Patients were at a loss, professionals cited bureaucratic burdens. I wrote a book about the mess, rolling the words of many real doctors into a fictional one, who says: ‘Pointless tasks, meetings, counting games. You can give me an abacus, but I can't promise you sweeter medicine.’
Surely—and we need to ask this, for want of an evidence-base that mushrooming management gives us a better time if we get sick—sweeter medicine is about that extra ounce of humanity? And finding it, even when, as a doctor, you've just had a row about targets, budgets and how much red tape you need to wrap it up in. Or when, as a patient, you feel dreadful and the system's apparently conspiring to make it worse.
While it is naïve to suggest curing the NHS's ills by being nicer to each other, it's surely part of the picture, and it keeps getting buried under rarefied rows. We need to work together, hard and fast, to claw back tender, loving health care before losing sight of what it is. Getting better is about people, not about politics, professional posturing and pride. Well or ill, we're in this together. Counting games may be a necessary part of the picture, but so too is stepping back, little and often, and asking whether we're treating each other well. Some days, that feels like the last achievable thing on earth. Surely it always has to be the first?