The NHS is failing us, but we are failing it too

Abstract

In October, Kit Yates and I wrote about how the NHS was facing its bleakest midwinter. 1 We highlighted how things were bleak and getting worse across the board, from emergency care, to secondary care, to primary care. Two months later and the situation has continued to worsen. Amid record waiting lists and full hospitals, there are rapidly rising covid hospital admissions and-for the first time in three years-rapidly rising hospital admissions for flu. 2 3 A recent large wave of RSV also added pressure and is only now declining. 2

Industrial practices are preferable to leaving people unseen

“…As Christina Pagel alludes to in her opinion piece in The BMJ ,2 a bigger, honest conversation is needed about what the NHS is realistically expected to do, what we want it to be, and what it will be able to carry out, as it is not currently in a position to be everything to everyone.…”

A national conversation about the NHS

“…Pagel rightly calls for a national conversation about the NHS, but that conversation will be difficult1; our record on grown-up national conversations is not encouraging, and this will need extraordinarily careful thought and planning. It must interrogate values and avoid assumptions.…”