First class speaker and tour of UCL
March 13th, 2023
Class Journal Prompt Response #1
My initial feelings when we got to London was shock. When I got off the plane it all didn’t feel 100% real right away until we got on the tube to leave the airport and head toward our hotel. That first day was incredibly long but we did so much that I am glad to have explored Oxford, even though I was dead tired. I think I adjusted quickly because we kept ourselves so busy and my exhaustion was soon replaced with excitement for the rest of the program.
Class Speaker: Dr. Nicholas Mays
We kicked the first full day off with our first speaker of the week, Dr. Nicholas Mays. Dr. Mays helped us better understand the NHS and its structure, as well as some current issues facing the NHS. Before the presentation and discussion, we all chatted a bit about the junior doctor strikes happening in London. The strikes lasted from Monday until Thursday morning where the junior doctors did not work and actively protested against their low pay, hoping to reach an agreement with the NHS on a pay raise. Junior doctors are currently getting paid as much or even a little less than what a retail cashier employee is paid, and they feel as though they deserve an increase in pay, which I agree with. According to Dr. Mays, strikes like these are fairly uncommon and the last one to occur was only a 24-hour strike about 20 years ago. It seems that junior doctors are set for a four-day strike again in April.
Above is a photo of our class during Dr. Mays' presentation
Below are some key notes I made during the presentation from Dr. Mays:
There is a 90:10 split between NHS to private healthcare in England, where 90% use the NHS and 10% use private healthcare.
GPs are contracted by the NHS and are not employees, so they are not salaried by the NHS.
Currently, a lot of funding in England has been moved away from the NHS and into defense spending due to the war happening in Ukraine. In order to increase NHS funding, there would have to be a reallocation away from defense.
Executive processes in England is very strong and they want to get things done as quickly as possible, which is a contrast from the US as our executive process is very slow and must pass through multiple doors and obstacles before anything can actually get done.
The NHS does not limit or exclude mental healthcare, though there is a short supply of mental healthcare providers.
There are many strengths to the NHS, including:
Financial protection
National resource allocation
Health technology
Chronic disease outcomes
Research and innovation
The NHS also has some weaknesses, including:
Poor pandemic preparedness
Low public funding/spending
Lack of social care
Inequalities in care
Low patient engagement
Current priorities of the NHS include increasing spending, social care, diagnostics, information technology, and perhaps rejoining the European Center for Disease Prevention/Control
I learned a lot from the talk with Dr. Mays and it gave me a much better feel for the NHS. It was also the first thing to begin removing my rose colored glasses about the NHS. The US has a privatized healthcare system, which works in some ways and doesn’t work in a lot of ways. My frustration with the system in the US made me think that the public healthcare through the NHS was the absolute best system and there were no problems with it, when in reality, it is incredibly difficult to structure the perfect healthcare system and they have plenty of weaknesses as well. I am still in favor of public healthcare systems, but I enjoyed learning about the NHS’s pitfalls to better understand what aspects I think make a good healthcare system.
UCL Campus Tour
After finishing our discussion with Dr. Mays, we walked to University College London (UCL) for a campus tour and student panel. I really enjoyed the tour and it was wonderful to experience an international college campus. Even though it was located in the city, it felt like a little community within central London. This felt different from IUPUI’s campus because we are very public and have a lot of buildings not dedicated solely to the college campus, like all the hospitals for example, which takes away a bit from the college campus type of feel. I love IUPUI’s campus, but seeing another city college was interesting to compare to.
