NHS SCOTLAND - Key Persons
Oscar-nominated make-up designer Ann Buchanan unwittingly started a showbiz career at the start of the NHS - doing her party piece for its founder, Nye (Aneurin) Bevan.
Job Titles:
- Healthcare Chaplaincy Training and Development Officer and Spiritual Care Advisor
A chaplain was recently called to a transplant unit in a large hospital where a patient was terribly worried about whether he deserved a transplant from another person. He was plagued by guilt and not a little fear. The Chaplain was able, by gently questioning and listening, to remind the person of the value he was to his grand-children and the rest of his family. The patient regained an element of peace and the operation went well. We can never really know differences such support can make to recovery - but clearly they can be of untold value to the individual patient.
Health and wellbeing involves more than basic physical and psychological need. This has in part been recognised since the inception of the NHS by Chaplains being part of. . . . Read Chris's story››
Job Titles:
- Chairman, Scottish Dental Practice Board
The dental health of thousands of people in central Scotland has been in the capable hands of Jack and Donald McNicol for half a century.
Jack and his son Donald have given 50 years of continuous service to people in the Stenhousemuir and Falkirk area since Jack started as a dentist in 1958. Donald followed his father into the practice in 1989 and took over after his father retired in 1992.
"When I started people would come in and say - ‘I want that tooth out.'. . . ."
In that time they have seen many changes. The most striking according to Jack has been the attitudes of people themselves to their teeth. "When I started people would come in and say - ‘I want that tooth out.' I would tell them I could save the tooth but it made no difference. When I was finishing my career, it was the exact opposite. I would tell a patient a tooth would have to come out and they would say - ‘can you not save it?' "
Dentists in the 1950s and 60s pulled out a lot of teeth. It was the time when it was said the best wedding present a father could give his daughter was a gleaming set of false teeth. It was also a time when many practices carried out their own general anaesthesia and the thought of dentists having to protect themselves from the risk of contracting infections like HIV or hepatitis was unheard of.
The biggest changes identified by Donald include technical advances such as the advent of the high speed dental drill and the introduction of disposable needles. Prior to the disposable needle, dentists reused and often had to re-sharpen needles used for pain relief. Sharp needles and improved anaesthetics makes today's dentistry as pain free as it can be.
Dr Addis was a member of the team that set up the first coronary care unit in Glasgow and he helped to train the doctors of the future. "I used to tell them they worked in a happiness factory. It was their job to make people feel happier."
Dr George Addis was a medical student on the day the NHS came into being and, like many people, was unsure exactly what the future would hold.
For patients, it was an unqualified success, providing them with access to treatment and services they had only dreamed of previously.
"We dreamed of an NHS where you would get all the medical attention you needed for free. The dream has come true.
However, for a young doctor trying to establish himself in his new profession, it proved to be something of a struggle. There were few jobs and limited opportunities in the early years of the NHS.
Dr John Buchanan was still working when he died from a heart attack in his driveway aged 78.
Few people have Helen Corsie's first-hand knowledge of the extent of the changes in the NHS.
Before she retired in 2007, Helen had worked as a staff nurse in Edinburgh for 46 years - more than three quarters of the entire existence of the NHS.
The Strathclyde fluoride case - at the time the longest and costliest in Scottish legal history - ended in 1983 with Lord Jauncey's ruling that Strathclyde Regional Council did not have powers to put fluoride in the water supply.
Public health officials argued that putting fluoride in would bring huge reductions in the appalling tooth decay among a sweet-toothed nation.
Catherine McColl, a Glasgow pensioner disagreed. She secured legal aid to fight Strathclyde Region and the case lasted three years.
The epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll later described his time as an expert witness as the worst two weeks of his life. The issue remains controversial to this day.
Job Titles:
- Team Leader at the Norseman Contact Centre for NHS 24
Lynn McCormack has been a Team Leader at the Norseman Contact Centre for NHS 24 in South Queensferry for the past five years and has worked in the NHS for 30 years. . . .
For the last five years Mags Higgins has dedicated one evening a week bringing music and personal messages to eight hospitals across the Glasgow and Paisley area.
Mags swaps her day job as Senior Public Affairs Officer for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) to join an 80+ strong team at the Hospital Broadcasting Service (HBS). This is a charitable organisation which entertains patients at their bedsides and provides that much needed link to the outside world.
Rod Moore has worked in the ambulance service for almost half the lifetime of the NHS and, in that time, his job has changed out of all recognition. . . .
At the last count, Susan Campbell Duncan reckons she has had at least 60 operations since contracting a rare form of cancer while still a baby.
If anyone can said to be an expert in NHS care, it is Susan who has spent long periods of her life in hospital. She is now in her 40s and working as a personal assistant in the Scottish Government's Health Directorates where she makes the most of any opportunity to use her experience as a patient to help design better services for others.
"After they removed the tumour, all I had was a big hole in my face. . . ."
Susan was only four months old when it was discovered she had a facial sarcoma. Surgery was ruled out on such a young baby and radiotherapy was used to shrink the tumour. This helped initially but, at the age of two, it was decided that surgery was the best solution to prevent the cancer returning. It was drastic action, resulting in the removal of Susan's left cheekbone and all the facial tissue on the left side of her face from below her eye to her jaw, including half her palate. "After they removed the tumour, all I had was a big hole in my face," said Susan. "I can understand why they did it - if not, maybe I wouldn't be here today."
Despite this, she started school at the age of four and did everything that all the other children did. "At that time, I was not aware of any reason why people would treat me any differently."
The work to rebuild Susan's face involved a series of operations and often long stays of up to nine weeks at a time in hospital. In the 1960s and 70s parents were not allowed to stay with children in hospital and Susan missed her mother. "Once I went on hunger strike because I wanted my mother and they had to get her. I was only three at the time - that is how determined I was. " Susan welcomes the support that is now offered to children and families to help them cope with serious illness. None of that was available when she needed it.
She took part in a BBC television documentary in 1996 which helped to change people's attitudes to facial disfigurement and, today, she is an advisor to the charity Changing Faces. Changing Faces supports the one million plus people in the UK who have some form of physical disfigurement and challenges discrimination which can blight their lives.
In 1998 she was sent by the NHS to the United States to get major reconstructive surgery which could not be performed here. One of the first things she was asked was if she had insurance to pay for the operation. It brought home to her that not everyone is lucky to have a health service that provides help whenever it is needed.
Susan is extremely grateful for the high quality care she has received. "There are some really fantastic people who work in the NHS. My case was very unusual case and they really were pushed to the limit but today I can lead a very full life. You cannot beat the NHS."
The NHS in Scotland would be much poorer today if it was not for the selfless dedication of people like Tom Tait.
"As an advocate, you do not know why a patient is there, you just serve their needs as required."
The retired parish minister from Blairgowrie has given more than 30 years of voluntary service to the NHS since becoming a member of his local health council.
For the past ten years he has served as a volunteer advocate with the Patients' Advocacy Service at the State Hospital in Carstairs providing essential support to patients to help them with any problems they have.