Design for failure!
If designing an educational system that destroyed the joy for learning and kept most of us ignorant, or designing a health system that could take away the individual’s responsibility for health that led to a sick society, we couldn’t have done a better job despite all the good intentions of our government leaders!

This is not an attack on all those dedicated people working in both these professions; let me make that clear from the outset. It is the systems that they are forced to work in that create these outcomes.

I taught science for a year as a supply teacher soon after leaving university and saw at first hand the thirst for learning progressively lost as children moved up through the years. There are exceptions; those fortunate enough to go to schools that inspire and develop the thirst for learning, (largely private schools I fear) find they get to the best universities and the leading positions in society. Winston Churchill said he found his schools spent most of the time showing him what he didn’t know, but if they had asked him what he knew he would have done far better!

My experience in the field of healthcare is far more substantial. Based on over thirty years working in the natural health field of medicine, I have helped many people who wanted to take more responsibility for their own health, who wanted to be more pro-active themselves despite a system that has failed to encourage or teach this.

We have produced in the National Health Service, a population that has come to rely increasingly on the doctor, medicines and surgical intervention. Most people now, are either disinterested or dissuaded from doing anything “alternative” to help themselves to improve their own health. Those who have decided to take more responsibility for their own health have had to buy the therapy and support they felt they needed in the form of complementary and natural therapies, and have made other lifestyle changes to improve their health. They find they use their doctor and medical facilities less and less.

At the Brighton International Healthworker Conference in 2004, I was surprised though delighted to hear that the King’s Fund had been given the remit by the Government, to find ways of transforming the NHS from a Sickness Service into a Health Service – unfortunately this transformation been not been achieved in the past decade!

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Michael Lingard BSc.Dip.Ost. BBEC