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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics

The depth of today’s NHS crisis is clear if you watch 1986 episodes of Casualty

Charlie, played by Derek Thompson, in an early episode of Casualty, tending to a patient played by Minnie Driver.
Charlie, played by Derek Thompson, in an early episode of Casualty, tending to a patient played by Minnie Driver. Photograph: ITV/Rex

I’ve recently been watching 1986 episodes of the TV drama Casualty. In one, Charlie, the staff nurse in A&E, is outraged that his patients have waited one and a half hours to be treated. Today, we dream of an A&E wait of less than two hours.

The ambulance staff in the programme simply bring their patients into A&E. They are not waiting outside for hours. There are no patients in the corridors. Yes, it is a fictional representation, but it is attempting to reflect the reality of that time. Then, a one-and-a-half-hour wait at A&E was considered chaos. Now, it looks like great service. How far we have fallen.

Let’s look at what we were doing right in the 1980s; we need to go back to what we were doing then.
Helena Tendall
Rydal, Cumbria

Frances Ryan describes the “foreshocks” of the continuing underprovision of the NHS (Want to know the depth of our NHS crisis? Then talk to disabled people needing day-to-day care, 25 January). The original seismic event was the blind implementation of austerity by the 2010 Tory-led government. Entirely predictable aftershocks now threaten the very foundations of the welfare state.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire

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