19/10/2026
It's a sad day for the NHS when compassion becomes the exception rather than the expectation.
Where has the empathy gone? The kindness? The simple human connection that should sit at the very heart of healthcare?
Today, I sat in a Minor Injuries Unit with my 13-year-old daughter following a basketball injury at school, and what I witnessed left me feeling profoundly saddened both as a parent and as a nurse.
Not because of the waiting times. Not because the department was busy. But because of the apparent absence of something so fundamental to healthcare.
Humanity.
Our experience began at reception.
I approached the desk with my injured daughter, only to be directed to an iPad to book ourselves in. Barely a glance. No acknowledgement of the child standing beside me.
I understand technology has its place. I understand the need for efficiency. But reception was once an important first point of human contact, particularly for someone arriving frightened, vulnerable or in pain.
That opportunity was lost.
The booking screen advised that triage should take place within an hour and that we should speak to someone if it hadn't.
An hour passed.
I approached reception again, only to be told, without the receptionist even looking up, to book in on the iPad.
I politely explained that we had already done so and were simply following the instructions on the screen.
A few taps on the keyboard followed.
"No. You've got four in front of you. It's not one hour!"
And that was it.
No explanation offered with kindness. No reassurance. No acknowledgement of the young person standing beside me.
Eventually, we were called through by a nurse.
There was no introduction. No attempt to establish rapport with my daughter. Barely any eye contact.
Just a screen, a series of questions and instructions.
She asked my daughter to make a fist.
My daughter explained that she couldn't. She was in pain.
"Try."
The nurse then physically pushed her injured hand into a fist.
My daughter yelped, tears filling her eyes.
There was no comforting response.
The nurse asked whether she had taken pain relief. She hadn't. We had come directly from school.
She asked whether my daughter could swallow tablets. She can't. She never has.
Rather than responding with understanding, the nurse appeared irritated and told my daughter that, at 13 years old, she should be taking tablets.
As though this was something to be ashamed of.
She then asked when my daughter's last period was before preparing a liquid medication and handing it to her.
No explanation of what she was being given.
I intervened to ask whether it was paracetamol or ibuprofen.
Paracetamol, she confirmed.
We were then sent back to wait for an X-ray.
And as I sat there, trying to make sense of what had happened, I witnessed something that troubled me even further.
A gentleman approached the reception desk. He had fallen and injured his back. He was visibly struggling and clearly in considerable pain.
He asked for a glass of water.
The same receptionist directed him to a water dispenser across the room.
He explained that he was in too much pain and asked whether she could help him.
She declined, explaining that she was on her own.
He then asked whether he could sit down.
He was told he would have to wait until she had taken his details and booked him in.
And there he stood, visibly struggling, while she turned her attention to another task.
I watched in disbelief.
Here was a man who had fallen, injured his back and was struggling to stand. He wasn't asking for anything extraordinary.
He was asking for water, assistance and somewhere to sit.
When did completing the process become more important than caring for the person?
I write this not simply as a frustrated parent, but as a nurse who has spent years working within the NHS.
I know the pressures. I know the exhaustion. I know what it means to work in overstretched services, to juggle competing priorities and to feel that there are never enough hours or enough hands.
I know that healthcare professionals are human too.
But I also know that compassion does not always require more time, more funding or more resources.
Sometimes it requires looking someone in the eye.
Introducing yourself.
Explaining what you are doing before you do it.
Acknowledging someone's pain.
Offering reassurance to a frightened child.
Recognising when someone is struggling and responding with kindness.
These are not luxuries. They are the foundations of good care.
And I find myself wondering whether we have become so focused on delivering healthcare that we are forgetting how to care.
We talk endlessly about NHS pressures, waiting lists, workforce shortages and funding crises.
And rightly so.
But what about the quieter crisis?
The erosion of compassion.
The normalisation of indifference.
The subtle shift from seeing patients as human beings to seeing them as another name on a screen, another task to complete, another interruption to an already overwhelming workload.
I don't believe most people enter healthcare without compassion. I believe many enter with an extraordinary desire to help others.
But I do wonder what happens when a system becomes so relentlessly focused on efficiency and throughput that the human connection begins to disappear.
And whilst burnout may help us understand why compassion becomes harder to sustain, it cannot mean we stop expecting it.
Because a lack of resources may explain a delay in care. It should never make a lack of kindness acceptable.
My daughter didn't need extraordinary treatment today.
She needed to feel safe.
She needed someone to acknowledge that she was hurting.
She needed to be treated with dignity, patience and reassurance.
And that gentleman?
He simply needed someone to recognise that he was struggling.
We can modernise healthcare without dehumanising it.
We can embrace technology without abandoning connection.
We can acknowledge the immense pressures on NHS staff whilst still holding onto the values that make healthcare worthy of the name.
Patients may forget the names of those who treated them. They may forget the clinical details of their visit. But they rarely forget how they were made to feel.
Today, I watched two people who needed care encounter a system that seemed far more concerned with process than people.
And that is what has stayed with me.
Not the waiting.
Not the iPads.
Not the overstretched service.
But the missed opportunities, again and again, to show a little humanity.
The NHS doesn't just need more resources. It needs to protect the compassion at the heart of its care.
Because kindness is not an optional extra.
Kindness is care.
Aneurin Bevan Health Board
