Random notes on the NHS

Hospitals, big ones especially with their cafes, post offices, different buildings, people hurrying from building to building, inhabitants and visitors, are like villages.

There are four distinct tribes that can be observed around the hospital village. The first is the doctors, wearing their passes round their necks like an identity-concious Mr T. The second are the swiggers. Ever wondered why the makers of fizzy drinks make so much money? It's because of all the hospital staff swigging the stuff. Every second person is walking around with a bottle of coke or seven up in their hand. Obviously the long hours and need to keep concentration mean that you need sugar and caffeine.

The third tribe are the smokers, or rather, the stupid smokers. The whole village is a non smoking area. Never mind not being able to smoke in the buildings, you can't smoke in the car park or anywhere on the premises. Not that the signs saying this stop the smokers from doing just that. Presumably they are too stupid to read the no smoking signs, just as they are too stupid to read the health warning on the cigarette packers, possibly the reason they are in hospital in the first place. Or maybe they are hear for another reason. Certainly the heavily pregnant lady I saw pulling on a fab outside the pregnancy unit could have been here about her pregnancy, some sort of smoking related problem, or maybe she was being tested for being stupid enough to smoke while pregnant.

The final tribe are the fatties. Leaving the hospital last night I had to squeeze past a family of three that filled the corridor. There was mum, daughter and son. Each of them looked amazingly overweight, the kids looked exactly like the fat kids hat Gary Larson draws in his 'Far Side' cartoons, they had that kind of fat where their elbows where starting to lose definition in the fat of their arms. The kids were not even teens yet I'm guessing, probably mum was booking them into the cardio clinic.

Comment on: There's not much of the NHS left to cut

Comment on:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/16/lucy-mangan-nhs-frontline-cuts

The proposed NHS reforms have created more concerned quacks than were heard from the village duckpond when news got round that the Droitwich duckfucker had broken out of Dudley nick and was heading home to indulge his foul fowl habit.

But, really, what did you expect? A new Government gets in and makes changes to the NHS, that’s what Governments do. Political parties rarely give the priorities in their manifestos as standardising the membership regulations for gargoyle fancier societies, bringing back sweets in jars and resurrecting betamax as the video format of choice. No, a new Government decides that they will put the country back on its feet and an essential part of that strategy is reducing the availability of beds. In hospitals.

It’s easy to have a go at the NHS managers, because nobody likes a bloke in a suit who tumesces every time he hears the term ‘vision statement’.

Nurses? Nurses we like. Nurses with their starched uniforms and dedication. Moreover, men of a certain age get a faraway look in their eye and go all unnecessary in the trouser department whenever they hear the theme tune to ‘Angels’. See also: ‘Carry on’.

Surgeons? Surgeons we admire because anyone who has ever tried to put together an Airfix Harrier Jump Jet (buy them now before the Government axe the 1/32 scale armed forces as well kids) and has ended up with a glue-smeared canopy and more bits of the kit stuck to their fingers than are stuck together, or who has tried to fix something by taking the back off it and faffing around with a screwdriver, only to have parts left over when you’ve finished the job, respects anyone who can poke wet, wild and wobbly things and still have a breathing patient and shoes free of bloodstains at the end of it all.

Want to save the NHS some money? Easy. Here’s three ways to make a start.

People responsible for their own injuries have to pay for their own treatment. If you have the money to indulge in a ‘sport’ that involves making a bungee jump using a rope that’s past its twang-by date, you have the money to have your feet sewn back on to your ankles, and you have the money to pay the bonus to get a surgeon who knows the difference between L and R. This measure specifically excludes smokers and drinkers, who paid the tax that built the very hospital that they are being treated in. In fact…if you don’t drink and smoke you should have to pay a National Insurance premium, because others are bravely doing more than their fair share to pay for your iron supplements because you are a bloody vegetarian or something.

Replace the entire ambulance fleet with Toyota pick-up trucks. Is anyone still using these for the purpose they were actually intended for; letting builders, serial killers, illegal immigrant smugglers and sheep rustlers move stuff around under a tarpaulin? So many folk in Libya are using them as mobile machine gun platforms that I’m wondering if the latest versions come with an iPod dock, sat nav and a mount for an M2 Browning.

Look, if somebody can get tossed into the back of one of these things and get driven to a field hospital after being on the wrong end of some horrific atrocity, then surely we could use them in cases where somebody needs to be taken to hospital because they have a headache in their tummy following an ill-judged experiment involving ‘prawn surprise’.

People who believe in homeopathy don’t get any real drugs. Ever. So, you have some hard to diagnose complaint that conventional medicine doesn’t understand…like ennui? Luckily, your local aromatherapy store has just the thing, and a few drops of essential oils in your bath later you are feeling better and, bonus, are irresistible to foxes.

Great, waste your own money, but not mine, and certainly don’t bed block the bloke who has just had a lapse of concentration at his lathe. The bonus is that this can save a shedload of money, because you can extend it to people who have a belief in the healing power of prayer (‘I’m going to prey really hard that your arse reattaches itself after that hunting accident…no luck? Oh dear.’).

Finally – people who appear on the Jeremy Kyle show have their organs harvested. No? Oh, OK, people that appear on Bargain Hunt and Cash in the Attic are on the compulsory pre-mortality register as well.