In future think about 7am as being the new 5am!

Can I just say how lovely it is to be sitting in my own bed and writing my blog? I loved our visit to Marrakech, but there is nothing like the comfort of one’s bed.  My dear wife J is not so enamoured with this early morning writing business, whether it’s in Marrakech or back in the UK. On a few occasions she has wondered out aloud if it might be possible for me to write and post my blog later, and maybe at what she considers to be a more reasonable time on a Sunday morning. She is absolutely not a bona fide member of the #earlyrisersclub, but I also know on which side my bread is buttered.

Thinking about changing the time of my blog posting after 13 years feels slightly unnerving. However, on Friday I met a Stockport NHS FT colleague who was a great fan of my blog, but he was not a fan of the #earlyrisersclub – he read it later on in the day. Looking at the stats, he is not alone. So, folks, this will be the last 5am posting of my weekly blog. In future think about 7am as being the new 5am.

Ok, let’s get on with this week’s offering.

Now then, regular readers of this blog will know that I try and steer clear of politics. I do. Honestly. It takes an almost seismic event before I get involved in politics in this blog. I mean, I don’t think I mentioned how relieved I was that Boris had gone, or if I did, I’m sure there wasn’t any glee in my comments.

You know, when you meet an MP and he looks younger than all of your children, that you may well be entering that older person’s section of society. Well, that was my experience last week. After returning from our holiday, the week felt jam-packed until Friday. There were plenty of meetings, sadly some of which didn’t lead to my expected outcomes. The meetings were back-to-back and unrelenting. That said, I acknowledge I’m not working in a clinical environment and I take my hat off to all my clinical colleagues who continue to work in the face of unremitting demand and during these hot days, in conditions that can be extremely challenging.

Friday came and my diary included a number of meetings with MPs. The first meeting was with a chap called William Wragg. He is one of the new MPs, and is just 34 years old. My youngest daughter is 40 (actually since being with J, I now have two new daughters, aged 23 and 25). On the Thursday, William took to Twitter to say he was taking a break from his parliamentary duties due to a flare up of depression and anxiety, two conditions he has lived with for a number of years. Like my colleagues on the clinical front line, I also took my hat off to William for sharing news of his mental health problems. For any one of us this can be a somewhat daunting admission, but for someone in public life like him, the decision to share his mental health issues might have been even harder. Sadly in 2022, there is still a great deal of stigma attached to people experiencing problems with their mental health and wellbeing. I wish him well and, of course, will arrange to meet with him when he has recovered.

The second MP I was due to meet on Friday was Robert Largan. He became an MP in 2019. He is aged 35 years old. My youngest son is 41. Interestingly, given the recent debate about Eton, Oxford and Cambridge Universities producing so many of our politicians, both William and Robert studied at the University of Manchester. Robert did eventually turn up, some 20 minutes late, citing the difficulty he had trying to find a car parking space. Welcome to my world I told him.

Our Chief Executive, Karen James joined us, and the three of us had a wide-ranging conversation for an hour. When he asked Karen what she felt was her number one issue, she replied saying that the workforce issues prevented us from truly being able to move things along as we would like, and that the lack of an adequate workforce in both health and social care was now beginning to impact on our ability to provide safe, high quality care. As a follow up question, I asked why his government had reintroduced the cap on the number of medical student places this year. There are over 3,000 fewer places than last year. Given the crisis in filling medical and nursing vacancies, it just seemed an absurd policy decision to me. Sadly, Robert had no answers.

When he asked me in turn what I thought my number one issue was, I replied and said the lack of social care and domiciliary provision. I took him through the knock-on effects of having so many people who have no real medical reason to be in an acute hospital, but who can’t be discharged because there is no social care provision for them. Using so many beds for these particular patients means it is difficult to admit new patents requiring in-patient care, and so our emergency department regularly gets blocked up. This in turn means we run the risk of having patients sitting in ambulances outside ED; ambulances that will subsequently not be able to respond to 999 calls. He appeared to get the knock-on story, or so I thought, but then reminded us that his government were doing something about social care through the provision of new monies.

He then paused as he remembered that this new money wouldn’t be available for three years.

We took him for a walkabout through the hospital. We were able to show him the really challenging areas which were no longer really fit for purpose, as well as those areas where we have been able to make an investment in improving the clinical environment. He was dismayed and impressed in equal measure. I was impressed with my colleagues who all, upon being asked what would make a real difference to what they were doing, said: ‘having enough colleagues to provide safe and quality services and getting social care sorted out.’ Let’s hope that despite his lack of years, Mr Largan may have listened more intently than my children often did in their youth to this particular message and, thinking about it, anything else I may have had to say.