Some weeks are so different to anything we have experienced before. This week was one of them. It's been a long time coming but my appointment with the surgeon finally arrived. I've been lucky to only have one operation in my life - when I was 17 I broke my jaw in a football match. But over the years I have become familiar with hospitals as other members of my family have been through illness, emergencies and elective surgery. Nevertheless, this was my first journey as a patient for a long time. My surgeon's goal was to replace half my knee the inner (medial) compartment, which he seems to have done very well. Four days after having the operation I am back home and can look back on my experience at the Royal Surrey County Hospital. Its has been very good. I received excellent professional medical care from all the people involved and I came away feeling extremely grateful for the service and care I had received and proud that our NHS is doing this day in day out.
There has been much talk recently of immigration and the NHS but I was struck by how international the NHS workforce is - even in deepest Surrey!. Over three days I was on the ward I lost count of the different nationalities of the people who worked on the ward which included - British, Chinese, Indian and Italian doctors, British, Chinese and Jamaican nurses, Polish physio, Russian and Nepalese cleaners, Ghanian and Philippino porters to name but a few. The value of this truly international ensemble proved itself when on the last night a sick Slovakian man who spoke no English was admitted and both the Russian speaking cleaner and Polish physiotherapist were able to converse with him and act as interpreters.
Being on a ward with five other (English) men during my recovery was also something of an experience - the friendly humorous but at times irreverent banter, raised our spirits and enabled us to keep cheerful even though we were very sore. I was impressed with the tolerance and humour of nursing and care staff. Sadly, in spite of being surrounded by the benefits of living in a multicultural society the talk was all about leaving the EU and stopping foreign people from coming to live and work in the UK. The views that my fellow patients expressed seemed so at odds with the realities of the situation we were in: while all of us patients were English (white older men) a fair proportion of the people who were caring and looking after us had not been born in the UK. I was also struck by a remark made to me by a young Italian doctor who had chosen to come and work here because he appreciated the values on which the NHS is founded. My experience brought home to me the fantastic social creation that is our NHS.
There has been much talk recently of immigration and the NHS but I was struck by how international the NHS workforce is - even in deepest Surrey!. Over three days I was on the ward I lost count of the different nationalities of the people who worked on the ward which included - British, Chinese, Indian and Italian doctors, British, Chinese and Jamaican nurses, Polish physio, Russian and Nepalese cleaners, Ghanian and Philippino porters to name but a few. The value of this truly international ensemble proved itself when on the last night a sick Slovakian man who spoke no English was admitted and both the Russian speaking cleaner and Polish physiotherapist were able to converse with him and act as interpreters.
Being on a ward with five other (English) men during my recovery was also something of an experience - the friendly humorous but at times irreverent banter, raised our spirits and enabled us to keep cheerful even though we were very sore. I was impressed with the tolerance and humour of nursing and care staff. Sadly, in spite of being surrounded by the benefits of living in a multicultural society the talk was all about leaving the EU and stopping foreign people from coming to live and work in the UK. The views that my fellow patients expressed seemed so at odds with the realities of the situation we were in: while all of us patients were English (white older men) a fair proportion of the people who were caring and looking after us had not been born in the UK. I was also struck by a remark made to me by a young Italian doctor who had chosen to come and work here because he appreciated the values on which the NHS is founded. My experience brought home to me the fantastic social creation that is our NHS.
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