16.11.1995

For a democratic health service

HEALTHWORKERS’ morale is plummeting as creeping privatisation takes over in Scotland.

In the last year two-thirds of Scotland’s nurses have considered leaving the NHS, a Gallup survey shows. The main reasons are: the changing nature of the NHS, staff shortages, having to compromise on standards of care, and management’s treatment of staff. Not surprisingly, 87% of those surveyed stated that stress levels in the wards have increased in the past year - helped by the fact that one in three workers in wards or units had suffered job losses, while at the same time the number of patients treated actually rose.

The trust bosses’ obsession with productivity and ‘value for money’ has a huge human cost in terms of quantity and quality of patient care and staff health.

This survey was followed by new Scottish Office figures that revealed NHS hospitals across Scotland have more than doubled the money they take from private patients - from £1.3 million to £2.8 million. Cash-starved hospitals will undoubtedly look to private patients to provide funds. Inevitably, the recruiting of private patients will have an impact on the provision for NHS patients, increasing the size and length of waiting lists.

The final link in the vicious circle is that to avoid uncomfortable, or potentially fatal, delays in treatment, more patients will be forced to go private.

Week by week in Scotland, as in the rest of Britain, we see public healthcare failing to meet the needs of the majority. The chief executive of the Highlands Communities Trust has been forced to resign following his proposals of ward closures and job losses to resolve a £1.8 million budget deficit. In an imaginative and effective response the unions organised a petition and ballot of ‘no confidence’ in the chief executive and the trust board, by 2,400 trust workers.

Although the chief executive has gone, the rest of the board remains in place. The Scottish Office has drafted in Howard Waldner, from Dundee Teaching Hospital Trust, as a trouble shooter to sort out the Highlands. He has been involved in the decisions to close two hospitals in the city and cut back other services.

We must fight for the healthcare provision that the working class needs, not one that the bureaucrats and the accountants say they can afford. Part of that fight should include the campaign for the resignation of all appointed hospital trust board members and their replacement by elected and accountable representatives of workers and the communities they serve.

Nick Clarke