Come to Edinburgh! Not something a Glaswegian says very often, but….

My next (and last book about health) will be out around October: The State of Medicine – keeping the promise of the NHS.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading, writing and thinking about why the NHS is in such a mess: how we got here: and how we get back to doing what it said it would: caring for our needs. I am absolutely furious about what is being done to the NHS and healthcare professionalism. We are lions being led by political potatoes. We ignore evidence, or don’t bother thinking we need it. We roll out initiatives while there is no understanding of basic statistics. The best and biggest resource the NHS has are its patients and staff, yet we keep ignoring them to produce short sighted policy that doesn’t work and takes resources from the most vulnerable people who have most to gain from it. Basically: I am as mad as hell and the NHS can’t take this sort of kicking any more.

Last year I was talking about this stuff at a Cochrane meeting when I met Phil Hammond: who has also been talking about this stuff for years (much more amusingly), and we bonded over a shared distate in health secretaries. I will be his guest at the evening shows and I will do rants with references. He will do the jokes. We want a revolution – an evidence based NHS, based on need not wants, ideals not political opportunism. Bring banners/gin. It should be fun.