Duncan Lay: Politicians need to spend time in hospitals to improve health system

I THINK our politicians should spend a couple of days in hospital each year. Not as themselves, with suits and minders and instant obedience. But as ordinary Toms, Dicks and Gladyses, Duncan Lay writes.

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YOU have plenty of time to think while you are sitting in an emergency department treatment room.

I wouldn’t exactly call it quiet time, not with the angry rantings of the ice addict next door to distract you.

And I certainly don’t recommend it as a holiday destination.

But I reckon all our politicians should spend a couple of days in hospital each year. Not as themselves, with suits and minders and instant obedience. But as ordinary Toms, Dicks and Gladyses.

Perhaps it might help break through the cocoon and open a few eyes.

For a start they might become enraged by the cost of parking and the way you have to leave your loved one’s bedside and rush out to feed yet more coins into this money-making rort.

Politicians need to spend some real time at hospitals to see what staff, patients and visitors go through every day, Duncan Lay writes. Picture: Christian Gilles

If we knew the cash was going to the hardworking nurses then we’d pay it with a smile. Yet I suspect it’s more likely to end up in some administrator’s biscuit fund.

They might also get seriously scared into action by seeing the violent drunks and ice addicts.

It’s a little worrying when you head out to pay the latest stage of the parking charge rort and discover six beefy security guards surrounding the next treatment room.

Or if you’re trying to get out of the hospital and most of the doors are locked to keep the monsters away from the patients.

Our hospital system needs an overhaul, Duncan Lay says. Picture: Tim Hunter

Maybe they might also discover the fancy new rooms they had built with our taxes were designed — seemingly — by someone who had never worked in a hospital before and so the nurses can’t tell who has called for assistance and then can’t get past the bed to cancel that beeping noise.

Yet the simple humanity you find there can also give you hope.

When people are at their lowest point, when there are questions of life and death being asked, then you often see people at their best. Except, of course, if they are off their face at the time.

My daughter had some amazing nurses. Our favourite was the grizzled ex-landscape gardener with the tattoos, thick silver beard, huge heart and amazing sense of humour.

Maybe we could have the politicians work for a few days as nurses and the nurses fill in as politicians.

That might heal quite a few things in our society.