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Pity the poor NHS – constantly overstretched, currently the subject of imminent (and ominous sounding) 'reshaping', it now has the dubious honour of having encountered a record year for cutomer complaints.
According to a flurry of news reports this week, the NHS complaints break down to show that over 44% were about clinical treatment.
The problem with statistics, of course, is that they are a pretty blunt instrument for excising facts from the reality of a situation. While the rise in complaints isn't acceptable, it has to be borne in mind that until a more transparent feedback process is put in place, all these figures show is a generalised vibe of dissatisfaction, including 12% of complaints centring on the "attitude" of staff.
In my experience "attitude" is a nebulous, amorphous concept, and the object of the complaint may not actually have done anything wrong.
On the more serious side, if there is an identifiable complaint arising from medical procedure, it needs to be listened to.


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Reading the health column in one of our major newspapers, I came across an article about how it is no recent thing for experts and reports to claim huge headlines about how this or that cancer is out of control because of this or that. There seems to be a new terror every week, [including the ridiculous report in another minor paper that cancer was caused by facebook].
Of course they are all overblown, and mostly laughable attempt by people needing to justify their salaries. But this doesn't take away the real risks that do exist about cancer. The important thing is not to make them into scare stories but just gentle advice and reminders that there are often pretty obvious ways to avoid cancer. Yet these do not get the headlines.
Take for example the fact that last week was sun awareness week, yet I can not remember it being heralded throughout the red tops [okay, there was an election], it was instead left up to a private health insurance company to fly the flag.
At least somebody is taking up the slack, and this company has a record with cancer as they also are amongst the few that offer specialist cancer care with a dedicated nurse for all their cancer patients.

Googlecancer

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