Making a difference

The NHS touches lives in many different ways and we've all had experience of its services - whether through receiving treatment or supporting friends or family through theirs. But did you know ...

• Over 60 years old, the NHS is a living, breathing organisation and is changing faster now than at any time in its history.
• We're one of the world's largest publicly funded health services and the single biggest organisation in Europe.
• There are over 60 million UK residents, all of whom are able to take advantage of services that are free at point of use.
• We employ more than 1.3million people, including some 90,000 hospital doctors, 35,000 general practitioners (GPs), 400,000 nurses and 16,000 ambulance staff.
• Our impressive, £90 billion budget for 2007/8 roughly equated to a contribution of £1,500 for every man, woman and child in the UK.
• Our annual budget is broken down into: around 60% to pay staff, 20% to pay for drugs and supplies, and 20% split between buildings, equipment and training, medical equipment, catering and cleaning.
• NHS funding comes directly from taxation, and independent bodies such as the King's Fund agree that this is the 'cheapest and fairest' way of funding healthcare in comparison to other systems.
• There are many different ways of measuring performance in the NHS (mortality; life expectancy; waiting times; patient satisfaction; bed occupancy; etc), but it is extremely difficult to measure how much health is improved for each pound spent. This makes it hard to measure the efficiency of any healthcare system.

All of this provides an exhilarating, challenging and ever-changing environment in which to develop your career.

Hello, and welcome to the NHS. We’ve been looking after the health of British people for over 60 years and will continue to do so for many more to come. Here we’ll tell you more about the size and scope of the organisation, and just how much we continue to change and evolve.