Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

So, the NHS is in another winter crisis.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a crisis  as:

1 A time of intense difficulty or danger.
‘the current economic crisis’

Mass noun ‘the monarchy was in crisis’

1.1 A time when a difficult or important decision must be made. As modifier ‘the situation has reached crisis point’
1.2 The turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death.
Origin
Late Middle English (denoting the turning point of a disease): medical Latin, from Greek krisis ‘decision’, from krinein ‘decide’. The general sense ‘decisive point’ dates from the early 17th century.

 

A crisis is still a crisis, even if you see it coming. What is vital, as per Winston Churchill, is that a) we don’t waste this moment, but allow it to be a true tuning point and b) we don’t rush prematurely to actions to try and solve it, but ensure we look deep enough and far enough and then move towards collective steps for an altogether different kind of future.

 

I think there are some difficult and inconvenient truths that we need to face up to together. If we can do so, then we can move beyond sensational news cycles into co-producing something really exciting. Here are my incomplete thoughts about where we might want to think about starting:

 

  1. We need to get some perspective! One of the dangers of believing everything is bad is that we start to believe that the NHS is over. It is not over. It is 70 years old and it is transitioning, but it is not over! In the crisis we find ourselves in, let’s remember why the NHS is such an incredible thing and why its integration with social care is so vital. The Commonwealth Fund rates the NHS as the BEST healthcare system in the world, when it comes to equity, care and accessibility. However, our outcomes are significantly worse than that of our peers – there are some really important reasons for this, which we need to understand better. One of the major reasons is that our goals are so short term, that we cannot bring the long term changes to the health and wellbeing that we need – and this is caused by the way the NHS is run and the nature of our political cycles.
  2. We need to stop the boring, binary, partisan nonsense that is the political boxing match. It really is grow-up time when it comes to our arguments. There are some very different perspectives on why we’re in the crisis we’re in, what we might do about it and how we should go about those things. However, shouting our perspectives ever more loudly, whilst never encountering or deeply listening to the other perspectives in the room make it impossible for us to find an effective 3rd way forward together. We are well versed in the blue vs red options, but let us be honest, please. Neither the reds nor the blues are wholly right, and neither is wholly wrong! It is absolutely OK to hold different perspectives, but the manner of our arguments is astoundingly pathetic. Whilst all this shouting goes on, there are several perspectives that are not being heard, important voices, those of the patient, the carer, the poor etc. We need to stop our reactionary, swing left, swing right steering of this great ship (and that’s not to say a centrist approach is best either!) and learn to have some humility. Humility starts with listening and being willing to change. This is being so beautifully demonstrated by the Rose Castle Foundation and Cambridge University through their work with the vastly differing world views of Conservative Islam, Judaism and Christianity and offers us much learning and hope for the NHS and indeed any other of our deeply held belief systems. Anyone willing to have better conversations and find a way forward?
  3. The maths simply doesn’t add up. We need some honesty.  A few weeks ago, the head of NHSI Jim Mackey, said that by April the NHS will be in around £2.2billion of debt. That is a very conservative estimate. It is a mathematical impossibility to close wards and scale down the size of our hospitals at a time when district nursing numbers have reduced by 28% over the last 5 years and social care is on its knees AND sort out the deficit! We know what the direction of travel needs to be, but the equation is simply unworkable, due to time and workforce pressures.We need to understand the true scale of the problems we’re facing and be real about how much money is going into health and social care spending compared to what is actually needed.
  4. The reason for this is that health and social care funding is becoming more costly and more complex. Our population is growing in size and people are living longer – this is great, on many levels (although we still need a much better conversation about death and why sometimes we keep people alive, when we could allow them to die well and peacefully). However, as we grow older, we develop more health conditions, and social needs, which require more costly treatments and packages of care, which we’re simply not accounting for, especially when we know the predictions of how our population will grow and age over the next 20 years.
  5. We therefore need to have a long term vision of how we want to build the most safe, excellent, effective, equitable, efficient, compassionate and kind health and social care system in the world whilst recognising in order to so, we will HAVE to make some upfront, BIG investments. It is simply impossible to have double austerity on health and social care and then believe we can do the transformational work necessary for the future change we need. Austerity has woken us up to the fact that there are some inefficient ways of working and some things we could definitely do more effectively in partnership. We’ve learnt that now. However, as a philosophy it is now defunct for where we need to go.
  6. This means, we have to put significantly more money into the system now. Once we have done some more work on the vision and plans for the future (the 5 year forward view is too short and although sets us up a good trajectory, is not ambitious enough), we need to ensure there is a sufficient injection of cash (not removal of it) to make this possible. So, we have some options available to us. A) We could increase tax for everyone – something that 67% of our population seem to be willing to pay. B) We could close tax loopholes and ensure that companies like Amazon and Google pay the tax that is owed. C) We could also increase our GDP % spend on health and social care – remember, currently, we have one of the lowest % spend of any of the other OECD nations. Perhaps a combination of all of these things is necessary.
