Don’t shoot the messenger.
The purpose of taking this step into bloggersphere is to provide another outlet for my own opinions about the state of healthcare, in particular how rural communities, and in particular rural communities in New Zealand, fare.
I suspect that when Don Berwick and his colleagues delivered their Don Berwick’s report for the UK NHS they felt a bit like Phiddepides the apocryphal first marathon runner.
Phiddepides bore bad news of invasion, and of the failure of the government of the day to respond.
Berwick et al told the bad news to the UK government of the need for systematic and widespread change to address the failures of the health system, to develop a culture of learning and patient safety, and the letters he wrote, to management, staff and the public exhort a response. They not only challenge the system in England, but internationally. Have we responded?
Famously Phideppides died at the end of his courier run, conveniently I suspect, since the bearers of bad news often did not fare too well in ancient times.
Many bearers of bad news are still “shot down” at least metaphorically, and perhaps in an effort to avoid this people who challenge the status quo will couch their approaches as “solutions” spinning the bad news to assuage the anxieties of leading political parties.
The problem is it is almost impossible to keep everyone happy all the time whilst maintaining the feeling of freedom of expression.
I have been told that you need to play the game if you are to have influence, to treat the powerful like they are children in a sandpit, fighting for the bucket that makes the sandpies.
It seems to me that a regular personal viewpoint, expressed clearly and with the acknowledgement that it is often through expressing ideas and debate that opinions form, could help to get the message through to the children in the sandpit.
Here’s hoping they don’t shoot….
Don't Shoot.. 