A taste of day-to-day life on the NHS front line

摘要

What this will involve in practice is unclear, although Whitehall mandarins have been told they will spend at least one month in 12 learning about patient experiences and developing a better understanding of how government policies affect front line services. Examples proffered in the DH press release include 'learning how busy nurses or healthcare assistants (HCAs) go about their business'. This raises several interesting questions. Will the civil servants undergo criminal records checks? They will presumably be necessary if they are to get near any patients. Who will select the nurses and HCAs who take part? Will they be like 'royal visits', in which government officials are treated as dignitaries, shown round the best bits of the hospital and meet only the politest staff? Can any visitor, however well intentioned, grasp what a 12-hour shift on an understaffed and overstretched older people's ward is like?