For many people visiting the NHS over the Christmas season, feeling festive is the last thing on their minds. Diagnoses of illness, long term health conditions and age-related frailty sadly don’t take time off over the festive period.
For healthcare staff, it’s business as usual throughout December, in fact it’s one of the busiest times of the year with demand for healthcare services peaking in the winter months.
Across the healthcare service many people will be working over Christmas and New Year: 12,000 midwives will be on duty for babies being born on Christmas Day, another 97,000 nurses and 53,000 healthcare assistants will be working on the 25th December along with 200,000 care workers across the UK. For GP surgeries the run up to Christmas and the days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve can be very intense. At a time when the rest of the population is winding down and relaxing, practice staff are busy with calls from patients.
Healthcare professionals from all different teams and areas of expertise dedicate their Christmas to helping others, and for that we’re very grateful. So to them, we wish a Merry Christmas and a happy new year, but most of all, we’d like to say a big thank you!
