Robert Fisk lays bare NHS failings (Image: Daily Express)
Lots of people excuse the inadequacies of the NHS, saying it’s a large, complex organisation and it can’t do things quickly because it’s such a behemoth. But every passing day of my time battling incurable cancer, I increasingly wonder whether it can’t change quickly because of a much simpler, and more fatal, reason. Is it simply doomed to failure because it is steeped in incompetence?
It seems that staff are out there making decisions about patient care that have no grounding in common sense. This is best summed up by some key sentences in an email I got this week from someone at my so-called world-leading hospital. For background, I’d met with them to highlight the lack of support that the hospital provides people to cope with the emotional and wellbeing challenges of battling cancer.
The meeting was positive in that they seemed to care about the gaps in patient care. And, after leading the Daily Express’s Cancer Care campaign to improve mental health support for patients, I will hopefully be working with the hospital staff in the coming months to make improvements.
But I was completely astounded by the email I received summing up the meeting.
I’d pointed out that it’s very difficult to talk through any issues about my cancer treatment and side effects with my clinical nurse specialist if I’ve never been told who they are.
And I mentioned that when I emailed all the clinical nurse specialists in my medical team, I was told they were too busy to reply to messages.
So during the three years of being a patient at my world-leading cancer hospital, I have kind of muddled through, without knowing who to contact if I have serious issues – or even minor problems.
This was until now. I can proudly say that I have a clinical nurse specialist that I can talk to about treatment issues, and I guess would refer me on to people if I have any mental health problems or other concerns.
I say I guess because the email said I was assigned a CNS in 2023, so around the time that my treatment began. But I haven’t been given their name.
The only thing I have been told is that the CNS who is supposed to be assigned to me isn’t actually in my medical team.
Why would someone be given the job of effectively being my keyworker for cancer treatment when they have nothing to do with my care?
Why would anyone think this was a good decision?
It goes back to my suspicion that the NHS is failing because many people are making decisions that smack of incompetence.
It’s the same as if I’d turned up on my first day at Daily Express in October 2022 and been told that my manager runs a kayaking centre in Wales. And obviously, to keep it NHS, the person running the centre would not know of my existence and so would never contact me in any way.
Thoughts about kayaking aside, I think the NHS does need to take a serious look at itself and ask why it isn’t making decisions in the best interests of patients.
Why are patients being left to battle through the agonising realities of long-term health conditions on their own?
And what can staff do better to ensure that patients don’t have to deal with baffling levels of incompetence?
Answers on a postcard please.