Natalie Silvey is one of the many fantastic people I have met through volunteering for NHS Change Day. Her passion and commitment always inspires me and we help to keep each other resilient.
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| Dr Natalie Silvey @silv24 |
“What’s different about Change Day and
the reason I was inspired to become involved is that it uses the passion and
drive of NHS staff to make a difference. We all see things every single day
that frustrate us or affect the care our patients get and so often people think
they can’t have an impact on this. Change Day is the amazing momentum so many
staff need. It shows the passion, drive, commitment and innovation that I see
every single day and gives everyone that boost to challenge the status quo and
to try something different. This is why I am involved. And at the heart of this
has to be the reason the NHS exists – the patients who rely on us all for their
care. We are doing this to improve things for them.”
I wrote those words before last year's NHS Change Day.
The volunteers had been talking about what Change Day was and why we had been
inspired to be involved.
I have been a doctor in the NHS for five years. My mum
has been a nurse in the NHS for over 30 years. We both love our jobs and are
passionate about caring for our patients. But the NHS isn't perfect, mistakes
have been made - one only needs to read the Francis and Kirkup reports to see
just how bad things have been at times and I would defy anyone not to feel
ashamed at the lack of care given after reading those. However uncomfortable it
may both should be mandatory reading for every single person in the NHS, from
the chief executives to the porters. We all have a responsibility to ensure
such situations never happen again and that a blind eye is never turned to such
horrors.
Daily I go to work and see the flip side, the
wonderful care given in our NHS. I see patients who could never afford care in
other countries receive life saving treatment. I see surgeons up at all hours
working incredibly hard to perform complex surgery. I see nurses flat out on
the wards trying to give each and every patient the care they need. I see
porters joking with a patient as they push them to a ward. I see a mental
health liaison nurse give a patient some money so he can get the bus home. I
see a cleaner in the emergency department bring in a bottle of pop each night
shift to make sure that the staff working flat out have a drink during their
shift. I see so much good and I am humbled by the staff I work with daily. I am
humbled by my patients and I am humbled by our NHS and I am proud to be an NHS
doctor.
NHS Change Day is probably slightly misnamed. I see it
more as NHS “trying different things to improve patient care and enabling every
single member of staff and every single patient to contribute to improving our
NHS” Day but that really isn’t as catchy. Just like Earth Hour isn’t about that
hour, NHS Change Day isn’t about the one day. It is a focal point. For me it is
a little ray of positivity in a time where staff are under increasing pressure,
where media coverage is nearly almost always negative and where patients often
get forgotten in the political point scoring between our politicians.
Criticism can be a good thing, it can focus our
attention on the things that don’t work, it can highlight things we had never
thought of and it can also act as a catalyst to improve things. NHS Change Day
isn’t perfect just as our NHS isn’t perfect. It will annoy some people, some
people may think it is irrelevant or even self indulgent. Some people may think
that the actions people take are insignificant or won’t help. And that is their
right and, as someone who often gets on my own soap box, I have to respect them
for speaking out.
My counter to that is this. The volunteers, known as
the hubbies, who are increasingly taking over the running of NHS Change Day are
all doing this in their spare time. They are a group of the most inspiring
people who I have ever met and they genuinely want to make a difference. Every
single person who makes an action is doing something positive, whether others
feel it is relevant or important honestly doesn’t matter to me; I love the fact
that so many people want to commit to something that matters to them. You don’t
have to log an action; you don’t have to take part. But please, don’t dismiss
those who do. They are doing it for their own good reason and often when we
knock down and dismiss such efforts all it does it lead people to stop trying.
That is a culture I don’t want to see.
It may be that NHS Change Day never leads to the sorts
of improvements and progress that people think it should to have validity. It
may be that in five or ten years, or even next year, there isn’t an NHS Change
Day and we have all moved on. But one thing I am certain of is this. That I am
a better person and a better doctor for having learnt so much from working as
part of such a wonderful team and those are lessons I will never forget.
