Making the most of waiting

Posted by Admin on 8 November 2019

Ray Earwicker, a WCCEH friend, writes …

If time is a great healer, is waiting the problem?

Florence Nightingale (1859) certainly thought so. She saw it as bad for health – “apprehension, uncertainty, waiting (my italics), fear of surprise…do a patient more harm than any exertion.” It’s tiresome too, as the Kinks noted in 1965 and in the meantime, we’re all Waiting for Godot (who never comes). For health systems, waiting is a mark of inefficiency that undermines ‘customer’ confidence. It is a focus for targets and management expedients in a culture which expects action, now.

Read more on the Waiting Times blog