INMYOPINION... REDTAPERUINSINNOVATION

RECENTLY, the NHS announced it is backing a programme to help double the number of volunteers working in hospitals, with the suggestion that they will carry out tasks medical staff are too busy to do.

This is confirmation, if one needed it, that after years of cutbacks, austerity and rising demand, the final drops of blood have been squeezed from the NHS stone.

For, although volunteers have been part of the NHS since its inception, typically their roles have been limited to running hospital shops or pushing trolleys selling toiletries, stationery and snacks. But now, with the company HelpForce, it is hoped they will work on the hospital wards, fetching equipment, running to the pharmacy, helping at mealtimes and driving patients home.

As a junior doctor, I saw first-hand how grateful patients were for the volunteers and their trolley service. But I fear there will be inevitable bureaucratic difficulties.

When I was the medical director of a hospice, I set up a transport service for elderly relatives to use after a long vigil sitting with a husband, wife or partner who was dying — the idea was that when they needed to get home late at night, a volunteer would drive them.

But in the end, not one person was ever transported home as every objection was put forward by members of the charitable organisation that had offered to run it, from ‘insurance difficulties’ to health and safety.

And now, 30 years later? Training, annual appraisal, proof of identity, chaperones, etc will all be mandatory. I can see an endless list of concerns and regulations which, along with the roadblocks that doomed my transport system years ago, will stand in the way of HelpForce.

The fact is that in the NHS, box-ticking and political correctness take precedence over almost everything else, and what might be a worthwhile enhancement on the wards will inevitably fail. I watch with sadness.