Ever wonder what do you get when you combine the average British persons’ top 2 favourite things to complain about (besides the weather)?
Money:
I remember the first time I used the ‘stocks’ app on my iPhone was on the day it was announced that Leave had won the referendum. Though my understanding of economics was limited, I was well aware that the plummet in graphs and all the negatively numbered red boxes was a bad thing. So leaving the EU saw an initial drop in the British Pound, what does that mean for the NHS? Well, many of the leading campaigners of Vote Leave claimed that being in the EU cost Britain £350 million a week, and also claimed that the money could go somewhere else, the NHS being the most talked about destination. In fact, a campaigning approach used much too insincerely by Brexiteers was ‘We’ll be giving the NHS a £350 million injection every week’. But with the initial drop of stocks, which is likely to drop again with the actual leaving of the EU, many have now come to the realisation that the ‘£350 million injection’ will be given to the country as a whole just to keep it up and running.
Staffing:
Professional health and social qualifications are held with mutual recognition within the countries of the EU. This means that, before Brexit, any Doctor in Germany could come and work in England and vice versa. So what does leaving the EU mean for the NHS’ 60,000 EU workers? It meant that in the last couple of years, NHS staff of the other EU countries, weren’t sure of what would happen to their contracts with nearly 10,000 of them quitting the NHS by September 2017. The NHS is struggling to cope with the ageing and larger population as it is, and with the exit of so many EU workers, this problem is only going to get much worse.
Movement (or lack thereof…)
Maybe we could solve the lack of staffing through ‘breeding’ more of our own Doctors and Nurses. But how do we do that without lowering university acceptance offers, which ensures Medics are the best of the best? The governments previous resolve to that question was to do nothing. In essence, students who thought that maybe they wouldn’t get into studying Medical degrees, would take it upon themselves to study in other EU countries such as Germany where its relatively easier to get into Medicine. After training they would come back to England and work for the NHS. But as Britain is no longer part of the EU, it’s much less convenient for students to travel abroad for their degrees and will undoubtedly result in a smaller influx of NHS staff.
Time:
A lot of time is being spent doing negotiations with the EU and not many agreements have been finalised. Taking so long to agree on anything means that we as people, we as national trusts like the NHS, simply have no control of our future. And with the actual leave of the EU taking so long, the NHS are left in an unprecedented paradox of taking actions now and taking actions for the future.
Like most problems with Brexit, the effects on the NHS currently are only ‘short term’ – in the grand scheme of things. Though it doesn’t seem so now, Brexit was done with the aim of being financially stronger in the future than we are now. However far in the future that may be is still unsure, but what we do know, is that if the UK does become able to spend more money on the NHS the benefits will be remarkable.
Fazna 🔹
Sources-
Kingsfund
The guardian
PentaMedics 