Happy birthday NHS, you are a national treasure we all need to take care of

The birthday parties planned in hospitals across the country to mark the NHS's 69th anniversary will also highlight a service in crisis says Sarah Freeman.
As the NHS celebrates its 69th anniversary, many people fear that by the time it hits 70 it will be in critical condition. Picture Anthony Devlin/PA WireAs the NHS celebrates its 69th anniversary, many people fear that by the time it hits 70 it will be in critical condition. Picture Anthony Devlin/PA Wire
As the NHS celebrates its 69th anniversary, many people fear that by the time it hits 70 it will be in critical condition. Picture Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

Like many people’s brush with the NHS it happened quite unexpectedly. It had been an otherwise quiet afternoon when mum called to say her youngest grandchild and my nephew was in hospital. He’d been off school all week but when my sister in law had taken him to the doctor’s surgery pretty sure she would be sent back home, earmarked as one of those over-fussy middle class mothers.

It was the end of a long week for the GP, but concerned there was no obvious cause for his high temperature she didn’t hesitate. Within the hour, Leeds General Infirmary had another patient.

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While the wheels of NHS bureaucracy often turn excruciatingly slow, on the wards events often happen at a speed which is hard to comprehend. Within 12 hours, Patrick had been diagnosed with a particularly virulent sinus infection which had spread to his brain. With 24 hour surgeons were preparing to operate. By the end of the weekend he was back on the ward, head bandaged and an industrial quantity of antibiotics did the rest.

It’s in those hours where there is nothing to do but make endless cups of tea that the strength of the NHS and the staff who work there becomes clear. The nurses on the neurological ward did what they were trained to. They administered drugs, checked blood pressure and changed dressings. But that was only the start. To the child opposite whose parents rarely visited, their own lives too chaotic to fit around even the most flexible of visitor hours, they were surrogate mums and dads. While they filled out charts, worked out rotas and logged test results, they also entertained a lonely little boy, parking his wheelchair by the reception desk.

To the teenage parents of a tiny baby born with a brain tumour they were a shoulder to cry on and to every family wanting answers to a million questions, the kind not satisfied by the clinical bedside manner of surgeons and consultants, they were a calming presence in a storm of emotions.

And then there were the patients who didn’t want to be there. They were the ones who spat and bit and whose aggression the nurses tried to hide behind the flimsiest hospital curtains.

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Today it is 69 years since Aneurin Bevan realised his post-war vision of a comprehensive health service which was universal and free at the point of delivery. Despite the waiting lists, the creaking staffing issues and a top heavy management structure, the NHS remains the envy of the world, but at the birthday parties which will be held across the country today many will be tinged with a degree of nervousness for the future.

While a hard fought campaign is being waged to save hospitals like Huddersfield Royal Infirmary no one is quite sure what shape it will be in come the 70th anniversary or even if it will exist at all.

The NHS can be maddeningly bureaucratic, it can be wasteful and as various scandals have shown, it can fail the very people it was set up to help. However, while it isn’t perfect, it’s the best we’ve got and for all its faults within the walls of every emergency department and every ward each day some pretty amazing things take place.

Within a few weeks of my nephew’s surgery the image of him post-operation had been replaced by the one of him wrestling his friend in the hospital playroom unaware he had been warned off contacts sports.

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After another six weeks he was finally discharged and barely gave the ward a second look. The nurses who had seen him through the worst didn’t need his thanks. What they do need though is recognition that a health service at breaking point can no longer be fixed by vague promises and kind words. Along with Alan Bennett and Judi Dench, it is a national treasure and one we should all take a little more care of.