The NHS, a complex machine, is failing because of frailty

Mathew highlights that many patients are trying to navigate a health service that is bursting at the seams.1 My impression is that the NHS is frail. Like the human body, it is a complex machine. In a simple machine, like a car or a torch, when a cog or wire breaks, the whole machine breaks. A complex machine has subsidiary systems, mechanisms to bypass the problem, but at a cost—they lose efficiency, often creating a burden somewhere else.The human body has two of most things, there are often multiple vascular and lymphatic routes, the organs have reserves, and, on a cellular level, there are commonly multiple metabolic routes, we can even for a short time use anaerobic respiration.Frailty is a complex system failing; efficiency decreases, the person copes but with more and more accumulating problems until the complex bypassing mechanisms are simply too inefficient. That is a death by frailty.What…
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