DATA from the British Social Attitudes survey has revealed that public satisfaction with the NHS has dropped to a record low.

Only 24 per cent of patients said they were satisfied with the NHS in 2023 which is five per cent lower compared to 2022 and a drop from the 2010 high of 70 per cent satisfaction.

The top-five reasons for NHS dissatisfaction were lengthy times taken to get a GP or hospital appointment, staff shortages, a lack of government funding, money being wasted within the NHS and government reforms that have affected the NHS.

Notwithstanding this, I’d like to reach out to our community and reassure them of just how amazing your NHS is by outlining some of the work we do and recent improvements in care.

Between 1970 and 2022, life expectancy in the UK increased from 77 years to nearly 85 for women and from 72 to over 81 for men.

This is largely due to advances in medicine with excellent clinical care delivered by the NHS.

Leading on from this, in the 1960s more than seven out of 10 heart attacks in the UK were fatal.

Today more than seven out of 10 people survive a heart attack.

It is estimated that around 1.4 million people alive in the UK today have survived a heart attack.

Furthermore, over 20,000 life-saving coronary artery bypass graft operations were carried out in England last year.

Almost 4,600 patients received a life-saving organ transplant in the UK last year.

Elderly people in our community often struggle with arthritis that adversely affects their ability to fulfil activities of daily living.

Your NHS performed over 100,000 knee replacement procedures and almost 82,000 hip replacement operations last year to restore pain-free quality of life to such patients.

We all worry about cancer.

Cancer survival is improving and has doubled in the last 50 years in the UK.

NHS England has published a one-year cancer survival index which looks at survival rates in 2020 compared to 2005.

The index also breaks down the figures by types of cancer and where patients live.

It shows the overall first-year survival rate has risen nine per cent to 74.6 per cent.

In 2023, 358 million general practice appointments, including Covid-19 vaccinations, were delivered.

Like all organisations, unfortunately, the NHS doesn’t always get it right and does make mistakes.

However, as a doctor who entered medical school 26 years ago, I’d like to reassure members of our community that the NHS is an effective learning environment with robust governance procedures to ensure that all patient concerns and complaints are thoroughly investigated with a view to improving care.

I have no doubt that patient dissatisfaction with the NHS from this survey will be reflected on with deficiencies remediated to ensure that your NHS continues to go from strength to strength.

Our columnist Dr Jason Seewoodhary is a former Worcester GP.