Death by 1,000 cuts: NHS budgeting laid bare

Tales of the destruction of the NHS by Patricia (Best Year so Far)Hewitt continue with this article in the Independent written by a doctor at an NHS hospital in the south of England.

In the article the doctor writes how the relentless pursuit of the false targets set by Patricia to make the NHS break even to some sort of mythological target are affecting an A&E department. One particular bit got my attention in particular and shows how the short term thinking of this budget is possibly causing lives to be lost

Training budgets have been cut back, or simply suspended. As a direct consequence, when our new defibrillator appeared, nobody had been trained in its use the first time a patient needed it. On another recent shift, of the three qualified nursing staff present, one was dealing with a man who had bled into his brain. Another was helping control seizures in a three-year-old, and the third one was transferring a patient to theatre whose thigh bone was poking out through his jeans.

Which left two unqualified assistants with three months' A&E experience between them, to temporarily look after 10 or so "trolley" cases, from backache to threatened miscarriage. They also had to make sure the department was clean to prevent the spread of MRSA, answer the phones that never stop and keep an eye on the junior doctors.

We must get rid of this women before she kills us all.

Death by 1,000 cuts: NHS budgeting laid bare