The other side of a difficulty is an opportunity
The waiting room in Mid Argyll Hospital has a new look.
Donald, with his rather old fashioned trousers, has been replaced with the whole Broons family showing us what a healthy life looks like.
Across the way is a smart wire rack holding leaflets, and a board with names and head shots of the people responsible for our care. It is there to show who you might want to talk to if you have a problem.
As a last resort there is a pile of complaint forms. And, somewhere, there is a poster telling you that the Health Care Forum is meeting on Saturday February 24, 10am-noon, in the MS Centre in Campbell Street.
This meeting is all about involving us, the patients and service users, in our own care and how it is delivered, inviting us to make it a real partnership.
The management, the HSCP, are facing money pressures and difficulties with recruitment. The mismatch between need and provision has put pressures, intolerable in the long term, on both specialist staff and those in the voluntary sector who support the public.
We are seen as essential to making it work and if it feels like a change in the attitude of the HSCP it is going to demand even more from us.
There is a lot to talk about. Fancy headings like Realistic Medicine and Place and Wellbeing assessments all boil down to the realisation that outcomes of health care services often depends on interaction between providers and service user. How this works out is eventually going to affect everyone in Mid Argyll, so , whatever your age, your view counts. If you can’t come on Saturday, feel free to join our email contact list and hear what is going on.
Barabel Mckay, by email.
Pensioners need to know...
Labour is not going to protect or care about free bus passes, free prescriptions, free personal and nursing care because Labour cannot deliver these in England. Equalising everyone in the Union would mean we in Scotland would lose essential free services, making our cost of living worse.
Tricia Grey, Lochgilphead.
Go Red for Heart Month
This month we are urging readers to Go Red for Heart Month to support the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
You can Go Red to raise money for pioneering research this Heart Month, and learn the lifesaving skill of CPR – helping to protect the hearts of your loved ones, your community and many others too.
By fundraising for the BHF this Heart Month, you can help get us closer than ever to a world free from the fear of heart and circulatory diseases. Whether it’s a coffee morning, an office dress-up day or a heart-themed quiz, red is an easy theme to have some fun with and raise vital funds for research.
With heart and circulatory diseases affecting around twice as many people in the UK as Alzheimer’s and cancer combined, we urgently need your help to fund the cures of tomorrow.
You can also learn CPR for free in just 15 minutes using the BHF’s online training tool, RevivR. Using just a cushion and a phone, you could learn the skills to help save a loved one’s life in the event of a cardiac arrest. Visit bhf.org.uk/heartmonth
April Davidson, Scotland regional fundraising manager, British Heart Foundation
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