by I am spending Christmas Day in a west London NHS hospital ward. I am here with my father, 91, and my two children – Lola, seven, and Liberty, five.
Like many others currently in hospital who should be at home, my father is ready for the misery of being stuck in a hospital bed over Christmas. He arrived by ambulance to A&E and has now fully recovered from a severe chest infection and delirium. He’s stuck here over Christmas – it’s called a “bed blocker” – despite being ready to go home. That means I’m trapped here, too. Not the kind of Christmas we had in mind a week ago, that’s for sure.
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard admits the junior doctors’ strike is causing delays in hospital discharges due to staff shortages (there are fears this week’s strike will delay the discharge of 13,000 patients ready to leave hospital ) as well as limited social care and community services capacity during the NHS’s busiest Christmas period.
This means it’s very expensive in UK hospitals – and I’m experiencing it first-hand.
My father is waiting for a six week NHS rehabilitation package to get him back on his feet at home. It usually takes two or three days to act, but at the moment it’s taking longer – which is very bad news a few days before Christmas, especially with a weekend coming up.
If we bring him home for Christmas before the care package is confirmed, we risk losing him – or delaying it further, because they will assume we can manage it. If we close the gap privately, they will cancel it because we are self-funding. The extra care he needs in the short term is on top of his own privately funded live-in carer – and, believe me, it’s not cheap.
So, while others are painstakingly working their way through Nigella’s Christmas cookbook, I’m getting my head around NHS Christmas. My fridge is empty. I had spent ages trying to figure out whether to order Christmas food delivery to his house, where we were supposed to celebrate Christmas – but now I’ve lost all the slots. I’ll have to borrow the hospital ward microwave to heat up some pre-made Christmas food.
He doesn’t eat the hospital Christmas lunch – and I don’t blame him. The Christmas menu includes a meager portion of pink roast turkey and soggy vegetables, followed by mince pie or Christmas pudding. Each patient receives a Christmas cracker and a gift – usually a wash bag or socks.
However, I will be serving ready-cooked roast beef and brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes and red cabbage from Whole Foods for our makeover lunch. My kids won’t eat it though – and there won’t even be a restaurant open to buy a quick margherita pizza on the nearby high street, because everywhere is as dead as a doornail on Christmas Day.
Their only option is pasta in a flask to keep it warm – just like they get your packed school lunches.
I have Christmas crackers at the door, and all the presents to throw away. I sneak in a G&T for my dad. No doubt we’ll be stuffing our faces with chocolates if I feel safe enough to remove my face mask.
We are lucky because my father is in a well-staffed ward – and I have to say that the care we had during the strike was fantastic, and the staff are so kind. But the truth is that my father is no longer very ill. He should be allowed to go unpunished.
I am in no way blaming my ruined Christmas on the junior doctors’ strike. I am fully behind doctors getting a pay rise – and not fleeing the UK for jobs abroad.
I sympathize with their anger at health secretary Victoria Atkins calling junior doctors “doctors in training” (despite the BMA saying they preferred it to the term “junior doctors”). The truth is that these “junior” doctors are fully qualified and save lives every day. Their demand for a 35 percent pay rise is certainly well deserved.
But why did they have to strike at Christmas just as the NHS comes under its heaviest pressure of the year? Is it going to cause as much disruption as possible to an already overstretched NHS? Or because the strike mandate for junior doctors expires in February?
Time leaves a bad taste in my mouth – the people we trust to care for us are abandoning us at the worst time. But whether junior doctors are right or wrong to strike over this Christmas period (with more dates scheduled for early January), the government needs to better fund the NHS.
If they could give my dad’s bed to someone who needs it, and let my dad go home, we might all have a better Christmas. It is much cheaper for the NHS to send my father home than to keep him there. If they would encourage us to look after him temporarily at home before the care package starts, we could all help each other.
I wish that was an option, because right now, all I want for Christmas is for us all to go home.
