The real NHS

The Health Secretary got a lot of stick for suggesting that the NHS had just had its "best year ever", despite stories of job cuts and ward closures. I've recently had first hand experience of my local NHS hospital , and my take on this is that the standard of care is good, but the standard of attention leaves a lot to be desired, and this is purely down to staffing levels. The ratio of staff to patients simply isn't sufficient to allow for an acceptable level of response most of the time. You soon learn that you need to know you need something about 10 minutes or so before you actually need it - that being about the average time delay between asking for something and it happening. So if this is the "best ever"........!!