Since its creation in the summer of 1948, the NHS has made constant developments in patient care and has been responsible for saving millions of lives.
But there is more to the NHS than you might think. Here are some curious, little-known facts.
The workforce
- The NHS is one of the largest employers in the world, along with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Indian railways and the Wal-Mart supermarket chain.
- The NHS in England and Wales employs around 1.3 million people. This is approximately one in 23 of the working population.
- Around 77% of today’s NHS workforce is female.
- There are more than 100 volunteering roles within health and social care. You can join the hospital radio team, the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service and the League of Friends, among many others.
- Nurses make up the largest part of the NHS workforce, at just under 30%.
The patients
- Staff across the NHS are in contact with more than 1.5 million patients and their families every day.
- Approximately 170,000 people (the capacity of the Glastonbury music festival) go for an eyesight test each week.
- In 2005/06 the NHS helped to deliver around 16,000 babies at home. This is enough children to fill the Royal Albert Hall three times over.
- Almost a quarter of all babies born in 2005/06 were delivered by caesarean section.
- Each month, 23 million people (more than three times the population of London) visit their GP surgery or practice nurse.
- In a typical week, 1.4 million people will receive help in their home from the NHS.
- Full-time GPs treat an average of 255 patients a week.
- NHS chiropodists inspect more than 150,000 pairs of feet every week.
- Seventy-five per cent of women aged 53 to 64 in England are screened for breast cancer at least once every three years.
- NHS Direct receives around 20 calls a minute. More than a million people called NHS Direct over the 2007 Christmas period.
- The NHS Ambulance Service received 6.3 million emergency calls in 2005/06, which is roughly 360 an hour.
- Community pharmacies dispensed 745 million prescription items in 2006/07.
- NHS ambulances make over 50,000 emergency journeys each week.
- There are now around 90 NHS walk-in centres, offering convenient access to services, including treatment for minor illnesses and injuries.
NHS firsts
- The oldest person in the world to have a hip replacement was a 101-year-old lady who was treated at Good Hope Hospital in the West Midlands. More than 89,000 hip replacement operations were carried out in 2006/07.
- When 13-year-old Sylvia Diggery (née Beckingham) was admitted to a Manchester hospital with a liver condition in 1948, she became the first patient to be treated by the NHS.
- Britain’s first sextuplets were born to Sheila Thorn at Birmingham Maternity Hospital in 1968.
- There was nothing ordinary about the birth in Oldham of Louise Joy Brown on July 25 1978. She was the world’s first test-tube baby. In vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment is now common and since then, more than a million test tube babies have been born worldwide.
- The first heart transplant in the UK took place on May 3 1968 at the National Heart Hospital in Marylebone, London. By December 2007, 5,328 heart transplants had been carried out in the UK.
Now and in the future
- Both men and women live an average of 10 years longer than they did before the creation of the NHS in 1948.
- Patients in England now have the right to choose between at least four hospitals for non-emergency treatment. This is designed to give people more choice and control over where they go for treatment, and to use patient power to make existing services better.
