News

Watch your language

As discussed on this blog yesterday, much of the Government’s problem winning over the public to its NHS reforms is because of the perceived effects on people’s own wallets of the moves to privatise elements of how the health service is run.

So David Cameron’s choice to refer to patients as ‘customers’ in a television interview was not exactly a stroke of strategic brilliance.

Granted, it has been a long time since the term was associated primarily with shops and supermarkets, and it now inhabits the worlds of transport, council services and all sorts of other areas where people were not previously accustomed to thinking of themselves as customers.

But if the Government wants people to feel comfortable with the upheaval, feel sure the reforms are all ‘behind the scenes’ and will not cost them in either monetary terms or standards of care, it needs to watch the terminology.

Watch your language