Thoughts of a carer

Do you remember the NHS IT Programme? Twenty or so years ago it was one of the flagships of the Blair era: a single, modern, IT system for the whole NHS. But it never really happened, or rather, wasn’t allowed to happen. I remember it well, I was part of the programme’s delivery team for four years. *** The plans sounded fine: the NHS should work like a bank, or a motor car business, or indeed almost any other industry in the modern world, which all have ONE set of records for its customers. Years ago, you could walk into a bank in a town and cash a cheque without them knowing whether you had enough money in your account - you needed a cheque guarantee card (remember them?). In the 1990s all of the banks moved to having a single set of records for all customers, and now, whichever branch of your bank you walk into they will know everything about your accounts from the one set of records. The NHS IT programme was based around the same idea: it should not matter which hospital a patient...

  I was watching Talking Pictures TV on Sunday (8th May); around 4.45pm they showed a short film, made, I think, in 1960, about schools for the deaf. It was an interesting film, made in a bygone era, but one which might still have some relevance today.  *** My stepmother, Margaret, was a working State Registered Nurse when that film was made. She had done her training soon after leaving school in the late forties, and, after a year or two as a nursery nurse at an industrial laundry, she worked in hospitals in central London until the late seventies, when she moved to an occupational health role, before retiring at the end of 1991.  Margaret had grown up when things were very different to now; all respectable people attended church. She was an active Sunday School attendee, and continued - on the face of it - to uphold ‘Christian’ values, but did, when the mask slipped, have some attitudes that, at least today, would be considered cruel, or unacceptable. One such was towar...

One of the (many) things my ex wife used to criticise me about was that I was sceptical about, well, almost everything. Ever since I was a child I have been wary of believing what others tell me; there are dark episodes in my past that may at least partly explain that. The fact is, I do have an ‘enquiring mind’. I don't like being told something, and then being told to believe it ‘because I say so’. I’m awkward; I’m probably somewhat ‘on the spectrum’; but I believe that I should be able to understand almost anything, if the person I’m listening to can communicate effectively, and that I should also be able to satisfy myself that what they are saying is, in fact, correct. If they can't, and I can't, I won't trust them. I’ve therefore earned a reputation for being sceptical on, among other matters, medical topics. Some may think that I’ve developed this attitude only in response to events in the last ten years or so, but that’s not the case at all: I have had my concern...