BMJ 2006;333 (23 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7569.0-f
Editor's choice
While Rome burns
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Something strange is happening in the NHS. I don't mean the chaos of constant policy change, the threat of closures, the job losses, the financial crises—we are used to all that. No, I mean that although the service functions and patients are seen and treated, many of them satisfactorily, something important is quietly dying. I don't think it is too fanciful to call it the spirit of medical professionalism. And we, the medical profession, are watching it die.
We asked Nigel Hawkes, an experienced health journalist, to give us his take on the NHS reforms (p 645). The result was unexpected. He describes a breathtaking ride through the past 15 years and concludes that, far from being privatised, medicine in England has become ever more a creature of the state. From the scrapping of the internal market in the early 1990s; through the NHS Plan in 2000; to
Fiona Godlee, editor
(fgodlee@bmj.com)
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- While Rome Burns
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bmj.com, 22 Sep 2006 [Full text] - Nothing surprising
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