a moment of appreciation…

So i have been thinking this evening how bloody good it is that we have a National Health Service in this country. Doesn't matter WHO you are, WHAT you have or don't have. You can come, get cared for, get treated and walk away with all your pennies in your pocket and no big bill following you out the door. 

Because health is a leveller…We all have it, we all need it and we all need to look after it and occassionally have it looked after for us…and i like that in this country because of our NHS we are all level..

yeah yeah yeah…there are private hospitals..you can jump queues by seeing Dr's privately…yadda yadda.

You wont tell me something im not aware of. BUT if you need specialist….specialist care…you won't get that in the private sector….like ECMO (google it if you are interested). I think there are maybe 4 centres in the entire country that offer it and lets see the privateers throwing their principles away when their relative needs that treatement to stay alive!!

Don't get me wrong, as a worker in the NHS it can drive me CRAZY. We are under-staffed many times, struggling often to get the resources we need to provide the sort of care we should and sometimes we can feel royally dumped on by the higher echelons of management. But the management/worker quarrel is boring and will be with us forever *yawn* 

BUT anyway the reason i felt like this today was as a result of visiting our local peadiatric hospital with my son who had fallen at school and hurt himself. We were seen by approximately five or six different members of the healthcare team and and my son was treated with respect, humour and sensitivity. The peadiatrician spoke to my son first before he explained what had happened to me. 

He received appropriate care for what turned out to be a fractured wrist. The pead explained the reasons why they were splinting his wrist rather than using a cast, then we were discharged knowing we could return if we wished to, whenever…"free at the time of need"