ABSTRACT
The National Health Service is big. Very big. If you took every NITS employee and made them all hold hands in a chain, say a metre each apart, then the chain would stretch for almost 1400 kilometres. Conveniently, this is the exact distance by road from Land's End to John O'Groats (allowing for a few diversions along the way). Almost one in ten of the UK's working population depends upon the NLIS for their income, either as an employee or as a supplier. No wonder, then, that any project that involves the whole NLIS is necessarily going to be the biggest project in the country - if not the world. A project to repaint every NHS waiting room would probably be the biggest interior decoration project in history. Today, for example, one quarter of a million people will receive some NHS help in their homes.1 If you are reading this on an average working day, then over one and a quarter million Britons will be seen by an NHS doctor today. That is a crowd that would fill out every seat at Manchester United 18 times over. 160 000 of those (or nearly two and a half Old Traffords) will be seen today during a hospital outpatient visit. Nearly 1500 babies will be born today, delivered by NLIS midwives and doctors; hospital laboratories will report on the results of around five million tests, around 200 people will have hip replacement operations, and the global pharmaceutical industry can look forward to dispensing around one and a quarter million NHS prescriptions. Can you hear an ambulance siren? There will be over 7000 emergency ambulance trips today. And it's a typical day.