  7. Creating long term health and social care solutions means that we have to put population and public health as the foundation of the system. We know that prevention is better than cure. We know that if we promote health and wellbeing, disease will be far from us. The disinvestment in these areas and the over reliance on a very stretched and struggling community-voluntary-faith sector is a recipe for disaster. There is huge work to be done in deeply listening to and working with our communities to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone, using the best research, evidence and data available to us through our public health bodies in order to make this shift.
  8. This means we need to continue to tackle the wider determinants of health and think radically about these things as being serious public health issues. This is how the city of Glasgow has gone about tackling knife crime and London has much to learn. We need to apply wisdom and learning to things like smoking, sugar, alcohol, pollution, drugs, road traffic accidents, domestic violence, suicide and adverse childhood experiences. We also need to develop a radically generous philosophy to the areas of job creation, housing, land rights and the care of the environment of which we are stewards not lords.
  9. We have to take greater responsibility and care of the health and wellbeing of ourselves and of those around us. It is not possible for us to have a national health and social care system that is sustainable if we think we can live exactly how we want whilst thinking someone else will simply mop up the mess or pay the tab. Our sugar, food and alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, driving, smoking and drug habits are all areas where we do have to take greater responsibility. NHS staff need to lead by example here. They are also areas where government give those lobbies far too much power and where we need better legislation to help bring about change. It is a both/and not an either/or approach.
  10. We need to create a much more shared-care approach with patients, co-partner with patients to enable them to understand the conditions they live with so that they are able to self-manage/self-care more effectively and create community support groups.
  11. We need to use digital solutions to full effect. We need to widen the access to patients having their own online records, the sharing of data across the system and getting savvy with better apps and technology for the benefit of patients and communities.
  12. We need to change our expectations of what we believe our ‘rights’ are in terms of health and social care. As an example, people phone up a GP surgery and want to see a GP. But there are MANY other allied health and social care professionals who may be better placed to sort out the problem. However, a recent survey in Gosport showed that of the people who phoned up wanting to see their GP, only 9% of them actually needed to see their GP and the rest would have been dealt with more effectively by someone else. We need to get used to the fact that we don’t have enough GPs available for everyone to be able to see one every time they would like to, but there are other professionals who are equally able to help. Another example is that everyone wants to safeguard their local hospital and we tend to have a fixed belief that being in hospital when we’re ill is the best place for us. Actually, especially when we’re older we can receive just as good care at home or in a nursing home and being admitted to hospital adds very little benefit. However, in order to have smaller and therefore more affordable hospitals, we really do have to ensure we have the necessary infrastructure and staffing around community nursing, social care and General Practice. Currently this is not the case and it takes time and investment to grow this workforce.
  13. We need ensure we are training and recruiting the right skill mix of people for the right jobs. This means we need to think at least 20 years ahead with the predictive statistics we have available to us and do some proper workforce planning. We’re are far too short sighted. This will take financial investment now, as stated above, but if we get it right, will leave us with a far more effective and efficient living system in the future.
  14. Our medical, nursing and therapeutic school curriculums therefore need to ensure they are training students for the kind of future we need. We need a complete redesign of some of the curriculums and we need to change the way training is done. As part of this, we need to ensure we are raising good human beings, not just good professionals, with values, culture and great communication skills built into all of the process.
  15. We have to redesign the contracts, as unfortunately without this, some of the behaviour changes simply will not happen. The current contracts across health and social care are the very antithesis of what is needed.  This will take some bravery and leadership, but it is time to grasp this nettle. Without this, we will behave perversely because the incentives driving the system and the nature of competition laws are detrimental to the collaborative future we need.
  16. We can only do all of this together. This means our staring place in all of this is to own up to the fact that in all of the above, we simply don’t know. From the place of not knowing, we can ask great questions, bring our bits of expertise to the table and build a jigsaw. There is expertise in national and local government, but certainly not all the answers. There is expertise in the health and social care clinicians, practitioners and managers. There is expertise in our communities and with people who have lived experience of the various complex issues we face. It is only together that we can face the future. Let’s break out of our camps, our deeply entrenched belief systems and find a new way of dancing together. The future belongs to us all. Together we can.

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Our Nation’s Biggest Public Health Problem

The subject of this blog is sensitive and difficult. It may stir up some difficult issues or memories for you, as you read. If this happens, then please take time to seek the help you need. I believe this blog and ones to follow might be some of the most important I have written to date.

