Two things struck me when researching media reporting on the medical profession in the UK: the number of issues in the National Health Service (NHS) and the fact that these issues have gone untreated for so long. I analysed articles from 2000 to 2024, and the problems in the NHS and health practitioners’ working conditions persisted throughout this period.
In some articles, I found that the UK media cleverly used language features to shift readers’ attention away from patients’ illnesses. Instead, reports put the ailing health of the NHS and its workforce under the microscope – hoping to find a long-overview cure after a waiting time of more than 20 years. Here, I dig into this language use across different media outlets.
Personifying the NHS
Media articles personify the NHS, positioning the service as a typical patient: loved yet sick. Medical words like “prescription”1 and “cure”2 were used when discussing how to fix the NHS, while conditions like “asphyxiation”3 were used to describe the issues themselves.
In a 2013 article for The Observer4, journalist Yvonne Roberts said that the NHS was “about to reach pensionable age… and sadly it is very unwell.” By invoking an image of a nearly 65-year-old in ill health in readers’ minds, she compels them to see the NHS as a vulnerable member of the community who needs and deserves medical help. Readers imagine one of their loved ones – or even themselves – stuck in a hospital bed and at the mercy of the health system and the people who make it up. Additionally, Roberts follows this imagery up with the idea that the private sector “has set out to make a killing”, referring to its bid to make lots of money. In doing so, however, she implies that the private sector is complicit in the gradual death of the health service – a killer juxtaposed against the NHS: a victim, a patient, a person.
Drawing on the book “NHS SOS”, Roberts finishes with an imagery-filled call to action: “Fight back and drag our favourite institution out of intensive care… Otherwise, we’ll all be sorry when she’s dead and gone.” Here, she makes readers think about fighting for the NHS’s life as though it’s a dearly loved grandma. She paints the picture of the loss of a family member taken too soon – but, unlike most medical cases that are out of everyday people’s hands, she tells readers they have the power to prevent that death, be the hero, save the NHS.
Blinded and Deafened by Love
The Daily Mail published an article by Bel Mooney in October 20215 that spoke of how Britain’s love for the NHS renders people unable to see, hear, accept and act on its issues. Mooney says it’s “not just the best-loved state-run body in the country but a key part of our national identity.” She cites the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, when nurses danced in tribute to the NHS, as evidence. However, like Yvonne Roberts, Mooney positions readers to compare the NHS to an aging person who is “as venerable and creaky” as her and thus needs “serious maintenance.”
One of the complexities of discussing the NHS’s shortfalls, Mooney suggests, is people don’t realise they can appreciate the care that health workers provide while also recognising the system isn’t above criticism. She details instances in which she questioned or criticised the health system and describes the widespread backlash she received, with some deeming such commentary “ungrateful and unhelpful.”
Throughout her article, she uses language to depict those who make these arguments as blind, deaf or narrow-minded. For example, she questions: “If members of the intelligentsia can be so blinkered about what is evidently wrong with this system, what hope do we have of improving something on which so many lives depend?” She also describes how there’s a “shocking crescendo” of voices across the country who bemoan the NHS’s failures, but they are “silenced like a shushing in a church by the pious ones who keep their eyes tightly closed.”
The NHS has aged and isn’t the young and thriving gem it once was. Treatment is often more expensive due to medical advancements. People generally live and need healthcare for longer. Society has changed. Yet, Mooney argues, politicians, campaigners and others are too busy singing the NHS’s praises to see and hear its flaws.
Sickness of Health Workers
It’s not only the NHS that the media portrays as sick. Some media coverage implies the NHS’s dire condition is contagious, with the health workers who work within the institution catching its illnesses but similarly going untreated. In an article published by The Guardian in 20186, junior doctor Adam Kay suggests that Britain’s failure to act on its love for the NHS is “conversational slacktivism, as pointless as canonising the dead.” He partly attributes broader workforce issues – like staff attrition, absence, sickness and suicide – to the idea that health workers shouldn’t voice their struggles. He calls on people to start conversations with health staff and “care for the carer.”
Clare Gerada says that the NHS falls into a category that Howard Schwartz termed the “snakepit” because it’s “always falling apart and people’s main activity is to see that it doesn’t fall on them.” Like other articles, her 2015 article for The Guardian7 speaks of leaders’ failure to listen or hear the workers’ cries. And like Adam Kay, she emphasises the importance of staff and ensuring they “feel attended to.” According to Gerada, while the NHS should “put patients first… it needs to be careful not to put staff last.”
The title of another 2018 article8, written by Helen Rumbelow and published by The Times, sums it up: “Why are we making our doctors ill?” Here, Rumbelow discusses the “British attitude to overworked junior doctors” and how society shrugs off doctors’ poor working conditions and refuses to make changes. She draws on the book “Also Human” by psychologist Caroline Elton to illustrate the consequences of people’s inaction: depressed, traumatised, silenced and suicidal medical practitioners.
Afraid to Go to the Doctors
In her aforementioned article, Clare Gerada explains that “fear was the central emotion that emerged” from an event that brought medical workers together to voice their experiences. They feared losing their jobs and being “named, shamed and blamed.” She quoted Professor Don Berwick, who said fear “is toxic to both safety and improvement.” In a 2014 The Times article, Sir Stuart Rose9 said the NHS has “a lot of goodwill, a brand ethos”, but the institution is conservative.
Thus, it’s arguable that decision-makers are afraid to go to the doctor for treatment to save an ill, aging NHS. However, it’s safe to say that the organisation’s issues are no secret. The media has given the diagnosis, highlighting the many problems and potential solutions to cure the NHS. Now, it’s up to the UK’s newly elected Labour government to review the NHS’s medical records, collaboratively establish a course of action, and perform the surgery.
Jess Laven
UK Team
- Letters. (2015, September 7). Labour prescriptions for the ailing NHS. The Guardian. ↩︎
- Francis, G., Mannix, K., Kay, A., Watson, C., Fong, K., Westaby, S., & Clarke, R. (2018, June 21). Doctors’ orders: writers from the medical world on how to cure the NHS. The Guardian. ↩︎
- Letters. (2015, September 7). Labour prescriptions for the ailing NHS. The Guardian. ↩︎
- Roberts, Y. (2013, June 30). On the brink in intensive care: This latest diagnosis is worrying, writes Yvonne Roberts, but the NHS is still treatable – if we act now. The Observer. ↩︎
- Mooney, B. (2021, October 16). Our wonderful NHS: Now it’s terminal. Daily Mail. ↩︎
- Francis, G., Mannix, K., Kay, A., Watson, C., Fong, K., Westaby, S., & Clarke, R. (2018, June 21). Doctors’ orders: writers from the medical world on how to cure the NHS. The Guardian. ↩︎
- Gerada, C. (2015, February 6). Where pain in the NHS goes untreated – among its staff. The Guardian. ↩︎
- Rumbelow, H. (2018, March 17). Why are we making our doctors ill? The Times. ↩︎
- Anonymous. (2014, July 19). The NHS has to change: what worked in 1948 won’t do today, says Sir Stuart Rose. The Times. ↩︎
Media and Epidemics (MEDEP) 