UK Edition
How you take your tea says a lot about your career. Ann, who has been a midwife in the NHS for 13 years, takes her cuppa – if she gets one – with a lot of milk. Imagine a lightly tea-flavoured milkshake, in fact. It’s not because she likes the taste. It’s because she needs to cool down the tea as quickly as possible to give her half a chance to drink it before she has to rush off again to support another woman in labour on an understaffed ward. And then there’s the really crucial word in her tea order: “if”. All this depends on if she gets the chance to even boil the kettle in the first place. Often she’s working for 12 hours straight, or more, without a break. This tiny vignette from Ann’s working day was an insight into the state of the NHS right now, along with four others provided in daily instalments all this week in Life Support (Radio 4, Monday to Friday).
The structure for the programmes takes the form of a conversation between two healthcare professionals doing the same job at different stages of their career: one a relatively recent recruit, and the other around retirement age. Together they discuss the day-to-day reality of giving care and how things have changed. Ann’s experience was thrown into relief by comparison with her more experienced peer, Joy, who remembered life as a midwife in the 1980s and beyond, until she retired a few years ago. Joy recalled a time when there was such a thing as a quiet day on the maternity ward, when the midwives could read books or get some knitting done.
The reasons for the stark change in the situation are complicated, but this short, 15-minute conversation went a long way towards illuminating some of them: more babies are being born to more women with complex medical histories; midwives are now expected to perform a broader range of medical competencies; record keeping is now more intensive and takes longer. Life Support gave a much richer and more informative experience than would have been possible if there had been an outsider interviewing either one of the two healthcare professionals. Ann and Joy were candid, empathetic and astute as they compared their experiences. Like the best episodes of Radio 4’s now-defunct The Listening Project, which ended in December after presenter Fi Glover’s defection to Times Radio, it was immediately understandable and immersive because it was real.
The other roles in focus in the series include anaesthetists and paramedics, but do make an appointment for today’s episode, in particular, featuring two GP practice managers. Recently retired Esther recalls a time when patients phoning for a doctor would have their call answered within three rings, something that’s now the stuff of most people’s wildest dreams. The reception desk at Tracey’s GP practice today, meanwhile, has seven incoming phone lines and a team of 13 admin staff, which still isn’t enough to attend to the 40 people who phone for an appointment at the moment the surgery opens each day.
The series is deftly produced, with a hands-off feel, by Gill Kearsley and Nick Holland. It’s excellent because it does exactly what a good healthcare professional should do: it respects the whole person, takes a careful history, and pays close attention to what’s happening now.
Taking a similarly holistic attitude is Why Women Grow, a beautiful new podcast about gardens and the women who make them from journalist and author Alice Vincent, a contributor to the gardening pages of this newspaper. It’s a series of interviews with women who have a close connection to seeds, soil and leaves.
The first episode that I heard featured Sarah Raven, who was a doctor before she became a gardener, swapping one kind of attentive care for another. She told the story of how she evolved from a medic into the owner of a mail-order gardening business and an expert in growing cut flowers, in enough abundance to make your home look like the dressing room of a prima ballerina. To the sound of chirruping robins, she showed Vincent around her garden. The tone was intimate, sensitive, and joyful; an inspiring meeting of minds to greet the spring.
Other guests are designer Margaret Howell and novelist Salley Vickers. Gardening programmes can be very solution-focused, addressing what’s to be done about powdery mildew or honey fungus, and when is the exact correct time to prick out one’s seedlings. Why Women Grow takes a step back from the trowel and stands at the edge of the garden, hands on hips, drinking it in, marvelling at why and how it came to be.
The NHS is in desperate need of life support for the sake of staff and patients
A brilliant Radio 4 series features conversations with GPs at different stages of their career, in an ever-changing – and struggling – NHS