If you ask what could possibly be worse than the UK’s weather and food, my answer is simple: the health service. Whenever I say this, I get plenty of pushback: “How often did you actually use public hospitals when you lived in Istanbul?”
Look, I won’t deny my privilege. Back in Istanbul, I had access to private healthcare. Still, it’s not as if I never set foot in a public hospital, whether for myself or my relatives. The queueing systems can be slow, sure. But at the end of the day, you actually see a doctor. You can even get an appointment with a leading specialist.
In the UK, under the National Health Service (NHS), seeing a doctor feels like a luxury. The entire system seems built to test how long you can survive on paracetamol alone. Getting an appointment when you're unwell is like running an obstacle course. They offer an app to streamline the process, but it books you in months down the line. Over the years, I’ve discovered one trick to shorten the wait: walk into your registered GP surgery, face the receptionist, and throw yourself on their mercy with a desperate “I’m dying, please help!” If you’re lucky, they’ll squeeze you in for a phone consultation if there is an opening that week, or book an in-person slot two weeks out.
Even those face-to-face appointments are often just for show. Take the time my son got a fishbone stuck in his throat. It hurt every time he swallowed, but nothing showed in the mirror, so we couldn't figure out why. We requested an appointment with the GP. They scheduled a phone call for two days later. Meanwhile, my son was squirming in pain. Realising this wouldn't work, I took him straight to an ENT specialist at a private clinic. One look with the right tools, and the doctor pulled the bone right out. Had we waited for the GP's phone call, that bone would have stayed lodged in his throat, probably causing a serious infection.
If you’re still not convinced that we should cherish Turkey’s healthcare system, here’s another detail. In the UK, after jumping through all those hurdles, the practitioner you finally see might not even be a doctor. It could be a nurse. I speak from experience. When a misdiagnosis made my condition worse, I went back the next day to lodge a complaint. That’s when I found out.
Why is the system like this? An ageing population and too many patients. High demand, not enough staff. European workers left after Brexit. Limited funding. Crumbling hospital buildings and outdated equipment. The infrastructure is falling behind. Yet, in the name of equality, there’s strong resistance to privatising healthcare. I’ll grant them one thing: it certainly achieves equality. It leaves the rich and the poor equally helpless.
For instance, if you fall ill in the middle of the night, you can’t just go to a private clinic, even if you’re willing to pay out of pocket. They’re closed. Yes, really. Once normal office hours end, private emergency services shut down completely. They only care for admitted inpatients. Anyone else needing urgent care gets redirected to public hospitals.
As for how that process goes… They say men never run out of military service stories, and women never stop talking about childbirth. My NHS stories are much the same. Let me tell you another one.
Last winter, a close friend of mine was rushed to a public hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night with suspected heart attack symptoms. They opened a file and logged her symptoms. Then they placed her on a gurney in a room full of other patients. Half an hour passed. Nothing. An hour went by. When her partner asked, they were told, “Someone will be with you shortly.” I suspect the staff wasn't panicking because she was conscious. (Their threshold for alarm is very different from ours, but more on that later.) Finally, after a long wait, a different nurse came over to register her again. That’s when they realised: the shift had changed, and her file had been lost. Feeling slightly better than when she arrived, my friend gave up: “It’s three in the morning. I’m going home to sleep and heading to a private clinic tomorrow.”
But wait, you haven't heard about my very first encounter with the NHS.
It was the winter of 2020. I was in the home stretch of finishing my PhD dissertation. Hours spent hunched over my desk had completely locked up my lower back. When my right leg started going numb, I knew it was serious. Mask on—COVID or no COVID—I made my way to A&E.
I spent at least two and a half hours waiting in a packed room. Finally, a specialist saw me. His accent and appearance suggested his roots lay far from post-Magna Carta Britain. I explained my symptoms and asked for an MRI referral.
You won't believe his response: “I can only refer you for an MRI if you lose control of your bladder.” That, apparently, was the official benchmark for a critical case.
After a quick mental calculation, I decided against faking an accident on a freezing winter day. Instead, I tried leveraging our shared regional background. After a few questions, I learned he was from Iraq.
“We’re practically neighbours! Same region, similar cuisine!” I coaxed, before asking him point-blank: “Doctor, tell me straight—am I going to be permanently disabled?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It looks like a pinched nerve. I’ll give you a pill.”
I expected a proper box. Instead, he popped a single blister strip out of a box, cut off one solitary tablet, and placed it in a small plastic container. I looked closely: Voltaren.
“Why just one?” I asked.
“We’re not authorized to prescribe more. Besides, this should do the trick.”
I thanked him and left, deciding not to mention the two spare boxes I’d brought with me from Turkey.
Now you might ask: “Does nothing good ever happen?”
To be fair, the Labour government made a breakthrough decision last year. You can now get certain medications directly from a pharmacy. Of course, you still need an appointment for that too. This shift has at least saved us from feeling like prescription drug smugglers every time we return from Turkey at the end of the summer. Still, it doesn't change the underlying reality: if you live in the UK, you have to try exceptionally hard not to fall ill.