Dear Sir,
Last week the CNJ published a letter from Richard Arthur, Chair of Camden & Islington NHS Foundation ('Decision is not financial') concerning the case of Tom Costello.
I don't know the ins and outs of Mr Costello's case and obviously am not a doctor. However, the very first sentence of Mr Arthur's letter greatly annoyed me. He wrote: 'You have featured the move of a service user to Northampton.'.
This adoption of the term 'service user' (which while particularly rampant in the health service is increasingly used elsewhere) is dehumanising and uncaring, especially when used as a device to avoid mentioning Mr Costello (in this case) by name.
A health service (or indeed any public or private service) which blinds itself to the fact that it is dealing with individuals who each have a name and families and friends will always run the risk of failing to reassure us that it is on our side, rather than the side of the administrators and bureaucrats.
So please will Mr Arthur and his chums on other local quangoes that are supposed to be acting in our interest do just that and start using our names and thinking of us as human beings rather than as service users, customers or consumers. I accept that this may not alter the medical opinion of what is best for Mr Costello, but it might remove the suspicion that such decisions are taken in the interests of the health service rather than the interests of an individual such as Tom.
Yours etc
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