Having yet to sample the delights of the NHS, I can't be certain but the article seems about right: dedicated personnel but insufficient budget.

However there are two things that make me think "Doesn't everyone do that?"

Also, British nurses have far more direct managerial control over how the hospital wards are run.


Nurses are medically trained professionals in charge of day-to-day patient care. Of course they have managerial control of the hospital wards. Low skill grunt work is for the orderlies. Nursing colleges don't demand 'O' levels for nothing.

British doctors, nurses and physical therapists also seem to put much more stock in the spiritual side of healing. Not to say that they bring religion into the ward. (In fact, they passed right over my wife's insistence that prayer played a part in what they had to admit was a miraculously quick return of movement to her left side.) Put simply, they invest a lot of effort at keeping one's spirits up.


It's called the placebo effect, as the author appears to know. Possibility of being sued is an excuse to damage patient health? Why aren't US doctors and nurses being sued for being so downbeat, then?