Mr Hunt, weekend effect aside, the NHS is in crisis – both patients and staff experience it

Angeliki Kerasidou and Patricia Kingori, Ethox Centre

On Saturday the 10th of August, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Hawking, addressed an audience at the Royal Society of Medicine. Over his illustrious career Hawking has become used to taking in public about his work in mathematics and physics. On this occasion however, he ceased the opportunity to draw attention to his lifelong experience of the NHS. His address, which was also published in a daily newspaper the day before,[1] raised concern about recent NHS reforms and the “political decisions” that have brought it to the point of crisis.[2] He listed underfunding, public sector pay cap, new junior doctor contracts, removal of student nurses’ bursary and ceaseless drive towards privatisation as hindering the NHS from providing high quality care. In response, war of words and statistics ensued with Jeremy Hunt accusing Hawking of “pernicious falsehoods”.[3] Where facts and figures can ping-pong between opposing sides and become political instruments to justify particular actions, personal experiences of the reforms can help elucidate the reality behind the numbers.