Category Archives: Doctors

Doctors’ strike to disrupt care ‘unlike anything seen before’, warn NHS officials

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Consultants and junior doctors will take joint action this week for the first time in escalating pay dispute

NHS officials have warned that doctors’ strikes this week are likely to cause disruption to patient care “unlike anything before”, as Wednesday will see consultants and junior doctors taking joint strike action for the first time in the escalating dispute over pay.

Junior doctors, who have already staged five days of industrial action this year, will now strike again from 20 to 22 September – the first day of which coincides with action by consultants.

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Doctors must show zero tolerance of sexual harassment, says UK medical council

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Updated guidance covers verbal and written comments, displaying or sharing images and physical contact

Doctors will be expected to demonstrate “zero tolerance” of sexual harassment, the General Medical Council has announced.

For the first time, new professional standards, published on Tuesday, introduce explicit rules on sexual harassment towards colleagues.

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Landmark NHS recruitment plan in danger from applicant shortfall

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The huge increase in students needed to fill medical training places, and supplying the staff to teach them, may not be feasible

A “once in a generation” NHS recruitment plan requiring an extra 50,000 clinical training places in less than a decade risks being derailed by difficulties in finding enough applicants and a shrinking number of staff to teach them.

A new analysis seen by the Observer reveals the sheer scale of the proposed increase in NHS staff implied by the government’s long-awaited workforce plan, unveiled at the start of the summer and given a broad welcome across the NHS.

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Sunak’s ‘intransigence’ on pay will lead to more NHS strikes, warns top doctor

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Exclusive: BMA council chair says medics will have no option but to stage more industrial action until ministers make ‘credible offer’

Rishi Sunak’s “increasingly intransigent” and “belligerent” stance on medics’ pay is blocking the path to ending the industrial action in the NHS, leaving no option but to strike until the next general election, one of Britain’s top doctors has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian on Friday after junior doctors launched a fifth round of industrial action, Prof Philip Banfield, the chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) council, said the union was standing firm and that doctors would continue to hold stoppages until they received a “credible offer”.

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Consultants in England to strike in September if government refuses talks

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BMA highlights government’s ‘complete disregard’ for the health service and its patients

Consultants in England will strike for two additional days in September if the government continues to refuse pay talks and fails to present the profession with a credible offer, the British Medical Association has said.

The BMA said on Monday that it had written to the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to inform him that on top of strikes by consultants on 24 and 25 August, there would be additional strikes on 19 and 20 September, unless the government agrees to further negotiations.

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Rishi Sunak driving doctors out of NHS with pay offer, say union leaders

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Public service workers in England offered 5%-7% rises but departments must fund them from existing budgets

Health union leaders have reacted furiously to a warning from Rishi Sunak that his offer of a 6% pay rise this year was final and that “no amount of strikes” would change his mind, as they began their longest walkout yet in England.

The British Medical Association said the government was “driving doctors away” from the health service and had missed an opportunity to put a credible pay offer on the table to end strikes when it accepted all the recommendations of the pay review bodies.

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NHS plan: the numbers are impressive, but where are the new ideas?

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Health bosses will welcome tens of thousands of new recruits, but the plan has little to say on how to change the culture to keep them

It was on 8 November 2017 that Jeremy Hunt, the then health secretary, first promised that the government would bring forward a long-term, comprehensive plan to end the NHS’s lack of staff.

It would, he said, be the “first proper NHS workforce plan that we have had since 2000”. And the plan would emerge quickly, he added, reflecting the urgency of tackling what has become the most debilitating of the NHS’s many problems – shortages of staff, everywhere.

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Plans to shorten medical training put quality of NHS care at risk, doctors say

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Unions say government proposals to cut training by a year and introduce apprenticeships could dilute skills

Plans to shorten medical training could dilute the calibre of doctors entering the NHS in England and damage the quality of care patients receive, doctors’ leaders have warned.

Government proposals to cut doctors’ time in medical school from five to four years, and to introduce medical apprenticeships, could “water down” training for health service staff, they said.

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Government aims to boost NHS with thousands more doctors and nurses

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NHS England could have 12,500 extra doctors and nurses by 2028 under the service’s first long-term workforce plan

Thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year as part of a government push to plug the huge workforce gaps that plague almost all NHS services.

The number of places in medical schools will rise from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and could reach 15,000 by 2031 as a result of the NHS’s first long-term workforce plan.

