Guest Blog: Dr Natalie Silvey on NHS Change Day

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.  

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.