Slow death of the NHS is an existential threat to the SNP

A decade ago, 12-hour waits at A&E were rare, now they are commonplace (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

Ten years ago, if a patient in accident and emergency waited 12 hours to be seen, it would prompt an investigation into what had gone wrong. However, this was so rare that such cases were referred to as ‘never events’.

In July this year, 5,000 people waited that long. What was once viewed as a scandal has become part of everyday life in Scotland’s hospitals. And, with the winter spike in patient demand approaching, it’s about to get worse.

Dr Fiona Hunter is the vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland. She’s an expert in her field, someone whose opinions cannot be dismissed as a politically motivated attack and who must be taken seriously by those in positions of power.

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‘Patients coming to harm’

In an interview we publish today, Hunter warned that doctors are “really scared about how ugly this winter is going to be”. And she criticised the Scottish government for “a real lack of any substantial, proper winter or surge planning that will save us from having more staff off this winter, more patients coming to harm, [and] higher numbers of excess deaths from prolonged waits in emergency departments”.

It’s not just patients who are suffering, with medical staff experiencing burnout.

Hunter said even some of the more resilient staff were “finding it really, really difficult, when they went into a career where they wanted to care for patients, and they are just not able to do that... we know there's evidence that there's harm happening to these patients because we're not able to provide the care they need. That's... really hard to face, day in, day out, shift in, shift out, and they are simply not able to do it.”

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Bold and radical action required

It is unconscionable that working conditions have been allowed to become so bad that they inflict a ‘moral injury’ on staff, to the extent that they go off sick.

The question is whether the SNP are actually going to grasp the scale of the problem and do something about it, or if they will continue to tinker around the edges.

For years, the nationalists have shied away from bold and radical solutions to the NHS’s problems, creating the suspicion that this is because they fear offending constituencies whose votes they need if they are ever to secure independence. However, if the health service dies on their watch, the resulting public furore would surely sweep them, and their over-riding ambition, away.