Persecution: Black Riders Seen in the Shire

October, 13, 2014 | 4 Comments

Comments

  1. Now I get it! I’d been wondering: Who would try to run David Healy out of his job, and why now after all these years? Is someone using alleged problems at Hergest as a pretext to go after David, whose research and advocacy pose a threat to Healthcare Inc.? Or is someone using David and his unorthodox views as a pretext to go after Hergest, just as so many other NHS units seem to be getting torn apart and readied for privatization?

    I think Richard Tranter has got it right. Hergest Unit is being targeted for its strengths not its problems. In order to force it to march to the business-oriented, box-ticking drumbeat of NHS tops today – and maybe privatize it later – it’s got to be portrayed as “in crisis.” Closing wards and cutting staff is enough to create a crisis in many good NHS units, but a bit more is needed to take down Hergest. Trying to fire two head nurses last year was the next step. Then they moved against Dr. Healy and his colleagues, in exactly the ways Dr. Tranter feared.

    So is it Healy they’re “really” after, or is it Hergest? Maybe the answer is Yes. With the corporate takeover of healthcare intensifying, outspoken academics like David are more likely to be targeted. What makes him harder to dismiss than most is that he’s a treating doctor and a leader among his coworkers on a local NHS psych unit. The fact that he and fellow doctors also spoke out publicly in defense of Hergest and its nurses makes him damn near intolerable. Is he like all the other NHS whistleblowers you hear of these days, or is this a special case? Again, the answer is probably Yes.

  2. “By the time it was published, Black Riders had appeared. Now the forces destroying healthcare worldwide almost seem concentrated here. -”

    A *golden* opportunity —

    the metaphor has an auspicious *ring* to it

  3. and I thought it was me that was wrong when working on the mental health wards and seeing what Nurses were having to put up with, even at my level as a lowly paid team member of the health teams on a long term zero hour contract (no holiday pay , no sickness pay and no idea what and if I’m working next week).

    Its refreshing to see what Dr Healy is writing about. We’re in the business of looking after people but we’re falling short at get that right and falling much much further supporting some of our hardest working lowest paid staff .

  4. Dr. Richard, I am so sorry you left. I feel betrayed beyond words that my name has become associated with the travesty that is BCUHB. I no longer wish my name to be associated with this carnival of fools. Yours truly B. Cadwaladr, 1815.

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