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A man sits pensively in a warmly lit room, surrounded by open books and papers, expressing deep emotional reflection.

Dixon

I have a new word for you.

It’s very rare. Like a diamond, buried deep in a paragraph. Concealed in a sentence like gold, in a thin vein in the bowels of a chapter. It needs the literary version of a metal detector to unearth it.

Very rare. It appears only 0.1 times in a million words. Its earliest known use was in the mid-1800’s.

Here we go, the word is…

Abreaction.

Pronounced; /ˌabriˈakʃn/. ab-ree-AK-shuhn.

What does it mean? Good question….

‘… a psychoanalytic and therapeutic concept referring to the reliving an emotional catharsis of a repressed traumatic experience.’

So, now you know…

… an emotional, unconscious ‘oh-gawd’ moment that you have in response to something that brings back a painful situation you’ve experienced.

Why do you need to know this?

First, just to see if you can mischievously work it into something you’re doing today (!)…

… and second you will need to understand what it means to fully grasp the importance of something that I’m going to point you to, to read.

It’s a short piece from the boss of the Health Foundation Dame Jennifer Dixon Phd.

I’m sure they’d never have made her a Dame if they’d have known she was capable of such language. Words like abreaction!

What kind of a well schooled young lady would use words like that!

Its first use was in 1825. Heaven forfend! That was when the word ‘necking’ was first used. Not to mention discombobulate.

If you can overcome the shock… please find the time, make the time, be sure to read her excellent piece; NHS reform, round in circles. It’s a cracker.

Dixon writes;

‘… reform by policymakers seems to be more down to:

the personality of the secretary of state at the time; 
some sort of political abreaction or departure from a previous suite of policies, especially those enacted by ‘the other lot’; 
events that poke through into public consciousness and demand a response;
gut response often influenced by prevailing ideas from outside health; and perhaps… 
a bit of evidence.’

Excellent isn’t it? It’s well worth a read.

It is a prize-fighters piece. Swaying, ducking, feinting and… pow! It creeps up on you from behind, like a footpad and wallop, yer pocket-watch it gone.

Yet, at the same time, Dixon writes with the genteel feel of Jane Austen;

‘…researchers classically study discrete parts of reforms but typically lack the methods, interest or bandwidth to look at a whole suite together…

… wouldn’t you agree, Mr Darcy?’

Dixon is bang-on, right. Reforms have squandered millions, wasted hours of management time.

Duplicated and repeated the mistakes of the past, mostly for no good reason other than vanity, or mollycoddle an angry public, knee jerking (like AI) or, yes… abreaction.

Look what’s happening now…

NHSE and DH+ are merging because the DH+ have duplicated a lot of NHSE processes. As a result NHSE is dumping half their staff, the very people with the real operational experience.

NHSE is sacking directors. DH+ is recruiting.

Hospitals are falling apart for the want of £14bn capital to repair them. The DH+ is building diagnostic hubs, which, in essence, duplicate what is already available in hospitals.

Hospitals are under pressure to balance their books and in consequence are sacking frontline staff. Trusts are advertising to recruit more staff to work in the hubs.

NHS needs innovative new drugs to cut patient costs and length of stay. The secretary of state has fallen out with the pharmaceutical industry.

NHS needs an urgent overhaul of basic IT systems to aid productivity. The DH+ is talking about artificial intelligence, for which there is no policy and no money.

DH+ wants more services in the community. Trusts are closing community hospitals

DH+ have a ten year plan for the NHS. NHSE has no implementation plan or funding for a ten year plan, nor bandwidth to implement it.

… had enough. Shall I stop? No… there’s more!

To cap it all, our great leader has hired Barrak Obama’s former speech writer Michael Lea Rock, who was also chief speechwriter to both Gordon Brown and David Cameron, to help him in his bid to oust the Charmer.

Apparently the DH+ (aka, us) are paying for it.

As Jane Austen wrote;

‘… if any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory…

… our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out…’

Or, was it Jennifer Dixon…

News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.

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