A scandal and disgrace that people are not at the heart of every health service decision
ANOTHER week, another raft of stories about the problems within our health service which seems to have been in a constant state of crisis for some time.
A crisis which bubbles up, settles down just enough to stay out of the news briefly but the fundamentals of which are not tackled.
There’s a reason why our health service provokes within us a mixture of emotions, a gamut ranging from pride to anger. We say our health is our wealth and we rely on our NHS when we are at our most worryingly vulnerable; and yet as it’s “our” health service we are particularly upset when those responsible for managing it make decisions which directly and adversely affect people’s lives.
It’s why campaigners to retain emergency surgery at SWAH in Enniskillen are particularly passionate in highlighting the concerns of a whole community; it is no exaggeration to say that this could cost people their life.
I also watched over the last week stories about the pressure that Emergency Departments were under in a number of hospitals. A major incident was declared on Saturday night at Antrim when there were 131 patients reporting to ED, with 66 of them needing to be admitted but no beds were available. It was unsafe so the decision was taken to close ED.
At the Royal in Belfast, there was a similar situation with alarming levels of patient congestion and the Ulster Hospital was also under extreme pressure.
This week, it seemed to be the turn of the ED at Craigavon with reports that it had gone away beyond its capacity, 138 patients in emergency and ambulances queued outside.
Absurd plan
As SWAH campaigner Dylan Quinn pointed out that this is one of the hospitals that patients here would be transferred to under the absurd plan to end emergency surgery in Enniskillen.
So, if the situation arises where a patient can’t have emergency surgery at SWAH and is transferred on a time-consuming journey to Craigavon, which can’t admit them, what happens then?
We need to realise that this is not simply a problem with Emergency Departments. This is a problem with our whole creaking health service, which runs very deep.
When I read some of these reports, and watched the extremely worrying developments at SWAH, my mind wandered to a number of people. Let me refer to some of them.
My elderly uncle died a couple of years ago at the age of 91. He never married and continued to live alone in his little farmhouse near Ballygawley. By his late 80s, he was still lucid and would tell us funny stories with a twinkle in his eye; but his body began to fail and he needed help when he was released from Craigavon hospital where he was taken occasionally.
He had few relatives apart from us, his nephews and nieces who lived variously in Enniskillen and Belfast. Apart from visiting often, there was little we could practically do from a distance. He was fortunate that he got a care package and his carers showed such dedication in calling to look after him a number of times throughout the day.
I wondered over the weekend what would happen to him today in similar circumstances. I heard someone from a Trust appeal to families to free up beds if their loved ones were medically fit….even if their care package wasn’t what they were expecting.
This shifts the onus on families who may simply not be able to do it.
The situation in domiciliary care is also in crisis, with workers not properly paid and being treated terribly by the system. So much so that there are fewer and fewer going into this type of work; hence this has a knock-on effect of people having to be kept in hospital and no beds available for emergency cases.
Another person I thought of was the man who fell and broke his leg badly outside my house one winter’s evening as he was out running. His colleagues rang our doorbell and we called an ambulance.
None arrived, and even though we covered the man in blankets for two hours his condition was deteriorating so we took the decision to lift him gingerly into the back of a van and bring him to A and E.
At the weekend, I thought of the poor woman who died, alone, on a trolley in the Royal ED while waiting to be admitted after being brought there from a care home.
I think of the many people in agony waiting for surgery or those diagnosed with cancer anxiously sitting on a waiting list; sometimes so long that their illness is irreversible.
No choice
I think of a story some years ago when a Trust run care home was closed and elderly residents and their few possessions were moved out. They didn’t have a lot of choice about which care home to move to, some of which didn’t suit their needs.
The whole of our health and social care system is interlinked, and every part of it is under pressure, from domiciliary care to care homes, from the ambulance service to the emergency departments, from nursing to consultants.
Our precious NHS is fast becoming not fit for purpose, and we’re often loathe to criticise it because we know hard people in it work and how dedicated they are. It’s not their fault, of course, there are serious questions for those who run it.
I think, too, of the people whose dedication and compassion within all sections of health and social care keeps it going at all, and indeed how their marvellous work is undervalued to the point where they are exhausted and underpaid to the point where many are leaving the profession. This week we learned of the high number of vacancies remaining unfilled in several Trusts.
Is it any wonder?
The reason I mention people is because that should be our focus when considering the health service.
Not systems, not accountants, not unaccountable managers (I think of yet another public inquiry this week revealing that patients have been let down and wonder about how the authorities who run our health service continue to mismanage it).
Leadership?
Where is the leadership, and why are those in charge who stumble from one crisis to another not being held to account.
The people who need the health service and the wonderful people who work in it should be front and centre of every decision made.
After all, it was the needs of the people which saw the NHS originally set up, to alleviate the horrible dilemma of those suffering from ill-health who couldn’t afford the money to buy medicine or get basic treatment.
And so to SWAH, and another set of people. Those responsible for making decisions which put the people of this area at risk. Fermanagh and Omagh Council believes we are being treated with disdain and people are the top have lost our confidence.
Are they even listening, or are they failing in their responsibility to look after the lives of the people in this area? Do they even realise that their decisions will mean people could die?
The issues have been well documented in this newspaper and on social media; they are important, indeed vital, to the health and wellbeing of so many people locally.
The campaign to save SWAH is such an important one, and the people who are engaged in it deserve the support of us all. More power to them.
One day, this could affect you or a member of your family.
“
Are they even listening, or are they failing in their responsibility to look after the lives of the people in this area?
editorial@impartialreporter.com
Yours faithfully,
Francis Gallagher, Chairman, the Daisy Hill Hospital Action Group,
Newry