 

UnknownI am currently reading a phenomenal book, sent to me in the post, by a dear friend of mine, who is a trained counsellor and knowing the work I do, felt that I should read it also. The book is called “The Body Keeps the Score” by the eminent Psychiatrist, Bessel Van Der Kolk. In my humble opinion, it should be compulsory reading for every person training in any of the clinical specialities, including public health and for those working in education. The book focusses on the detailed research and work done by Van Der Kolk and others at Harvard over the last 30 years in the whole area of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), or “Disorders of Extreme Stress, Not Otherwise Specified” (DESNOS). It is not a part of our vocabulary, unfortunately, because even now, after a huge evidence base and many studies, there still remains no such psychiatric diagnosis. However, it is a hidden epidemic affecting huge numbers of our population and is the root of many of our major public health issues. So what causes this problem and just how wide spread is it? The evidence shows so strongly that the cause of CPTSD or DESNOS is Adverse Childhood Experiences, which we more starkly call Child Abuse.

 

Child abuse falls into four main categories: Physical abuse, Sexual Abuse, Verbal Abuse and Emotional abuse – usually in the form of neglect. 10% of children suffer regular verbal abuse. 25% suffer regular physical abuse. 28% of women and 16% of men have suffered sexual abuse. 16% regularly watch domestic violence. 87% of all those who suffer one type of abuse, are also abused in other ways. Each of these forms of abuseUnknown lead to major health problems later in life and studies are showing that it is not just mental health issues (many of which lead to inappropriate diagnoses like Borderline Personality Disorder or Bipolar Disorder and ineffective treatments) but also major physical health problems. Those who have been abused are twice as likely than others to develop cancer and four times as likely to have emphysema. The more difficult a person’s experiences, the higher the chance of developing heart, liver or lung disease at an early earlier age with much higher chances of taking more health risks with smoking, becoming overweight or having multiple sexual partners. There is good evidence to suggest a link with autoimmune diseases, such a lupus, and other complex conditions like chronic pain, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. The body cannot be separated from the mind and literally keeps the score of the internalised turmoil. So, even if the abuse happens before memories are formed, or our minds manage to forget or block out what has happened, the body simply cannot forget and sometime and in someway, the damage will show itself. Studies show that the overall cost of this appalling reality far exceed those of cancer or heart disease. In fact, eradicating child abuse would cut depression rates by over 50%, alcoholism by 66% and suicide, IV drug use and domestic violence by 75%. Antidepressants and antipsychotics are now some of our largest prescribing costs. We know this, but are doing very little about it. Perhaps it feels too big. Perhaps we don’t want to face the demons involved. Instead, we are numbing the problem, trying desperately to get people to be just functional enough to keep on serving the needs of our economic system, but we are not facing up to or dealing with this horrific problem, nor its true cost.

 

What can be done in the face of such evil? How can we develop aimages culture of compassion and restorative justice in which we can find a new way through for humanity? It isn’t getting any better. It is just as widespread and far reaching in its consequences as it was a generation ago. Is it possible for us to face up to the startling reality we face? Van der Kolk offers much hope, but it is not within the gift of the health service and social services to tackle this alone. If we are to take this issue seriously, we must embrace what Bessel refers to (at the end of chapter 2) as four fundamental truths:

 

  1. Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring wellbeing.
  2. Language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know and to find a common sense of meaning.
  3. We have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through simple activities such as breathing, moving and touching – (learning to be present in our own bodies is a vital way of separating out the memories of the past which can overwhelm us at times).
  4. We can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive.

images-1People can be healed of trauma. We need this at both an individual and corporate level. We have become so focussed on saving money, on quick fixes to ensure the NHS and Social Care System can survive, but we are ignoring the root cause of many of our ill health issues. If we are willing to face up to the truth of child abuse in our society and its long lasting and far reaching impact on overall health and wellbeing, then we might just be able to find a way through to healing and restoration of what has become an extremely broken society. In the blogs that follow, I will look at some of the ways we might find a way through this crisis of epidemic proportions. One thing we must face straight away is that we are spending our resources in the wrong places and are focussing our attention in the wrong areas. We must protect our children and help people learn how to be good parents. We must strengthen our school teachers and sense of community. We must invest in the first five years of life far more than we are doing so currently, especially those key first 12 months of bonding and attachment. Together, if we want to, with love, care, bravery and determination, we can change the future. There is hope. There is healing. Our systems are not yet designed to cope with this, but we must speak the unspeakable, break the silence and face up to the truth. The truth will set us free and enable us to develop the kind of wellbeing that every human being should be able to live within.

 

 

 

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