Every day we see awful things that should shame the nation. The new health secretary’s solution? Ask the public to pitch in
Thérèse Coffey has unveiled her plans to tackle the NHS crisis by vowing to direct a “laser-like focus” on the needs of patients. It’s a pledge that might have had more credibility had she not revealed herself last week to be the first health secretary in NHS history to care more about commas than comas.
Nevertheless, I wanted – indeed was desperate – to believe her. You would be too if you worked inside a hospital. It’s easy, after all, to glaze over calamitous headlines about the state of the NHS. But for frontline staff, those crisis conditions are vivid, immediate and slammed into our faces daily – felt, heard, touched and smelt. Corridor deaths, putrefying flesh, relatives’ features contorted with justifiable rage, bed covers pulled back on more than one occasion to reveal fragile octogenarian skin, unforgivably caked in dried excrement. Vignettes I will never unsee, scenes to shame a nation. She had better have a plan, I have found myself muttering, because we can’t carry on like this.
Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic
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