Dear Editor Re: Physician Associates I am writing to give my perspective on the role of physician associates( PAs). I am a recently retired Consultant Physician who was involved in the initiation of a PA programme in Devon over 10 years ago. Workforce planning in the NHS is notoriously difficult and an issue that central […]
Our NHS would collapse without migrants. Almost 20 per cent of the staff in NHS England are from overseas. Out of 1.5 million NHS staff in England, around 265,000 reported a non-British nationality as of June 2023. That’s 45,000 more than the previous year. What’s more, since Brexit, data indicates that the proportion of EU citizens working for the […]
Health warning: much or all of this will make your blood boil. Use your vote to secure health benefits. The only way we can get our blood pressure down is to get these liars, crooks, charlatans and incompetents out of office asap! What follows is a list of just a few of the dreadful things […]
Why this petition matters The petition was started by Seaton resident, Martin Shaw, who explains why it’s needed: The Seaton area community paid half of the cost of building the Hospital in the 1980s. The NHS agreed to own and run it with NHS services for the local community. In 1991, a new wing was […]
Sign the petition here! Back in December 2021, journalist Stefan Simanowitz pulled together a long thread alerting people to the risks to our democracy and data privacy from Palantir, the shadowy data, surveillance and genomics firm (whose founder, right-wing, libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, was a Tump donor and one of the largest donors to the […]
Greetings, South-westerners! Now you see him… The news that Steve Barclay, Secretary of State for Health, was meeting the Prime Minister for discussions about the NHS refutes the widespread belief, supported by the press and social media, that he is a Virtual Minister. Virtual Ministers are the result of a dire shortage of genuine […]
The problem with the NHS is very simple: there isn’t enough capacity. There aren’t enough GPs, hospital doctors, nurses, physios, OTs, lab techs, radiographers, etc. We currently have less hospital bed capacity than Mexico. We have the second lowest in Europe. On all metrics, the UK is way behind comparative nations and no where near […]
The change to cancer targets is a big deal! The issue is the 28-day to diagnosis versus the 2-week wait target. That is, if your GP suspects cancer, from the point of referral, 75 per cent of patients should be diagnosed or given the all clear in 28 days. Currently, if your GP suspects cancer […]
How many people have been nudged, goaded or battered into believing that the NHS is now beyond saving? How many have been nudged, goaded or battered into believing that privatisation for some or all services is the only way forward? What a very clever campaign the Conservatives have fought! How very happy their many private […]
Even on the 75th anniversary of its foundation, the NHS came under assault from the far-right. This article tackles the claims of its detractors and shows how a team of volunteers has taken the argument to Parliament to defend the NHS – and the UK economy. The assault on the NHS When the NHS was […]
Monday was another damning day for the government at the Covid Inquiry. It is becoming clearer what the recommendations from the Inquiry are likely to be… But there is also a bigger question raised about criminality… TUC union, the BMA, the Health Foundation, and The British Red Cross gave evidence. Many of the government defence […]
Rishi Sunk has said that this year’s public sector pay awards have been agreed in full but with no new or additional funding to cover them. There is literally no economic sense in this whatsoever. Pay rises of around 6 per cent for education and health have been announced – with there being no room […]
In the week when the NHS celebrated its 75th birthday, there was an article in The Telegraph headlined ‘NHS to slash bureaucracy by recruiting doctors and nurses over pen-pushers’. This, of course, led to all the usual clichés about the NHS being full of managers. I thought I’d take a look at what the evidence […]
No doubt we are at a tipping point for the future of healthcare in the UK You will hear a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and barefaced lies over the next 18 months – a £200bn/yr industry is on the table. So here are the facts… Has the NHS been value for money? Here is the […]
Dear Steve Barclay, There seems to be a lot of interest on UK social media (#MedTwitter (@RoshanaMN) regarding how enticing Australia is for UK doctors. Here are a few examples from the international market you are competing with, from a junior doctor who made the move. You should be worried. For context, I work in […]
While we are all distracted by this government’s latest antics and dog whistles, it is pushing through a policy that will likely see the end of the NHS as we know it – at least in England. The guise is “patient choice”. The truth: biggest change in our healthcare model so far. This UK government […]
Junior doctors across England have undertaken three days of strike action from 13 to 15 March, during one of the busiest periods of the year for hospitals. This has been a long time coming, with years of stagnant wages and deteriorating working conditions forcing many to consider leaving the country or profession altogether. Six years […]
This is a long post from Oct 2019, and some of what it says would have seemed seem hard to believe back then. But now? Now when we see cuts to public services, the increasing wealth gap, steady defunding of council services, the running down of the NHS and talk of the use of artificial […]
My thoughts on the government’s new plan to the NHS crisis published today. Sum: They seemed to listen to the experts but are clearly not interested in recovering the NHS… There are some positives. But stating the obvious first: this is way too little, way way too late! We have been calling for action all […]
Although government seems to be in denial, it is clear that the NHS is in crisis – a consequence, in large part, of a decade of underfunding. The impact on the service nationally has been logged in detail, with the Financial Times offering a series of particularly thorough analyses. We wanted to find out […]
Dear Sheryll Murray You have often used the term “democracy” in your replies to me when challenged over your abysmal record as our MP – at least in the replies that weren’t just copied and pasted from the Ladybird book of lazy replies for MPs, at any rate. But, do tell me, can you prove […]
Those of us who fought hard against the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 (and I did, most especially on Twitter) always knew the danger within that Act. Clause 1 said: But then this was added: That section changed the whole focus of the NHS. The Secretary of State might still be responsible to […]
I watched agog as Nadim Zahawi went on the media rounds to brief – predictably- against our brave nurses and their strike action. With zero sense of self-awareness, he tried to paint their reasonable request to be paid what they are worth as “unfair” and “unpatriotic”, even at one point claiming it was “playing into […]
Dear West Country Voices, Nurses are the first health professionals to vote for strike action. I fully support them and I hope that those of you reading this will too. The NHS has been ground into the soil by 12 years of ideological attacks designed to make it as cheap to sell to vulture capitalists […]
I did ask the nurse whose testimony I quote here if I could name her. She was not comfortable with that, I am afraid, but I understand why and hope you do, too. “What’s that about, then?” asked the nurse as she set about applying a fibreglass cast to my broken wrist. I followed her […]
Update: the mainstream media is finally waking up to the impact of Brexit on dental care provision. We were writing about this more than a year ago. Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw (Labour) posted a tweet drawing attention to the astonishing statistic that 78,000 people in Devon and Cornwall are waiting to get onto an NHS […]
“Quit the EU to save our #NHS” said the Daily Express It was the wrong diagnosis, but voters believed it. The latest news is that the NHS is facing “the greatest workforce crisis in its history”, which is bringing our health service to its knees. NHS England is facing a chronic and dangerous shortage of […]
The cross-party Health and Social Care Select Committee slammed the “absence of a credible government strategy” on the NHS. Sadly, we think the government’s strategy is quite clear – it is just not what they have been telling us it is. The Health and Care Act has given ministers all the powers they need to […]
Some seem to think doctors, nurses and paramedics working in urgent care spend their day saving lives. And we do, sometimes. But actually, we spend most of our day saving organs – brain, heart, kidneys, etc – to prevent disability so people can make the most out of life. There are occasions when we have […]
The NHS is being reorganised again, and if you’re like most people you’ll have questions. So what’s happening? Campaign group We Own It have given us permission to reproduce their guide to Integrated Care Systems (ICS). In an upcoming article, we’ll talk about what’s going on in the south west, with information from Save Our Hospital […]