Dr Nick Scriven can pinpoint the exact day he realised the NHS could no longer cope. "I first noticed it when I was on call on New Year's Day 2012. We ran out of beds in our hospital. As a result, medical patients had to occupy the beds in a surgical ward meant for people with broken bones waiting to have planned orthopaedic surgery.
"We'd always had 'outliers'; the occasional medical patient who'd ended up in a surgical bed. But this was the first time cases like that had ended up taking over almost all the 30 beds on the orthopaedic ward. This went on for a month and was a massive stress for everyone as we'd never had to cope with this amount of patients being looked after elsewhere before. I hoped it was an anomaly but sadly the same thing happened every year after that," recalls Scriven, who works at a hospital in Yorkshire.
However, in his experience it was not until 2015 that the NHS went from struggling with just its usual "winter pressures" - a temporary overload in the cold months - to suffering from "eternal winter": the same difficulties but now close to all year round. "This was evident in the number of 'extra capacity' beds opened across the NHS to relieve winter pressures that were still open at Easter. This picture has continued to cause ever increasing concern and put pressure on staff and patients," adds Scriven.
He was talking about England. But the trajectory of the health service in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has followed the same pattern of dramatic, relentless decline.
Denne historien er fra July 03, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian.
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Denne historien er fra July 03, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian.
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