I like the National Health Service. This is a fashionable thing to say, but it also has a whiff of naivete. It's like saying I love chocolate. Those things are great, but they are also big things that are complex and loving them without being critical seems to avoid important criticisms, such as the waiting lists for essential surgeries and taking your dog to the vet every Easter.
I love the idea of a nationalised health service, rather than the service we have now, where staff are more overworked and underpaid than they were when I left. I love the idea of a system in which our freedoms are not contingent on avoiding being overwhelmed, despite it coming close to being overwhelmed in a normal year. I didn't understand the idea that health care has to be free until I got sick.
There are only a few careers that allow you to switch roles and find out what it's like on the other side of a desk. Some students end up becoming teachers, some unfortunate barristers end up as the accused, and many doctors are horrified when they find themselves in a backless gown on a gurney.
I knew what the problem was. I woke at three in the morning with my heart beating too fast and in a chaotic rhythm that made me feel like a misfiring engine in my chest. I felt bad. I knew from my pulse that I had a problem that needed to be fixed. I called a taxi to get to A&E because I was happy with my skills.
Although I didn't know it at the time, the machinery of the health service swung into action after I arrived. Since then, I have been in the hospital many times and have had many video consultations. I had a procedure that froze away the part of my heart that Covid seemed to have damaged. This appears to have cured me. When I sat in the triage room and the nurse began covering me with stickers and electrodes to record my heart rate, I was relieved that someone was looking after me. All I had to do was show up and say I didn't feel well.
It has to be easy to get healthcare. People stop coming when they have to fill out forms, call an insurance company or produce a credit card. Being ill without having to do admin is inconvenient. I didn't want to take pills, I didn't want my operation, and I complained every time they shaved my chest. My treatment required people to care more than I did. I read the letters from the hospital and turned up. The admin for a health problem like mine in the US would be a part-time job.
My doctors and nurses were not paid for each procedure or test, so there were no financial incentives to distort the decisions. They wanted to fix me and get me out of the building. Everyone who looked after me went above and beyond the requirements of the job.
Three people stood up. Dr Phil Gothard was an old friend who saw me in the A&E follow-up clinic. He said at the end of the consultation that being ill should not make you think differently about yourself. If I ever start seeing patients again, I will say that you are still the same person, just one bit of you isn't working very well. Prof Toby Hillman is a respiratory consultant at University College hospital. He and his team had to figure out how to study the new disease while they were treating it. It's unbelievable. Finally, Dr Oliver Segal, who was right about me needing an operation, was gracious enough to not rub it in my face.
Anyone who says the health service needs to be improved is correct. There are huge deficiencies in its ability to meet people's needs and I was very lucky. The core of its design has astounded me in the past two years. The nationalised system relies on professionals who are paid based on the rewards of patient care. I wouldn't want to be in a healthcare system that didn't offer that.
How to Lose Weight Well is a TV show hosted by Xand van Tulleken.
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