I’M a Surgeon, but I’M Standing for Holyrood to Fight the Destruction of My Beloved NHS

By DAVID SMITH

DAVID SMITH

CONSULTANT SURGEON AT GLASGOW’S VICTORIA INFIRMARY

WHEN I became a consultant surgeon 30 years ago, I never imagined the NHS would be in a poorer condition when I retired than when I joined.

I am due to retire at the end of this month after spending 34 years in one Glasgow hospital and I regret to say it is a shadow of the place it was in the 1970s.

Over the years, vital services have been stripped away one by one and hived off to a larger hospital complex several miles away. To put it crudely, it means the hospital is no longer capable of doing the job it once did.

I speak of the piecemeal withdrawal of inpatient beds and specialist departments from the Victoria Infirmary on Glasgow’s south side, but the issue is certainly not unique to Scotland’s largest city.

Those in other parts of the country may notice a similar pattern in their own areas. Most concerning, perhaps, is the threat of withdrawal of accident and emergency departments at many local hospitals a result of the European Working Time Directive forcing the NHS to concentrate junior doctors on fewer sites.

Services once routinely available at our nearest hospital are now increasingly centralised in vast complexes in our major cities. That is fine if you live next door to Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital or Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, but most of us do not.

Expertise

For the people of South-East Glasgow, this centralisation represents a loss of health provision.

That is why, after much consideration, I have decided to do something I never dreamed of doing when I joined the Victoria Infirmary as a Senior Registrar back in 1973.

I am going to stand for election. I would like to represent the people of Glasgow’s Cathcart as an independent MSP in the next Scottish parliament.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not a political animal. My field of expertise is caring for patients. I’ve never been a member of a political party and throughout my career I have considered myself more or less apolitical.

But I have come to the conclusion that the provision of health care is too important an issue to be left to party politics.

You may remember that retired GP Dr Jean Turner reached a similar conclusion in the run-up to the last Scottish parliamentary election and decided to throw her hat in the ring as an independent candidate. You may also remember that she won a stunning victory in Strathkelvin and Bearsden, ousting the sitting Labour MSP.

Her remarkable success was a clear indication of where the public stands on the stripping away of much-needed hospital services.

But I am not Dr Jean Turner Mark II. She was concerned with health provision in the north of Glasgow and was elected on a Save Stobhill Hospital ticket.

I am not trying to save any hospital. In fact, on the south side of Glasgow we have two of the oldest hospitals anywhere in the country.

The Victoria Infirmary was opened in 1890 while the Southern General Hospital began life a decade earlier in 1880.

Nowhere else in Scotland are acute medical services still being delivered from buildings constructed in the Victorian era. Both are long past their sell-by date and should have been replaced a long time ago.

I will be campaigning for a new hospital, built in an area readily accessible to everyone in South Glasgow. It is a battle I intend to fight on behalf of the public, the people the NHS is there to serve.

There are undoubtedly some specialties such as neurosurgery, cardiac surgery and plastic surgery that should only be available on a limited number of sites. However, the common, sometimes life- threatening emergency conditions need to be able to access appropriate facilities with the minimum of delay.

If elected, I would also be more than willing to work with other MSPs who feel that services in their area are being eroded.

In the Victoria Infirmary the most significant changes have taken place over the past 15 years. First the urology department disappeared, then the gynaecology department. That was followed by ear, nose and throat and pathology. As a result, patients who arrive at the Victoria increasingly find the hospital no longer provides the treatment they require.

Uncertainty

This means patients shuttling back and forward between two hospitals by ambulance, often in great discomfort and in heavy traffic. Doctors, too, often must divide their time between two sites increased time spent travelling means less time spent with patients.

For the patient admitted to one hospital who then requires transfer to another, these highly unsatisfactory arrangements not only prolong the period of uncertainty before treatment can start but also sometimes extend the period of discomfort. They also result in longer journeys and added worry for the patients’ visitors.

I’m not wanting to turn the clock back to the days of Doctor Finlay’s Casebook. I am not suggesting highly specialised services should be available in cottage hospitals in rural towns across the country.

But I cannot see why, in 2007, access to health services should become more difficult. That, surely, is not progress.

My disillusionment with the political process with regards to the Victoria Infirmary perhaps crystallised in the first term of the Scottish parliament when the then Cathcart Labour MSP Mike Watson apparently told his constituents one thing and then did quite another.

Having spoken in Holyrood against the Scottish Executive’s plans to close the Victoria Infirmary and re-site all emergency services on the Southern General site, he performed a U-turn and voted with the Executive much to the distress of those who had campaigned to ensure the continuation of the full range of services at the Victoria.

Challenge

The reorganisation of health care is no smaller an issue in other parts of the country. In Ayrshire, there are widespread concerns over proposals to remove the accident and emergency department at Ayr Hospital and centralise services at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock. In Lanarkshire, the AE unit at Monklands Hospital is under threat while in Fife, acute beds are transferring from Dunfermline to Kirkcaldy.

Is this really the way forward for healthcare in Scotland?

The challenge of getting the best out of the health service will never be achieved by politicians whose first loyalty is to the party whip.

That is why I feel an independent voice is the best means of ensuring that local concerns are taken into account.

For 30 years I have been privileged to work as a general surgeon, specialising in the treatment of breast cancer.

When I leave the operating theatre for the last time next week that part of my life will be over. But I’d like to serve the people of Cathcart in another way by representing their interests at Holyrood as an independent free of the rigid discipline of the party whip.

A parliament that reflects as many aspects of Scottish life as possible will be more constructive and this is why I am offering myself, with my background in hospital medicine, to serve the people of Glasgow Cathcart.

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