The failings in the NHS are the SNP’s responsibility, not the fault of patients.
This might seem an obvious point, but apparently not so to the National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch (remember him?), who seems determined to claw his way back into our lives whatever the reason.
Leitch’s latest intervention is to blame you and me for the current crisis afflicting the National Health Service.
According to Leitch, “we are too big, not eating well enough, not exercising enough”, while also living longer, and thereby placing an excessive burden on health infrastructure.
The current crisis, in other words, is caused by us and our outrageous eating, excessive drinking or even, it seems, just having the audacity to stay alive.
Putting aside the troubling fact that the National Clinical Director seems only to have just realised an ageing population might lead to an increased burden on the NHS, his entire framing is wrong.
The failings currently seen in the NHS are down to SNP mismanagement, not the sorry souls who have to try and use the service.
And the reality facing those sorry souls is stark.
NHS problems are not unique to Scotland, but SNP mismanagement is
It is currently estimated around 50 people are dying each week in Scotland as a result of delays in emergency healthcare.
Meanwhile, exhausted doctors and nurses are feeling compelled to share pictures and stories of ambulances backed up in hospital forecourts, corridors overflowing with patients and the physical consequences of their own burnout.
Wards are now so overwhelmed, with so many patients trapped in hospital, that Health Secretary Humza Yousaf is resorting to sending them literally anywhere else in a bid to make room for others.
Even Leitch himself, in the same interview, was hardly reassuring when he stated: “If you have a stroke, heart attack or a fall then an ambulance will come, but the system is stretched so it needs a little more patience from everyone.”
These issues are, of course, not unique to Scotland.
My daughter the ambulance technician.
Another update
She sat outside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEUH) A&E in Glasgow for over 5 hours yesterday, unable to have her patient handed over.
During that period, many red and purple calls came in and were unattended. She hates this. pic.twitter.com/mXwpeeZx3f— ProudScot /NHS /Anti-Tory /Ukraine 💙🚑 (@SoProudScottish) December 31, 2022
The health service across the UK is struggling with a potent cocktail of seasonal flu, Covid-19 backlogs and a staffing crisis, which has been greatly exacerbated by Brexit.
But this does not excuse Leitch’s ill-conceived comments or absolve the SNP government of responsibility.
SNP should be discussing NHS crisis, not wasting time on independence
It is not the fault of patients that Nicola Sturgeon, as Health Secretary, decided to cut training places for nurses, creating the record number of nursing vacancies we currently see in Scotland today.
It is not the fault of patients that Yousaf ignored warnings from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that we would face a winter crisis.
It is not the fault of patients that, rather than discussing how to fix the problems in the health service, the SNP government has instead chosen to make independence the first item that will be debated when MSPs return to Holyrood this week following their Christmas break.
Leitch is undoubtedly right that Scotland – like the rest of the UK and, indeed, much of the Western world – could be thinner, fitter and generally healthier.
He is also right that working from home – or wearing a mask – when you feel unwell is a considerate courtesy.
But responsibility for failures lies at the top, not the bottom.
You cannot blame long-suffering football fans for the poor performance of their team, nor patients for the current issues in the NHS.
Rather than trying to shift the blame on to us, Leitch would do better to focus his ire on those ultimately responsible for this debacle – his paymaster in Bute House and her incompetent ministers.
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