All the trimmings: patient and staff wellbeing should not be left to charitable funding

Tokens of festive jollity—parties, decorations, and a communal tin of chocolates—pepper UK hospitals in December. Health service archives catalogue 75 years of celebrations, along with recurrent negotiations between administrators over whether NHS budgets, charitable donations and funds, or staff and patients themselves should pick up the bill. By providing “non-essential” things the NHS cannot afford, charitable funds often soften the edges of a struggling system. But, in another year where joy among the NHS workforce has been in particularly short supply, we should resist the suggestion that patient and staff welfare are “extra” to core business.