Demeaning and Trivialising

The national director for patients and the public, Harry Cayton, who advises ministers on "improving patients (sic) experience and on building a patient centred health service", has apparently nothing to say about privatisation, low wages, long hours, underfunding, inadequate training, middle management epidemics, centralisation, hospital closures, cockroaches, the pharmaceutical industry lobby or irritating acronyms like that of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Instead, he has criticised NHS staff for referring to patients in "demeaning and trivialising" fashion. Cayton does not criticise NHS staff for addressing customers in such a fashion, so the all-important medical problem of public relations does not arise; perhaps it is the managers whose sensibilities have been offended. If the NHS wishes to become truly patient-centred, it must protect these fragile creatures and "change the language it uses to describe customers". The term "frequent flyers" (used by NHS staff for people who are in and out of hospital) exercised Cayton particularly, although the term "customers" (used by the Department of Health for people who don't know that the NHS is still free at the point of use) seems as acceptable as ever. The use of bad-taste humour to get through the day is now permissible, it appears, only at ministerial level.