(2015)

Author’s Remarks:
This poem was immeasurably inspired by and written specifically for Mrs Leanne Carter: Cardiology Specialist Nurse, Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic, Department of Cardiology, East Surrey Hospital, Surrey, England.

The National Health Service – fondly and generally known nationally throughout the United Kingdom as the NHS – is in my honest opinion the best invention that Britain has or could possibly ever have conceived and achieved; and what’s more is a monumental, inspiring and lasting legacy to the forethought as well as the sheer and compassionate genius of those who not only conceived the principle of the NHS but also markedly brought that exceptional concept into fruition, nurtured it and ably assisted it in every aspect of its growth and development.

Currently staffed, as it always has been since its inception, by some of the most selfless, utterly committed work-wise, totally dedicated and additionally the most exceptionally compassionate group of consummately professional human beings imaginable working individually and collectively to provide the best care possible and that one could ever wish for across a wide-ranging spectra of medical, nursing and vitally important allied and ancillary services from cleaners, porters and volunteers to the ambulance crews and top-notch technical specialists in their respective fields of expertise, the NHS is, and will forever, both solidly an unerasably, be engraved in my psyche both as a former practitioner within it as a well as a trusting and grateful patient of the multiplicity of indispensible services that it offers.

And accordingly I’d very much like to extend my sincerest thanks and fulsome gratitude to all those, past as well as present participants, who’ve been and are still constructively involved with the NHS, as well as the several millions of sensible supporters who passionately subscribe to, and equally so, support the NHS to which we all unexaggeratedly owe so very much; will continue I earnestly hope to be in its debt; and without which we’d be so much the poorer in so many respects both nationally and as human beings.

So thank you NHS from the bottom of my heart and for being there when you’re most needed! And in the strikingly consoling and profoundly inspirational words embodied in the emphatically emblematic and famous song of Edith Piaf: “Non, je ne regrette rein!” – for that’s precisely how I feel about the reality of us actually having such a prized asset in our armoury of health care as the NHS is and, of course, knowing that that reality passionately and committedly coupled with my own personal and unabashed sentiments towards our NHS are nothing less than enduring! An NHS that long after each of us and subsequent generations have shuffled off our respective mortal coils will nevertheless aspirationally and forever continue to meaningfully exist!

#NHS