When deaths ought not to be expected: the interdependency of couples & the inadequacies of health services

This is an account of how, through multiple failures, misses, barren communications, and thoughtless expedience, one family’s parents seem to have died sooner than they should. The NHS was already struggling due to huge changes instituted by a government that I clearly remember promising us it would not make. The NHS, they said, has been through enough change and needs to settle. I don’t like to think what they really meant by change if this is consolidation. Then, and blame cannot be attributed to these immediate changes but perhaps to the impact of the constant tide of them, came the scandals … Continue reading When deaths ought not to be expected: the interdependency of couples & the inadequacies of health services

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Being Human: getting round the ‘them and us’ of clinical practice

Last week I popped into the optician’s to make an appointment for a routine eye test and I was asked if I was a patient there. Well, was I? A patient? Not before I stepped over the threshold, I thought, and I wasn’t ill. There were goods on sale, it looked like a shop and I wasn’t entirely convinced that I could be a patient in a shop. Maybe that sounds a little touchy – what’s wrong with being a patient if you’re receiving health care? Well the word, for a start. It implies passivity and dependence and not an … Continue reading Being Human: getting round the ‘them and us’ of clinical practice

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