A particularly British way of doing things.

There was not much real news in the UK last week as the main news channels seemed more interested in covering the motorcades of a man dressed in white but a couple of the early birds at ND Central caught some bits of “real” news last week.

The first is that the UK is entering a synchronized swimming team in an international competition for the first time in 15 years. The second is that a cardinal has described Britain as a third world country.

So you might ask what is the connection between these and healthcare? Well bear with us as we explain what caught our imagination about these seemingly unrelated events.

The first is that the last UK synchronized swimming team used to train as individuals and only meet up as a team for a couple of weekends a year. Now did we miss something or are teams not groups of individuals working together for a common purpose?

And then look at how political reform of the NHS has operated.

Every group in Government has come in with their own politically led way of doing things. A bit like every coach in isolation training an individual swimmer but for some unknown reason ignoring the bigger picture of making a team, here the NHS, work.

Fine at an individual level but, for large groups of people, or teams, to work they need to work together in a co-ordinated not a repeatedly fragmented fashion.

Perhaps the success in the last 15 years of British synchronized swimming is on a par with the success of the last 15 years of NHS reform? They both utilize the same “training” tactics and no doubt share similar results.

Still the swimmers seem to have realized the error of their ways and, for some unknown reason, for the last 3 years have been training together at the same pool.

And an ill informed, possibly racist, remark by a 77 year old German cardinal is no different to your average local 77 year old patient’s and their relatives’ comments about their local healthcare.

“We have been in hospital X and no-one talks to each other. We are sent home without anything . . . it is like a third world country”.

Could synchronized swimming GB and NHS GB have one or two things in common? One of them appears to have now learnt the error of their ways.

Praise be to the Party all of whom are team players. Shame none of them are on the healthcare professionals’ or the patients’ team.

We do have a particularly British way of doing things in sport and healthcare don’t we?

We all know it is not the winning, it is the taking part that is important . . . or is it just playing the “Game”?