'What matters to you?' NHS can sometimes leave me baffled – Susan Morrison

The NHS is a mighty and wonderful thing, but by crivvens, there are things that leave me baffled.
The modern NHS likes to ask a few questions so they can get to know you (Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)The modern NHS likes to ask a few questions so they can get to know you (Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The modern NHS likes to ask a few questions so they can get to know you (Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Some new developments are good. Today you are welcomed to the ward by a lovely young student nurse bearing a white board to stick on the wall behind you.

It has a few questions on it, so that they can get to know you. For one thing, they ask you how you’d like to be addressed. This is good. I’m not bothered, but some older women there preferred to be called ‘Mrs Thomas’ rather than ‘Nancy’ and so on.

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What I did find odd was the earnest question “What matters to you?” I’m in hospital. I thought it pretty clear that top of today’s agenda is ‘removing cancer’.

“Oh,” said the nursing student, “Aside from that, what matters in your life?”

It’s a small whiteboard. I have a lot of concerns. Ukraine is currently number three, cross referencing with number two, which is a potential nuclear war brought about by a nutter with bad Botox and a Messiah complex. We could reach Number 15 before we even hit surgery.

She didn’t write any of that on the board.

The NHS loves an early start. My surgery was at 8.30am. So, naturally, they woke me at 5.30. This was to give me enough time to get ready for surgery. Apparently.

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Cue mild panic. What was I supposed to do? Full hair and make-up? I had a shower. Honestly, it didn’t take that long. And then I sat about missing coffee so much I started to follow the trolley around snorting the fumes.

My favourite though is the post-surgery blood pressure monitor. There’s good science behind it, but that massive cuff strapped to your upper arm is a tyrant.

I believe it to be sentient. During the night, just as you drop off to sleep, that demon knows and kicks off, squeezing your arm with the slow tightening painful grip of a boa constrictor. You wake up with a start and the monitor goes berserk.

The nurse strolls over and remarks. “Oh, blood pressure’s up.” No kiddin’, sweetheart.

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