The NHS saved my life – twice. Now it feels like it’s trying to kill me

The NHS is “broken”, says health secretary Wes Streeting, as he warned against “killing it with kindness” and vowed not to back down in his mission to reform the health service.

It prompted a swift backlash, of course, with the BBC reporting “concerns” among staff that this could “put people off approaching it”.

Sorry, but it should come as no surprise that the NHS is on its knees – we have the stats to back it up. Lord Darzi’s landmark report into the NHS two weeks ago described the health service as “in serious trouble”, pointing out that the health of the nation has deteriorated; that spending is poorly distributed; that waiting times have become unsustainable; cancer care has declined and that years of austerity has hit the NHS hard.

Even before Darzi’s damning review, the British Social Attitudes Survey showed the public’s satisfaction with the NHS had fallen to a record low. The survey revealed that overall satisfaction has taken a five point tumble to just 24 per cent – the lowest since this authoritative and oft-quoted study began in 1983.

That’s why Streeting is right – and we should listen to him. It is deeply disturbing that we’ve reached this low point; even frightening. And I say this as one of the health system’s most regular (and reluctant) users.

The NHS has saved my life twice. First, by diagnosing and treating my incurable type 1 diabetes; second, when I was run over by a cement truck and nearly died. I’m grateful for my treatment, of course – but since then, I’ve been someone who relies on the NHS not out of choice, but of necessity. And at times, it really feels like the NHS is trying to kill me.

This is how bad things have got: over the last week, my T1 has been running haywire and my blood sugars have suddenly started to run low. This can be dangerous. One is generally advised to seek medical advice.

But I have not felt able to approach the NHS, given some of the poor treatment I’ve received – and written about – in the past. Instead, I turned to the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. And if people with long-term health conditions like me are turning to Elon Musk for answers instead, there’s something disastrously wrong with the system.

Why did I do it? Well, quite simply: the type 1 community there has lately provided better advice and support than my NHS-run clinic.

In recent years, the best diabetic care tip I’ve had came via X from a woman called Lesley Ross, who has been energetically campaigning for T1s in Scotland to be able to access the same revolutionary tech being rolled out in England.

My clinic, by contrast, admitted to failings in my care after my frustration with it built to a level where I felt I had no choice but to raise a formal complaint. I did receive an apology, in the end. But the letter still read to me as a polite “get lost” and I’m currently considering bringing a case to the NHS Ombudsman.

Back to the public: the main reasons people have given in the past for being dissatisfied with the NHS were (it won’t surprise you to learn) waiting times for GP and hospital appointments (71 per cent), followed by staff shortages (54 per cent) and then the widespread view that the government doesn’t spend enough money on it (47 per cent).

This chimes with my own experience. In addition, I would raise the issue of the layers of bureaucracy you have to battle through to simply speak to someone, let alone get anything done. It seems to me that for some working within the system, the attitude towards the patient is one of inconvenience.

I have read the NHS constitution. It states that the patient should be “at the heart of everything we do”. If there were an NHS constitutional court, rather than an ombudsman which will now consider only what it judges to be the most serious complaints, I wonder how public attitudes might improve.

There is clearly a message being sent to Britain’s politicians – in particular those with their hands on the purse strings (here’s looking at you, Rachel Reeves). If we are going to be asked to pay more for our health service – and I’m among those that would have no problem with that – we have a right to expect better from it.