Sponsored by
Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the NHS
As the NHS celebrates its 60th birthday on July 5th, Hannah Gray looks at the history of hospitals in the Peterborough area and chats to a long-serving surgeon about the changes he has seen.
As the NHS celebrates its 60th birthday on July 5th, Hannah Gray looks at the history of hospitals in the Peterborough area and chats to a long-serving surgeon about the changes he has seen.Today, we fret about the state of it and take it entirely for granted, but in 1948, the NHS was a revolutionary idea.
It was a highly ambitious plan to bring good healthcare to all, for free, funded completely from taxation.
The service was officially launched on July 5, 1948 by health secretary Aneurin Bevan. Since then, millions of people have received free health care.
Related: Hannah Gray looks at the history of hospitals in the Peterborough area 4 July 2008
A glimpse behind the scenes at Peterborough District Hospital
Hundreds of visitors took a rare opportunity to look behind the scenes at Peterborough District Hospital as it celebrated the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service. 9 July 2008
See our new section: NHS Choices health news, updated daily with articles brought to you by NHS Choices – the Department of Health.
---------------------------------
But the organisation can become a political pawn, subject to ever-changing agendas and plans imposed by central government.
Each party is convinced it has the solution to the NHS's problems. Of course, the best people to give an overview of the health of the NHS are the people on the front line, and Alfred Choy, a consultant general surgeon at Peterborough District Hospital (PDH), has seen his fair share of changes and developments in the 20 years he has been practising.
When he first qualified, after studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, the life of a junior doctor was a hard one.
Mr Choy said: "In the old days, even when I was medical student, we used to work very long hours. There was no European Working Time Directive. I used to work over 120 hours a week as a junior doctor but that's no longer legal."
Mr Choy explained this change has come about because hospital care has shifted from being mainly led by junior doctors to being consultant-led. In other words, the poor junior doctors have been freed of some of the huge workload previously placed on them.
How does Mr Choy think these changes have worked?
"I think it is a positive change in all but the manpower side to provide that type of change is demanding," he said.
In more recent years, in terms of the job he does, Mr Choy has seen a shift away from major cancer operations being performing at PDH.
These are now done at bigger teaching centres, such as Cambridge and Leicester.
The kind of operations he now does include those for gallstones and hernias, and in the last six years, obesity surgeries such as stomach banding and gastric bypass operations.
Some of these are carried out by keyhole surgery – a key development in the medical world and Mr Choy's profession.
This form of surgery really came into common use in this country in the early 1990s, and it allows surgery with less scarring, which is less painful and gives a quicker recovery time.
"Before you'd do major open surgery and patients would be in for 10 days or two weeks. Now they're sometimes in as a day patient," Mr Choy said.
When the NHS was conceived all those years ago, the idea of keyhole surgery probably never entered anyone's mind as a possibility, and the next developments on the cards seem equally as fanciful.
A way of operating called Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic surgery is currently being pioneered in Europe, and could mark a huge step forward.
This is a type of abdominal surgery which means that the patient has no exterior cuts to their body. As the name suggests, an already occurring orifice such as the vagina or the rectum is used to get into the part of the body being operated on.
It is, however, still in the experimental stages.
Being a doctor or surgeon today is not simply about treating patients, and issues to do with the organisation of the NHS creep into a surgeon's life.
Mr Choy has some concerns over Government targets for waiting times of patients in need of an operation.
His concern is that often patients in need of less serious operations can get put to the front of the queue over someone with a more serious condition, but who has not been waiting as long, in order to meet waiting list targets.
"These targets do impose limitations and for some patients they get better care, but they can also lead to distortion of clinical priorities," he said.
Another frustration for Mr Choy is the shifting of power away from doctors to managers.
"Increasingly now, the management decisions are all taken out of our hands. I think the management have a difficult task achieving the targets set centrally. They are under a lot of pressure but they have to work in cooperation with clinicians," he said.
Despite the pressures and frustrations, Mr Choy is certain of one thing, which applies to both management and clinicians, and that is what makes him proudest of the modern NHS.
"No one wants to offer a poor quality service. We all want patients to have a good outcome, good treatments," he said.
Events to mark the anniversary
To celebrate the NHS's 60th birthday, PDH is opening its doors between 11am and 3pm on Sunday, July 6th. The event, based in the main outpatients department, will be officially opened by Councillor Patricia Nash, the mayor of Peterborough.
The mayor will invite visitors to take behind-the-scenes tours of the hospital, find out about hospital departments and services and take part in a range of fun activities and competitions.
An operating theatre will be open for the public to meet staff, see different medical instruments and learn more about how operations are performed. There are plenty of activities for children including a special 999 club which will give tours of accident and emergency and X-ray departments. The 999 club is also holding a special "teddy clinic" and children are invited to bring their teddies in for a free health check.
Visitors will be able to step back into the past at the hospital history stand which will display past photographs and memorabilia of healthcare in Peterborough since the 18th Century.
For more information, call 01733 875201
Peterborough Labour Party is hosting a barbecue to celebrate the anniversary. This will be held in the garden of the Westwood Hotel on Mayors Walk at 4pm on Saturday. Admission costs 5.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Peterborough
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: West
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.