JellyBean 024 with Damien Roland

Damien Roland has been at the centre of an interesting grass-roots, bottom up movement in the UK all based around the idea that everyone can make a change.The National Health Service is the 4th biggest employer in the world. Set up after second World War by Aneurin Bevan based on the 1942 Beveridge report and a movement that had started back before first World War.

Its been under the cosh for the last few decades as successive governments of every persuasion have tried to cut its funding, privatize its profitable components and downsize it in any way possible. The NHS is expensive, it is inefficient, it makes mistakes. It is, in many ways, the best health service in the world.

It is big. As with a lot of big things those involved can feel very removed from the exercise of power. Nurses, doctors, patients can all feel like it’s impossible to get the damn thing to change. It’s all committees, reports, bureaucracy, politics, back-stabbing…. You know…the sort of stuff any big corporation or organization has.

The politicians that are making the laws at the moment are among the tiny proportion of Britons that can afford and use private healthcare. But people love the NHS. It still has the trust and appreciation of (most of) the millions that depend upon it as their only source of healthcare.

That’s a lot of untapped good will from a lot of untapped minds. Imagine more than half a million people (and counting) trying to dream up little (or big) things to improve the healthcare experience. We all go through this experience, some of as staff and almost all of us as patients.

It’s an interesting “Soft-Power” phenomenon. Have a wee look at NHS Change Day

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