I
think It's fair to say that Jeremy Hunt is at least on the shortlist
for being the most despised health secretary ever. He has a
reputation among NHS staff for being aloof, unthinking and callous
when it comes to patients. And exploitative and belligerent when it comes to his
staff.
To my mind however his worst failings are that he is
demonstrably illogical and unintelligent. As a prime example;
He
was warned that if he abolished bursaries then applications for nurse
training would plummet. DZ is old enough to remember when nurse
training was not only free, but the students got a wage, and has
commented before on how converting nurse training to a degree course
was a con, a trap into which the nursing profession fell willingly. Abolition of bursaries is just the next step on the
road to getting nursing on the cheap.
But
true to form Hunt ignored the warnings and went ahead anyway. And the
warnings proved accurate. So,
what is his response to a 23% slump in applications for nurse
training. It's a 25% increase in nurse training places of course.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but it seems logical to me that,
if a quarter of places remain unfilled, then that is not addressed by creating more places. Is it? What sort of pigheaded
fuckwit could possibly imagine that this is a solution. It is clear
that this man refuses to acknowledge that the problem is of his
making.
I
note also he "He will also pledge funding for a further
5,500 “nursing associates” each year – who will “earn and
learn”, rather than study full-time through a traditional
university degree." Return of the SEN then,
which, frankly I think is no bad thing, as long as their non degree
status is not used as an excuse to pay them a pittance.
Is it
any wonder that the NHS is in the state it's in with this man at the
helm?
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