians and taxpayers alike – should listen.

The latest person to do just that is the new chairman of the Scottish Consultants Committee at the British Medical Association.

In an interview to mark his appointment, Simon Barker, an orthopaedic consultant in Aberdeen, outlined just how difficult it is for hospitals to recruit and retain senior staff.

Many consultant posts are being filled with lower grade staff, he said, because repeatedly advertised vacancies are failing to attract applicants.

He adds that when he was appointed a decade ago, consultant jobs would receive around eight or 10 applications; these days one or two is a good result.

So, where are all senior doctors going? In our global, more connected world, the answer is places such as Australia and New Zealand, where staff can get a better work-life balance, according to Mr Barker.

All this, he says, has left the NHS in dire straits and facing the most stark choices: put in more funds or services will have to be cut.

There are some, of course, who would say that consultants get a pretty fair deal in comparison to other NHS workers, such as nurses and junior doctors, and are particularly adept at lobbying governments.

Whether this is true or not, however, is perhaps irrelevant when the facts speak for themselves and hospitals are clearly struggling to fill these key posts.

Health boards must do more to ensure that the senior doctors who save and improve so many lives at least feel valued in their work.

And, as Mr Barker points out, achieving this is not solely about money.

He also, of course, highlights the wider issues faced by our NHS at a time when people are not only living longer, but with multiple health problems and conditions all requiring long-term treatment.

Ensuring our medics are able to provide quality care to all at a time of competing clinical priorities, fiscal austerity and an ageing population is the conundrum no politician has yet worked out the answer to.

But when experts such as Mr Barker speak plainly and honestly about the realities of modern healthcare, it is incumbent on all of those who care about the NHS to listen; and, crucially, to respond.

Neither politicians nor the public want to face up to the reality that something will eventually have to give; unless we as a society decide we are prepared to pay more taxes, we will likely have to accept that the health service in its present form cannot do everything we want it to do.

We will have to make tough choices. It surely time for us to engage in this debate; time, after all, is what the NHS does not have.