Two Simple Words

Two simple words cannot express all the gratitude we owe NHS, Private Hospital and Agency staff this winter, but we hope it is a start: Thank you.

Thank you for dealing with a 20 per cent increase in demand on your time and services in the week running up to Christmas and thereafter.

Thank you for answering call after call on an NHS hotline that’s experiencing it’s most challenging Winter Pressure due to budgets and staff shortages.

Thank you for operating on the broken bones and blood-gushing cuts, for staunching the flow and stitching the wounds without pausing for breath.

Thank you for smiling with saintly good grace while you were swamped with a massive surge in accident and emergency admissions.

Thank you for dealing with those who fell down drunk and were abusive to you.

Thank you for abstaining yourselves so you could lift them back up again and deliver them safely to hospital.

Thank you to the admin staff who keep the show on the road, to those who leave their desks to volunteer help to the medics.

Thank you to everyone who jump in and bail out mates and colleagues in other departments when they look like buckling under the strain.

Thank you to the GPs who stay on and stay open and fixed things for us in 10 minutes.

Thank you to the pharmacists for the drugs, thank you for the lab assistants who do the blood tests, and the radiologists who run the scans.

Thank you to the porters who fetch and carry and keep up spirits with a constant stream of banter.

Thank you to the paramedics who risk their own lives through winter to save the lives of total strangers.

Thank you for your sore backs from bending over beds and pans and thank you for still doing it with a smile on your face after a gruelling shift.

Thank you for going into work early and leaving for home well after you should have finished.

Thank you for working through your own winter aches and pains…and then going home to nurse your own coughing and wheezing families.

We thank you for the babies that come crying safely into this world and we thank you for comforting the bereaved shedding tears for a loved one who left it.

And thank you if your missing Christmas Day with your own loved ones after being promised a pay rise that will just be a heart monitor’s bleep ahead of inflation, but that’s why you have Nursco!

The NHS isn’t perfect, no one knows that more than you. Every day the system is creaking at the seams.

But every day, not just on a winter’s day, you hold it together, make it all face in the direction of the patient, and get on with it.

Many of us owe you our lives to you. Yet all we can offer in return is our appreciation, respect and unswerving admiration.

While you superheroes of the NHS and the private sector continue to perform daily miracles we, the ordinary humans, will continue to watch on in awe and gratitude.

More often than not we report on the many issues affecting the NHS. We do so because it is this country’s most cherished institution and we wish to see it protected and nurtured.

But today is not a day for that. Today is a day for giving thanks to the very many NHS, Private Hospital and Agency workers represented on this message.

They are simple words, and we don’t say it often enough, but we mean them very sincerely.

To all of you at Nursco, the NHS and the private healthcare organisations from all of us at the Nursco Europe, Asia and UK office – we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

If you need us over this manic period or beyond please note that Nursco Asia, Europe and the UK offices are live, online and open like the NHS on a 7 day, 24 hour basis; 0203 954 1917 or [email protected] with some Specialist Nurses, ODPs, Decon Technicians and Midwives ready for action, first come first served basis.

Merry Christmas and a red tape free New Year!