As a regular user of the NHS, the news that NHS staff are 50% more likely to be off sick than those in private hospitals comes as no surprise - in fact, I'm amazed it's not higher.
Over the past 13 years, I've watched the cancer clinic I attend move hospital once and move location within each hospital at least half a dozen times. I've seen procedures and practices change and morph pretty much every other visit. I've seen umpteen health professionals and watched the doctors get younger even more quickly than I've got older. The one thing all these health professionals have had in common is a fantastic commitment to their work in the face of the swirling vortex.
If the NHS staff had done to health services what bankers have done to financial ones, we'd all be dead yet who gets the bonuses? Earlier this week, Alastair Darling rejected the call for a high pay commission to look at the obscene pay differentials in this country. That attitude in the face of a report such as this on the state of the health of the staff in Britain's best loved institution makes me feel quite ill really.
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