Neil Gray: Media too fixated on writing negative stories about the NHS

Health secretary Neil Gray has accused the media of “failing to recognise” good work going on the NHS.

Speaking at a Holyrood fringe event at the SNP conference in partnership with the Royal College of Nursing Scotland and the Charted Society of Physiotherapy Scotland, Gray said the press was failing to report on the positives in the NHS.

He said: “It's critical that we are understanding, we're cognisant and we're honest about the challenges that are facing health and social care services, but the persistent negative narrative in the media and commentary is unhelpful when it's not balanced with the incredible successes that there are within health and social care services.

“If you've read all the headlines, you would only see that there is a crisis in the health service. That's not true. The majority of people receive good quality services from highly motivated and incredibly well trained and dedicated staff.

“We need to make sure we rebalance the narrative for our patients and our staff and for those that are looking for a potential career. If they're only looking at the headlines, it's very difficult to see why people want to choose that public sector.”

When asked about reform plans, Gray rejected Labour’s proposal to reduce the 14 health boards to three, saying the process would be  “torturous” and “too lengthy”.

He said: “Some of our opponents suggest that the very simple answer is just to reduce the number of health boards. That's a massively expensive, very tortuous and probably very lengthy process to achieve something that we are only going to see the benefit of a number of years down the line.

“If we were setting up the health service from scratch, would we have 14 territorial reports? Probably not. However, we are where we are, we need to recognise that we need to see service improvement now.”

During the event, communications and public affairs manager at RCN Scotland Carol Harris called for more support for nursing students, adding the “current bursary”, which stands at £10,000 per year, is “not enough”.

She said: “Unfortunately, our students are struggling. They're really telling us that although they've got the bursary and they really appreciate the bursary, it's simply not enough to live on. Nursing is a complex course. It has a large number of placement hours.

"It can be very difficult for nursing students to juggle their home life and their academic life and their placements, and we really need to have a look at how we can support them better to make sure that after they've made that commitment in terms of studying for the three, three or four years, that they actually then move on and stay in the profession.”