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Meeting of the Parliament 05 November 2013

05 Nov 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Person-centred Healthcare

Findlay, Neil Lab Lothian Watch on SPTV

I begin by declaring an interest, in that my wife and daughter work in the NHS.

I say at the outset that Scottish Labour shares and supports the good intentions of the Government motion. Person-centred healthcare, as it says on the tin, puts the patient at the heart of their healthcare. Patients should, of course, be centrally involved in all key decisions that affect their journey along the treatment pathway, so the text of the Government motion, which stresses those points, has our support.

It is not just in that area that we agree with the Government. In its 2020 vision, the Scottish Government states that it is committed to the values of the NHS—the NHS that was created by that great post-war Labour Government—which are timeless values of solidarity and co-operation, and the collective sharing and pooling of resources in a system that is based on need and not the ability to pay. I am absolutely delighted that the Scottish Government shares those Labour values. I am glad, too, that the Scottish Government opposes the marketisation of the NHS and expresses its support for continued investment in the public rather than the private sector.

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s rejection of the disastrous so-called reforms that are being introduced by the coalition in England. Thankfully, what is happening in Scotland’s NHS is different from what is going on in England, but the cabinet secretary should not use Tory ideology and an attack on the NHS there as a diversionary tactic to cover up what is happening here and now on his watch.

Patients should always be at the centre of health policy, funding decisions and clinical priorities. I am sure that all members of the Parliament agree that all decisions should be considered on the basis of how they will impact on the patient, but there are many areas of current policy in which that approach is very much an afterthought or is missing completely.

For months now, policy makers, professional bodies and trade unions have been raising the issue of how prepared the NHS is for winter. Such preparation is key to delivering person-centred care, particularly at the most testing time of the year. Last year, accident and emergency units were full to bursting and patients were stuck on trolleys for hours on end because bed and staff numbers had been cut. Since 2007, the system has lost 1,000 beds and there are 1,200 fewer nursing and midwifery posts than there were in 2009.

How would the patients affected by those cuts view our warm words about person-centred healthcare? Doctors and nurses complain about having to look after increasing numbers of patients without the support that they need. How would the patient who has not seen a doctor all day because of the pressures that the doctors are under view the warm words about person-centred healthcare?

Further, what about the repeated boarding out of patients during their stay in hospital because of pressures? Staff tell me about patients being moved time and again from ward to ward to free up space. Who could forget the appalling story last winter, exposed by the Daily Record, of John McGarrity, a frail 84-year-old who was left for eight hours on a hospital trolley without even a pillow after being rushed to hospital with chest pains? John was not the only patient to be left on a trolley, but his son described the scene to me as

“like a scene from a third world country, not something you would expect to see in Scotland.”

How would John and his family view their experience of person-centred healthcare?

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Meeting of the Parliament 05 November 2013

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