Steve
Onyett
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| Care and appreciation. Simple but more powerful than we realise Pictue: Deviant Art |
It
seems to have become fashionable to criticise the NHS – or in newspaper-speak
to ‘attack’ it. Of course scrutiny of public
services is important, but the relentless focus on blame for failures worries
me. In the words of Dr Cliff Mann, president of the College of
Emergency Medicine, ‘we want to make sure that we don't end up demoralising the
very people that we need to keep our health service going’. This sentiment was echoed in a recent
open letter in the Guardian from leaders of ten
NHS organisations. I’m encouraged by campaigns like ‘Big
Up the NHS’ on
Twitter which recognise that, as all parents know, praise and encouragement
generally get you much further than relentless criticism.
It’s
worth being absolutely clear, though, about the scale of the culture shift
needed to restore a sense of meaning and vocation among NHS staff. Can this be
achieved? How should we go about it? I’d suggest the solutions are radical but
also surprisingly simple.
