I was recently in London and attended a conference titled, Nurse Led Clinics. It was a fascinating day with many excellent speakers. As an advanced practice nurse who runs her own company and loves being my own boss I was interested to see how this concept was being developed in the UK, my homeland but one I have not worked in as a health care professional for nearly 20 years.
It seems the National Health Care Service is moving in the same way (relatively speaking) as the US, in terms of need for accountability of costs, tendering of services - which means there is no reason why nurses, physical therapists and others cannot form their own groups and bid for contracts. It is an exciting time of change in the UK. However, I appreciate not being a part of the NHS anymore it is probably very frustrating to live with these changes. What is refreshing is that the UK system is still a service based industry whereas the US health care system is very much profit driven, sometimes quality of care gets lost in both systems.
I see a two tier system developing in the UK, where many people now have private insurance through their employers and prefer to get their point of service care, elective surgery and treatment through the private route. Does this make the free NHS suffer, not sure, have not had enough exposure to that lately to make a judgement. However, it does not seem that much different to the US system where we have the medicare/medicaid population, the totally uninsured and the rest of the nation. It certainly is a tiered system where there are different levels of quality care depending of what coverage you have.
It was not all work though, I thoroughly enjoyed Barcelona, especially the flamenco festival that was taking place right outside our hotel. It was lovely to see London draped in Union Jacks in anticipation of the Queens Jubilee (God Bless her) and the Summer Olympics.
Now back to the reality of home. Have started double duty in my community health class that I teach on line, balancing 50 students instead of the usual 30!!! I just keep saying to myself "Angie, you got this, you so have this!!" Community health work has slowed down a little this week for which I am grateful. I have not taught this class since February so I am taking the extra time to catch up on readings and go through the syllabus in detail.
I feel like I am on a new summer schedule and it feels good, getting up late, lazy breakfast, check in with my students, do a few visits, wander around my beautiful yard dead heading and pruning and then back to check in with my students later on in the day. I could get used to this, very satisfying.
