Rights bring responsibilities

Editor - With the perennial media frenzy about, the NHS has stimulated a renewed debate about the problems it faces in the years ahead. It is now time for patients to participate in finding the future direction of our health services. As users of the NHS and members of the electorate, patients have the ability to dictate change - be it funding, services offered, or the like. The NHS is often taken for granted by British citizens who do not remember what it was like without a comprehensive free service and are generally unappreciative of healthcare systems in other countries. They demand more and better services but at the ballot box seem ill prepared to vote for a political party that wants to raise taxes - which could make a real difference to NHS funding. Given that the NHS has the responsibility to provide a high standard of service, and patients have the right to use them, it is time for patients to be responsible too.

In the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast the record of missed appointments among outpatients to the dermatology department fluctuates between 15% and 20%. Each missed appointment costs the hospital £35. In December this single outpatients' clinic in a single hospital in the United Kingdom lost over £7500 from missed appointments. This is funding lost from frontline clinical service provision that could finance eight extra cataract operations a month or interferon beta for 10 patients with multiple sclerosis. It is now time for patients to help repair their NHS.

Ian Bickle, third year medical student, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN
Email: email


studentBMJ 2000;08:45-88 March ISSN 0966-6494