[pendy]

We have always run the NHS on student nurse labour. You only need a couple of fully qualified nurses on the average ward, the rest can be students at 1st, 2nd or 3rd year. When trained, the majority will almost certainly not get jobs where they trained, because the jobs just aren't there.

The NHS does some things superbly well. Emergency care is second to none, as I can vouch, having recently ended up in Resus with a severe asthma attack and being pulled round by two doctors and three nurses. The trouble is that the NHS was set up to provide basic medical care, based on the use that people made of the existing services at the time it was set up. Of course, what nobody thought about was that if something is free, you will certainly have it, whereas if you had to pay for it you might think twice. That obviously doesn't apply to life-threatening conditions, but certainly to the odd twinge that people would put up with if it cost them to put it right. Add to that the fact that medical science can now treat conditions which were previously invariably fatal, and you have the perfect recipe for overload.