On April 18th, Jeff Jacklin presented a talk about ‘Life in the NHS – it only hurts when I laugh’.

This proved to be an informational and amusing talk that reviewed the reasons for and the origin of the NHS in 1948. Insightful and moving video clips took us back to the poverty and lack of general affordable healthcare in the inter-war and immediate post WWII period. While at the time not everyone was in favour of a national health service, Jeff’s talk showed the massive subsequent development of services over the years into an organisation that is the UK’s biggest employer – with the introduction of vaccines against the big killer diseases of the time, including polio and diphtheria (now extremely rare), and hip and organ transplant operations that are now commonplace.

A few light-hearted video clips from Monty Python and Ronnie Barker and amusing quotations from mis-transcriptions of medical records were followed by a number of interesting and challenging questions from members.