UK hospitals are doomed if NHS doesn’t make two crucial changes for all patients | UK | News

Surviving in the UK in 2026 involves knowing who you can rely on in a fight. Who would be able to pull off a spinning bird kick while still clutching their drink, and who would hold the jackets? And who would bring out the karate skills they honed when they were seven years old? Obviously, I’m talking metaphorically because violence is never the answer. But, coming up to three years as a cancer patient, I definitely know who has my back and which of the nurses could handle themselves in a fight.

I was reminded of this earlier this week when I was having chemotherapy and a nurse talked about an incident from two years ago when she suspected I had a blood clot in one of my arms. Her suspicions were based on the fact that one of my arms was blue and cold, while the other was my usual pasty-white person pinkish colour.

The doctor she called to ask to authorise an ultrasound, to assess where the clot was, refused because my blue arm wasn’t swollen.

He refused with the same “computer says no” attitude as the staff at McDonald’s when you ask for an extra barbecue sauce.

So the nurse went above his pay grade in the NHS hierarchy and asked his boss to authorise the ultrasound.

Everyone in the day unit was delighted when the results came back, and they confirmed I did indeed have deep vein thrombosis in my arm.

Obviously, we weren’t delighted about the result, but overjoyed that the doctor who hadn’t bothered to leave his office to see me in person had lost the battle.

I’m still staggered that a doctor could turn down a request just because my blood clot didn’t tick all three boxes on his checklist – especially because untreated clots can lead to strokes and other serious health issues.

And speaking to other people with different long-term health conditions over the past few years, that is the biggest problem with the NHS. Some hospital doctors are so impressed with their own skills and training that they forget their colleagues also know a lot about healthcare.

Recently, one patient told me how they’d been fobbed off with paracetamol for abdominal pain since November. When doctors finally agreed to authorise a scan, they discovered that there was a cyst on her pancreas.

And I’ll never forget a story I worked on years ago about a doctor who misdiagnosed patients with depression when they actually had cancer.

The NHS needs a lot of things to survive, no matter who forms the next Government when Keir Starmer is booted out of No10. The main thing it needs is doctors who are willing to accept that other staff, who have actually seen the patients, might be right with a diagnosis.

And to always be aware that they should always respect what patients are saying, because they are the ones with the illness, rather than dismissing their views and blindly committing to one inaccurate diagnosis, because it’s what they want it to be.

I don’t know if we’ll get there in my lifetime, but if we don’t get there soon, then hospital care in the UK is doomed.