NHS Tattoo

I think I need to bite the bullet and just get the NHS logo tattoo on my arm I’ve been thinking about for the last 20 years. I’ve nearly had a tattoo only twice before. The first was on the Incirlik Air Base, Turkey in 1991 en route home after the Kurdish Refugee Crisis. The American Army tattooist was however decidedly opposed to adorning the arm of a tipsy British civilian medic with an enormous campaign eagle. The second was after completing the Rangitoto Swim in Auckland. I’d promised myself a volcano tattoo if I managed the 4.6k open water crossing in a wetsuit, but was put off after being overtaken by bunch of teenagers effortlessly completing the swim in just their shorts.

 

The reason why I want the NHS tattoo now more than ever, is that over the last four weeks, I’ve realised it is my existential axis. To me, it is simply the best idea in the world: the ultimate demonstration of a civilised country, a pinnacle of social evolution. I’ve worked in it since I graduated, with the exception of an eight-year stint in its New Zealand equivalent. I’ve belligerently defended its many failings and faults, citing the sheer universality and measureable efficiency of it as a system. It is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the International Space Station – a massive visible-from-space triumph of collaboration, equality, courage, vision and public expenditure. I have taken great pride over the years in delivering exactly the same health care to the homeless drug addicts and asylum seekers as to Members of Parliament and celebrity sportsmen. Even in the many interminable management meetings, in which any kind of binding decision comes as a pleasant surprise, the break point is always what provides best care for patients.

So after the last four weeks in New Zealand Covid-19 quarantine and then lockdown, having spectacularly mistimed a visit over to see my two adult sons, I find the gravitational pull back to my Glasgow NHS team overwhelming. Getting back to answer this visceral call is not easy. Multiple flights have been booked, then cancelled by the airline and not refunded. I’ve started to feel like a spawning salmon instinctively drawn to its home; leaving the calm, safe, sunny waters of Auckland, and the comfort of being within a 500 mile radius of all my children (even if I still can only Skype them), to leap upstream into the uncertainty of working in a Scottish Emergency Department during a novel pandemic.

Emergency Medicine doctors always have a sense of FOMO when big thing are happening and they are not on duty. They have an intense desire to be part of the action, do a great job and receive the dopamine squeeze, inner validation and external acclaim that follows. This time it is different as there is real uncertainty, and risk, both physical and mental – but the sense in the NHS of resolve, camaraderie and destiny is not only palpable, it is reflected in the reactions of the public as they applaud in the streets. This respect for the NHS as both an entity and an idea resonates within me like a harmonic frequency. Every pub argument with a private healthcare supporter, every tough A&E night shift wrestling with drunks, every email written to document gaps in care suddenly have context and purpose.

Perhaps my NHS tattoo won’t actually happen. I expect like the eagle and the volcano, there will be others who already deserve one much more by the time I’m back moaning about yet another backshift in Minors.