Saw this going around online recently. It sums up to a very great extent what is wrong with Britain’s NHS.
Public art and public art activities are nice things to have. However they are not something that could be called a core function of the NHS. I see zero justification, especially at a time when the NHS is clearly failing to provide an effective and safe comprehensive healthcare system for the people of Britain, for expenditure such as this. The fact that this NHS trust has the arrogant gall to advertise a post like this knowing full well that the post holder is unlikely to contribute anything to clinical outcomes or bring down the waiting lists or make their hospital safer for patients, disgusts me. I see it as an indication of the arrogance of NHS management and how little they actually care for their real customers, the patients.
The NHS is now a socialist state within the state and one where the customers, as in all socialist enterprises, comes last. We truly deserve better than what we get from the NHS.
I’m not sure that the Arts is any more or less useful for healthcare than homoeopathy, which the NHS will offer (presumably to people with no serious illnesses, as it’s nonsense).
Perhaps a soothing mural helps with recovery times, unlike sugar pill placebos.
(Excuse my dislike of homoeopathy: my wife insisted on this pointless stuff when dying and rejecting conventional treatments which might have saved her.)
You are correct about how some artworks might help patients calm down but such artworks and indeed art services could be bought in at much less cost than employing an artist in house.
I’m fully with you on homeopathy. It’s complete bunk. I do not believe that it should be funded by the NHS.
I personally do not see a lot of problems with this. The employed artist, note a post only for a year, will be also paying their taxes and N.I. to contribute to the NHS.
I’m assuming that basic arithmetic isn’t your strongest point. See also perpetual motion machines and Ponzi schemes.
But the money to pay the taxes is coming from the taxpayer. It’s not as if this person who will fill this role is creating something outside that which will be paid for by the taxpayer is it?
Lol more typically short-sighted garbage. I’m sure at least the author can agree that boosting working conditions will in the long term save NHS money by reducing staffing turnover.
Every organisation of 10,000 employees has such roles.
What next? Reducing nursing salaries? Mothballing HR? To the dimwitted these instant money saving ideas seem a work of genius but think about it properly and you’ll see such machinations are a product of capitalism not the “social state within a social state” (whatever that means?) the author states. What a joker.
But do these roles improve working conditions? Do they improve patient outcomes? I don’t believe that they do. The NHS is so huge and so unwieldy that it is indeed a state within the state and far from being a capitalist enterprise is very much socialistic. We have had a rise in management roles in the NHS since it was created with the problem getting particularly bad from the 70’s onward. All organisations need management but is the management of the NHS becoming too burdensome and unwieldy, that certainly seems to be the case from my and other’s experience of the NHS.
BTW I despise the NHS. I’ve seen too many relatives and friends get piss poor treatment out of it. This piss poor treatment was nothing to do with funding issues and more to do with the attitudes and the competences of NHS staff. If we want a healthcare system that treats everyone effectively and gives the patient some degree of choice about their treatment then the NHS model cannot provide that.