IT really is getting quite tiresome to see criticism of the Scottish National Health Service being deflected with the stock response that it is performing better than England. That’s basically an admission that it is failing, albeit at a different rate.
Since Covid, most if not all GP surgeries have closed their doors to walk-in admissions and are operating on a lottery system, whereby the phone lines open and all hell breaks loose as the lines become jammed with people trying to get appointments. I have spent endless hours on redial, selecting from various menus, sometimes successfully, often in vain, trying to get the opportunity to speak to a receptionist who will vet my ailment, before being passed to a nurse or GP, who will then assess whether I will be allowed to attend an appointment.
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Having been given an appointment I will then head off to the surgery, armed with a book, knowing that the appointment time I have been given is when I must be there, not when I will actually be seen, and I should be prepared to wait for a considerable length of time. But I have an appointment and am one of the lucky ones.
On a recent visit to a GP’s surgery I saw a woman breaking down in tears, having spent two days trying and failing to win the telephone consultation lottery, begging to be seen – still only to be stonily told that she must phone for an appointment! It is horrific and humiliating to have to watch people having to shout their personal details and ailments out in front of a packed waiting room to a receptionist screened behind glass. Your embarrassing medical problems are no secret here. There is more discretion in the local pharmacy at least, where special customers are fast-tracked behind a curtain to receive medication.
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Many people are now being locked out of medical care. If you have no credit on your phone then you cannot see your GP. If you are working office hours and wish to arrange a more routine GP appointment this is regularly refused because appointments are for “emergencies only”. If we keep excluding people from medical care then we push problems down the line, perhaps until a point where they have developed more serious conditions.
We need the Health Secretary to intervene and immediately reinstate the availability of walk-in and routine appointments to end the frustration and misery that is being caused merely trying to access the system.
This isn’t even to mention the problems affecting our hospitals, running at capacity, and with a list of missed targets as long as your arm, despite the efforts of the workforce.
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Brexit was almost seven years ago and we knew then the effect it would have on staffing. Seven years is surely long enough to have created recruitment and retention programmes to build up our SNHS to required levels. More people are needed to ensure staff are not burned out covering vacancies and shortages – a major cause of people leaving that particular line of work.
Understaffing is a political failure. Failure to achieve targets set by politicians is a political failure. Every SNP failure is used to undermine the case for independence (while conveniently ignoring that Mother England is a failed state), but our SNHS is too important to be allowed to fail, nor should we be viewing a different level of failure than England as a success.
The Scottish Government must up its game here. The only way to protect our SNHS in the long term is to gain complete independence to shape a system ourselves, for our needs, not a colonially managed Barnett-budgeted one with mitigation round the edges. If Humza Yousaf is not up to the job then for all our sakes, move him aside and find someone who is – before critical becomes terminal.
James Cassidy
Airdrie
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