Third Class Speaker and Final Day's Adventures
March 17th, 2023
Class Journal Prompt Response #4
My Kodak moment on this trip would probably be sitting in the little Italian café in Brighton, just soaking in the whole experience abroad. Brighton as a whole was incredible, but sitting in that bay window in the café, sipping my coffee, journaling, and people watching was so surreal. It was a moment in time that I keep going back to, even as I finish up these blog posts from my apartment in Indianapolis. I’m not sure how to best describe that moment, but I felt so at ease, so happy, and so grateful to have had this experience.
If you would like to read more about my trip to Brighton, click here to view that journal post.
Class Speaker: Charlotte Wickens, The Kings Fund
The class discussion today was centered around the future of the NHS and various changes made in history that had major influence on the system. The biggest takeaway for me from this discussion was realizing that the NHS has practically no part in social care in England. It is rare to find a social care provider that is public, most of them are private and very small. Social care includes things like hospice and support for those with disabilities, as well as their families. The NHS and social care providers have poor communication, so it is common that people stay in the hospital longer than needed, sometimes staying over a month, because they do not have anywhere to go after their hospital stay. This reduces the number of available beds in the hospital, resulting in longer wait times for non-priority services in the NHS. In fact, the recent data showed about a 78 week wait time for non-priority surgeries in the NHS. A lot of people in England love the NHS and are willing to put up with a lot to maintain public healthcare, however, the NHS satisfaction rating is at a 25 year low, showing that people are becoming fed up with the conditions. This is mostly due to a decrease in NHS funding and a lot of empty promises from politicians.
Charlotte’s presentation was very interesting and again, pulled the rose colored glasses off my eyes regarding my view of the NHS. They are having a lot of problems right now and the people are starting to become more and more frustrated with how things are going. I have learned so much from this trip’s programming and feel confident in my ability to critically analyze both the healthcare system in the US and other countries. Dr. Nora Groce said in her discussion, “I think you guys should go home and cause some trouble,” and I agree with her. I want to question the system we have in place and be part of what can eventually shift it to a far more inclusive healthcare structure, even if that means only making small changes locally when I enter into the healthcare world as a physical therapist. Big things can’t happen unless we start somewhere and I would like to be part of that start.
Above is our final group photo taken outside the Winston House before we concluded our programming.
Final Day's Activities
We ended the day fairly early and had the rest of the time to do whatever we wanted. Me and Bryce took a trip to Emirates Stadium, Arsenal's home field. My boyfriend is a massive fan so I got him some merch from their store. The stadium was huge and kind of surreal to see in person; I watch games all the time but it was a really cool experience to actually see where they play.
After Emirates, we took the tube to near Kensington Palace. Here, we walked through Hyde Park and visited the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. When the sun started to set and we both started to get hungry, we hopped on the tube back to our hotel to drop off our things and head to our final dinner in London. We thought it was fitting to finish off our time in England with a fish and chips dinner, which was absolutely delicious! It was St. Patrick's Day on this day so even in the early evening when we were out for dinner the streets were packed - tons of people everywhere, practically exploding out of pubs. Me and Bryce had an early flight the next morning so we abstained from going out, which was probably for the best. We headed back to the hotel after dinner to finish packing up our things and try to get some sleep before leaving at 3 am the next morning to make sure there were no tube strikes affecting our original plan to get to Heathrow.
