Andrew Vine
‘The NHS’s problems are nothing new. There never were enough staff, and never was enough money.’
THE DAY after my father died, I went back to the hospital ward where his life had drawn quietly to its close to thank the staff for their compassion and care.
There was a reason for doing so besides wanting to say a simple “thank you”.
My father had done their job virtually all his working life, caring for the ill, and latterly specialising in looking after frail elderly people, just like he had become, and it seemed to me towards the end that his life had come full circle.
It always meant a very great deal to him when relatives took a moment to express their appreciation, and it plainly struck a chord with the staff who had cared for him to be thanked.
They had known he was one of their own, a nurse of an earlier generation, and would sit and talk to him about the job, even though dementia had robbed him of all understanding.
Or maybe not entirely. If he was agitated, as his illness sometimes made him, the talk of nursing and the day-today routine of running a ward seemed to calm him, as if somewhere deep inside a tiny glimmer of remembrance remained.
I often wished he could have talked to them while he was still lucid, because they would have found much in common, not least the balance of satisfaction and frustration at working for the NHS that existed as much in his day as it still does.
And the pride in it, too. If he had lived to see this Thursday’s 70th anniversary of the founding of this most beloved of national institutions, he would have been full of pride.
In his own small way, along with thousands and thousands of others, my father helped to build the NHS from scratch. He was one of its first intake of trainee nurses in 1948, demobbed after war service and embarking on a new career in what was an exciting leap forward for the country he had spent six years in uniform serving.
Because of his job, I lived with daily talk of the NHS from being old enough to remember. And its problems are nothing new. There never were enough staff, and never was enough money.
He wasn’t paid anything like enough for what he did, and the nursing staff who looked after him at the end weren’t either. That hadn’t changed.
Forty-five years ago, he would return home exhausted because he’d been rushed off his feet all day or all night. There were always too many forms to fill in, and too many gaps in the service.
His first winter in the NHS, when bitter weather brought the Britain of 1948 to a standstill, he recalled there not being enough beds for the flood of elderly patients who had to be admitted to hospital.
If he had been here to witness very similar scenes last winter, or likely enough in the one to come, he would have nodded in recognition.
But he made the ward he was in charge of work, just like the staff do now, by doing his damnedest every day, exactly as still happens, by never throwing up his hands in despair and just getting on with the job.
Yet he was under no illusions about the flaws inherent in a service that set out to provide all things to all patients. The more it was able to offer, the more would be asked of it.
He had a longer perspective than most, and recognised that the NHS would always struggle to meet the demands placed upon it. That was there from the start.
He lived long enough to see medical advances that would have been startling at the beginning of his career, and cheered every one. But he knew that every step forward also tightened the pressure on the NHS just that little bit more.
Politicians who scored points off each other over health infuriated him, because they knew little of the day-to-day realities, of what the staff really gave to make the system work. And that’s as true now as it was then.
His job was a vocation. To his modernday counterparts it still is. That was always the magic ingredient of the NHS, the strength that got it over the bad times and through the especially difficult working days, the commitment, the goodwill, the compassion and willingness to go the extra mile. My father had that in spades.
He wouldn’t have claimed to have the answers to maintaining the NHS as the country wants it to be.
But what he knew for certain is that it always needed more money and always would. If we want an NHS, we’ll just have to pay for it, he said, and if we have to pay more, then so be it.
That was true when he started nursing 70 years ago. And it’s still true today.
If he had lived to see the 70th anniversary, he would have been full of pride. In his own small way, along with thousands of others, my father helped to build the NHS from scratch.