Across all reports, this period was deemed to be the worst A&E performance in over a decade, with 16,000 people enduring waiting times of between four to 12 hours in early January according to The Daily Telegraph. The fall-out this year was compounded by the fact that A&E services are already stretched beyond capacity having to accommodate 600,000 more patients compared to 2010, as reported by the Mirror. One of the many patient stories published in the Mirror featured David Walters, an 89 year old war veteran, who was left waiting on a trolley in the Princess of Wales Hospital’s A&E department for 34 hours. However there is light at the end of the tunnel. According to The Times, pressures eased in mid-January with A&E visits and waiting times falling consistently.

Unfortunately, issues extended much wider than the A&E gloom. According to a front page article in The Observer, approximately 500 patients died last year as a direct result from harm suffered when hospitals were dangerously overcrowded. The statistics were broken down further to show that 350 people died because they were not diagnosed or given treatment quickly enough and the further 150 fatalities were due to bed shortages. 

As always, when there is a focus on NHS issues, questions about budgets are raised. As reported in The Guardian, The Health Foundation has called on the Government to ‘plug the gap’ in order to avoid a projected £65bn hole in NHS finances by 2030. Failure to do so would mean the quality of care would deteriorate further for patients. Certainly a frightening outlook when the Government’s purse strings have been tight in relation to health recently.

Drug funding was on the agenda again this month. NHS England announced that 25 treatments would no longer be funded as part of the Cancer Drugs Fund, blocking 8,000 cancer patients from accessing treatment. Furthermore, new information provided by NHS England suggested that the Nursing Technology Fund budget would be halved for the current financial year to £35 million.

Despite the bad news, there has been positive progress in the battle against ebola. The Times reported that the number of new cases in Guinea has fallen to the lowest level since August last year. Transmission rates are now low enough for Guinea to tentatively allow children back to school for the first time in six months. According to the WHO in Sierra Leone, the worst-affected country, there has also been a drop in the number of new cases, decreasing by 60% to 184 per week, compared to the peak in November last year.

And finally, at Aurora this month we have made a conscious decision to focus on the bright side. We are not suggesting ignorance to the challenges we face, but there is merit in seeking out the positive in everyday life. We came across an article in Stylist with examples of unexpected acts of kindness which lifted our spirits. There certainly is something to be said about the power of doing good deeds for others.