Phil Hammond MD
Why is the press so down on the NHS? Most patients sing their doctor's praises (for a jar of marmalade)
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Your support makes all the difference.All doctors are wonderful. The NHS is marvellous. Patients get brilliant treatment. I love Gerald Malone. No, I've not had a personality transplant but I am having second thoughts about this column. It was Arthur Scargill who got me thinking. I was flicking through my back issues of New Socialist when I chanced upon this quote of his: "What the media present as news is not news at all but pure, unadulterated bias. News presents a digest of what's going on. In order to achieve balance it must reflect all the elements comprising that phenomenon called truth. You won't find them reported by the BBC or ITN." Is Arthur right? Every year, the NHS is slagged off more than any other institution by the media, and yet household surveys always find most people are happy with the service and that doctors are way ahead of the field in the "trust and respect" league table. Journalists alas, languish near the bottom, sandwiched between politicians and dog poo. When I see patients, I'm happy and positive and things usually go fairly well but when I write about medicine, I'm a flippant ginger nihilist. Why is this?
And it's not just me. For want of something better to do, I've surveyed all the health headlines in all the newspapers I could find for a random week this year (January 8-15) and divided them into negative and positive. To the untutored eye, this may seem like an incredibly lazy way of filling a page - the kind of column someone might write if he'd just moved house and the baby wasn't sleeping well - but read on and you'll be amazed at just how crap the NHS is through the eyes of medical journalists.
Negative headlines:
Leave us alone
Deaths put spotlight on pressures facing NHS
Embarrassed regional health chief keeps his job
Patients suffering
Crisis of care
Cutback fears
Don't drive a stake through the NHS Mr Dorrell
Britain living on diet of half-truths
Boy, 15, dies of meningitis
Nurse told home-visit racism is legal
Warning on advance of cell biology
Bug fear hits sales of beef
Black nurse loses claim on race bias
NHS accused over mentally-ill killers
Pensioner loses home fight
Hospital bed crisis will get worse, warns Labour
Extra 1,500 died in cold at Christmas
Chained night and day: the prisoner with HIV
NHS swamped with elderly who can't afford to keep warm
Hospital runs out of meningitis vaccine
Community care: ministers blamed
Health warning: do not get ill
Vaccine runs out after mass meningitis jabs
Stay away plea on "brain bug" hospital
Women miss out on cancer test
Health alert over bacteria that resist drugs
Psychiatrists quit over risks to patients
Psychiatric beds under siege from all sides
Community-care patient found dead after killing mum
OAPs face care grants ban
Document fuels fears over bed shortage
Brain illness kills city baby
Doctors demand new security from attack
Gridlock in secure beds adds to crisis on the wards
Op cancelled by lecture-tour surgeon
Fertility clinic set to destroy 3,000 orphan embryos
Meningitis strikes 12-week-old baby
"Killer bug" fear on wards
Dentists: are they putting profitability before patients?
Hospital struggles to meet dialysis need
Acne drug blamed for two deaths
Private health hits NHS
Psychiatric ward close to despair
Complaints about NHS trusts top 100,000
Kidney patient given cancerous transplant
NHS managers up 400 per cent on 1989
Positive headlines:
Pensioners block meal price rises
Snake venom offers hope of thrombosis cure
Murders by mentally ill "show no increase"
Cast your mind back. Does this reflect your experience of the NHS in the week January 8-15? I sincerely hope not, or it isn't worth saving. I keep a diary and you'll be pleased to hear that there were plenty of positive NHS experiences that week which somehow evaded the media. For example, doctor freezes wart (successfully). Woman with flu gets better without antibiotics. Doctor receives jar of marmalade from grateful patient (see wart story). Doctor gives jar of marmalade to receptionist for good service. Wonderful stories like these of triumph over adversity and the generosity of human spirit occur in surgeries up and down the country every day. And do we ever hear about them? If something good has happened to you at the doctor's, write to Dr Phil. There's a jar of marmalade (slightly opened) for the best entry.
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