We’re in the run-up to Easter.
This will be my 76th and it might be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Easter’s a movable feast; it’s the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or soonest, after 21st March.
The Easter Act 1928, set out legislation to change the date to be the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April, but it was never enacted.
Stick with me. You’ll learn stuff!
Tomorrow, is Maundy Thursday, washing-the-feet-day, and the evening of the Last Supper.
It’s also the beginning of the Easter sales, a get-away-bargain-break, the chance to spread Covid a bit more and chocolate.
Let’s not forget, for some of you it will be work as usual and it’s going to be very busy. A perfect storm…
… Covid cases are still around the peak in January, the impact of infection control on capacity, staff absences (through covid) and demand, leaving people marooned in hospital or abandoned on the kitchen floor.
The average time for a category 2 call, last week… 70 minutes. In some places, over two hours.
Moving people through the system has become next to impossible as social care is log-jammed, skint, with nowhere near enough people.
The NHS has been, effectively, abandoned.
The response from politicians and the communications directorate at the DH+? Recite a litany of numbers and how much money the services have been given.
Like money can walk, or put on a mask, a uniform, make a diagnosis and hold the hand of the bereaved and lost.
If misleading communications was a crime, misdirection was an offence and pulling the wool over the eyes of the public was indictable, we’d be locking people up.
This Easter weekend we’ll see;
- More people getting sick than the NHS can treat.
- More people needing emergency care than the NHS can get to.
- More people on wards than we have staff to take care of them.
- More people waiting to be treated than there are people to treat them.
There’s no prospect of getting more skilled, qualified people any time soon. Let alone, before the bank holiday. There’s no possibility of increasing capacity.
I wonder if you might agree… this is serious?
NHS old-timers will tell you; bank holiday pressures are as nothing, compared to the days after, when the four days without primary care putting out a full team, is manifest.
When community and domiciliary colleagues give up the struggle and admissions become inevitable. Plus, families have to get back to work and looking after granny is no longer practical.
Next week will be horrible. And it’s not like we didn’t know the ecclesiastical full moon was on the way. We were heading for an emergency week with a knock-on for months on waiting, long-covid and a knackered front-line.
Normally, emergency-planning response entails five steps;
- Prevention,
- mitigation,
- preparedness,
- response,
- recovery.
We can’t do the first two, it’s too late for the third and recovery is probably five years away.
All we have is, response. The wick is already turned-up, our collective foot is on the loud pedal and we’ve let-off all the brakes. What happens now?
Thus far NHSE Board’s response has been ‘do more of the same’ but quicker and faster…
It is too late for a hazard mitigation and risk assessment.
In the meantime, it’s a close race. Is it quicker to get a lorry off to France, on a cross channel ferry, from Dover, or get yer granny off the kitchen floor and into A&E?
- Were there should be management, there are billet-doux.
- Where there should be truth, there is the DH+ press office.
- Where there should be leadership there is…
… well, dunno?
The Board, who should be meeting in emergency session, won’t. To be blunt, there is no one with traction, voice or relevance.
We all know the answer; where there should be leadership there is… a vacuum.
If the NHS were a plane, we’d be shouting brace, brace, brace! If we were a cruise-liner we’d be shouting, lower the life boats. If we were an office block, we’d be making our way to the assembly point in the carpark.
Easter is the time when Christians celebrate a miracle…
… this Easter will be the year that the NHS will have to perform one of its own.
——-If you are working over the Bank Holiday, thank you. If you are not, have the best time you can.
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.
