Steve’s Student Blog

An Alternative NHS Argument

This is an argument about NHS hospitals, but not as you know it. And no, I’m not talking about debates over the future of abdominoplasty or how much doctors get paid. My attack goes something like this: leave the people who clean the hospitals alone for a minute, will you?

I’m talking about the people whose job it is to clean every square inch of the hospital, of course. The unsung heroes of the hospital: those who do all the work and get very little praise. It doesn’t matter where you go or who you ask, people on the street say more or less the same thing: “Hospitals need to be kept cleaner, they should do a better job!”

But here is the grisly fact, which you may or may not like to know: dust is largely made up of shed human skin–and in a place which houses hundreds if not thousands of human beings (not to mention all the people working there and the numerous visitors) it’s quite a tricky thing to keep it at bay…To say the least. If you wanted to completely eradicate dust, there is no doubt in my mind that you wouldn’t actually be able to visit hospital in the first place…there would simply be too many cleaners!

All that said, I am sure there are some hospitals where more could be done. But don’t forget all the good hospitals. As with anything, there is a good and bad sign to the coin, but let’s not tar everyone with the same brush.