A battle on the home front... for the future of our NHS

EVERYWHERE I look, I see A&E departments being compared to war zones. And I get it. What could be worse than being treated on the battlefield?

But for me, it doesn’t quite stack up. Because I’ve been in an intensive care unit in a war zone. And it was the finest medical care I have ever received.

It was the summer of 2008, and I was in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, covering the war for a newspaper. After almost two weeks there, travelling in armoured vehicles, meeting former Taliban leaders and sleeping in makeshift camps, I had gone out on patrol with British Army soldiers and a group of US Marines.

In temperatures of around 52C, and after a suppressed Taliban ambush, I got into difficulties in the heat. I started to feel unsteady. I may have thrown up. And then I collapsed.

What I had suffered was severe heat stroke, in one of the hottest and most dangerous environments on earth. A freak event, perhaps, but one I still carry guilt over. I slipped into a coma, and my internal organs failed. While being airlifted in a Chinook helicopter I suffered cardiac arrest and my heart stopped for four minutes.

An Army medic resuscitated me, manually, and kept me breathing until we could land at a field hospital. There is no escaping the fact that I was – am – incredibly lucky to be alive.

But luck only goes so far. I am alive because of the gold star treatment I received from the British Army at every step of my medical emergency. Having been brought back to life by that extraordinary medic, I arrived at the field hospital and was placed in an induced coma for 18 hours.

I was kept on a ventilator in a sparklingly clean, air-conditioned ICU. I was never left alone, as staff constantly checked my lungs, my blood pressure (which at one point dropped to zero), my heart and my brain. When I came round they held my hand, too.

On the troop plane back to the UK several days later, a makeshift intensive care unit was set up in the cabin to monitor my vitals and keep me comfortable. Through it all I was treated with care and compassion, and never made to feel like I was in any way a burden, although in all honestly, I probably was.

I will forever remain grateful to the bravery and skill of those who saved me, and a portion of my salary goes to veterans’ charities every month.

But my experience also means I have never looked at the NHS in quite the same way again.

On arrival back in the UK I was, after two days in ICU, placed on a mixed ward full of dementia patients. There was one toilet for seven women. Within 72 hours I had contracted C. diff, a hospital superbug, while it took days to arrange a scan of my damaged liver. The contrast in care was stark. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

None of this was the fault of the staff, in the same way that none of the crisis in our NHS is their fault, either. They have been warning our Government for months – years even – that things are near breaking point. With 60 a week dying as a result of hold-ups at our A&E departments, I fear we have reached a critical moment.

Not that we have seen much accountability. While our First Minister sought this week to blame patients for ‘unnecessary attendances’ at hospitals, the always-articulate Dr Lailah Peel, deputy chair of BMA Scotland, lambasted her for ‘patient-blaming language’.

ANY patient in A&E has felt it necessary to present or been advised to by someone,’ she said. ‘Even if A&E isn’t the right place there’s likely a reason or barrier... stopping them accessing what they need [in] other ways.’

Trust our SNP Government to make patients feel like a burden. It is something the British Army, despite being in an actual war zone, never, ever did.

I understand that I am not comparing like for like. The Royal Army Medical Corps is a highly trained and efficient machine, not a creaky, ancient structure that has been underfunded for decades and is no longer fit for purpose. While the British Army remains the envy of the world, our NHS, once in the same category, is now a source of national shame.

Indeed, just this week, we heard that a Ukrainian refugee returned to Kyiv to see her doctor because she waited so long in Scotland for treatment.

And so I return to my original point. If our emergency departments really were like war zones, there is absolutely no way that 60 people would be dying a week. And in Scotland, in 2023, that is wholly unacceptable.