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Union fury at reports Sunak might overrule some public sector pay rises

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Recommendations from independent pay review bodies could be rejected by PM if he deems them unaffordable

Unions have expressed outrage over reports the prime minister plans to block public sector wage increases owing to fears about pushing up UK inflation, which remains worse than in other leading economies.

Recommendations from the independent pay review bodies could be overruled by Rishi Sunak if they are considered unaffordable, the Times reported, because of concerns they could set off a “wage-price spiral”.

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Adam Kay tells of life ‘transformed’ by two babies

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Writer of comic medical memoir This is Going to Hurt reveals surrogacy on BBC’s Desert Island Discs

Adam Kay, the author of This is Going to Hurt, the bestselling “secret diary” of a junior doctor, is now the father of two babies, he has revealed.

Kay, who was portrayed by Ben Whishaw in the Bafta-winning BBC1 adaptation of his comic memoir, said life with his husband, TV producer James Farrell, has been “absolutely transformed for the better” by the arrival through surrogacy of their two children.

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Heatwave brings surge in A&E patients as England doctors’ strike begins

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Some hospitals record highest ever A&E attendance figures as heat, high pollen count and air pollution bring rise in demand

A&E units across the UK are experiencing a surge in patients seeking care as a direct result of the heatwave, which is leaving many people unwell with shortness of breath, heat exhaustion and sunburn.

The number of people suffering problems as a direct result of the sustained high temperatures in many parts of the country has resulted in some hospitals recording their highest A&E attendance figures.

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Twenty-four UK doctors in five years censured over medical record breaches

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GMC says cases were among 194 incidents of alleged violations of confidentiality between 2017 and 2022

Two-dozen doctors have been disciplined by the UK medical regulator in the last five years after accessing and using information from patients’ treatment records without good reason.

The General Medical Council (GMC) said it had struck off two of the 24 doctors it had sanctioned after finding that they had undertaken “inappropriate use” of medical records.

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NHS England workforce plan delayed amid rumours of cost issues

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Health secretary Steve Barclay not confirming when strategy to increase numbers of doctors and nurses will be published

NHS leaders have raised concerns about the delay to the long-awaited workforce plan, after the health secretary, Steve Barclay, refused to give a deadline for its publication amid rumours it is considered too costly.

The plan, which was expected to be published on Tuesday, appears to have been delayed, according to the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery.

Barclay blamed the pandemic and “various things that have been happening in recent years” for the delay during broadcast interviews over the weekend. He had previously promised that the plan to increase the number of doctors and nurses would be published before the next general election.

Cordery said the plan, which has already been postponed from last year and aims to fix the UK’s crumbling healthcare system by plugging chronic staff shortages, was needed “as quickly as possible”.

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Nigeria’s doctors furious over plans for five years of mandatory service

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MPs back new bill for medical graduates, designed to limit brain drain to countries including the UK and US

A new bill to impose five years’ mandatory service on Nigeria’s medical graduates in an effort to stop the exodus of doctors to the UK and the US has been attacked as “obnoxious”.

The bill, which could be put to a public hearing in the next few days, passed its second reading in the Nigerian parliament’s lower house last month.

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Patients paying £550 an hour to see private GPs amid NHS frustrations

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Signs that NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating surge in people resorting to private care

Patients are paying up to £550 an hour to see private GPs amid frustration at the delays many face getting an appointment with an NHS family doctor.

Growing numbers of paid-for GP services are opening up across Britain, in the latest sign of how the NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating a surge in people resorting to private healthcare.

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Senior doctors in England to vote on industrial action

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BMA says consultant pay has declined by 35% since 2008-9

Senior doctors in England are to vote on whether to strike amid the continued row over pay in healthcare, as teachers’ unions also plan to hold a ballot for industrial action.

The ballot will open on Monday until 27 June as the British Medical Association urges members to approve.

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Warnings over NHS data privacy after ‘stalker’ doctor shares woman’s records

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Exclusive: Victim speaks of feeling violated by hospital doctor incident that expert says is evidence of ‘systemic’ flaw in England

The confidentiality of NHS medical records has been thrown into doubt after a “stalker” hospital doctor accessed and shared highly sensitive information about a woman who had started dating her ex-boyfriend, despite not being involved in her care.

The victim was left in “fear, shock and horror” when she learned that the doctor had used her hospital’s medical records system to look at the woman’s GP records and read – and share – intimate details, known only to a few people, about her and her children.

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Sudan’s doctors turn to social media as health infrastructure crumbles

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With hospitals struggling amid the violence, medics are using helplines on messaging platforms to reach those in need

Sudanese doctors are turning to social media to reach patients as hospitals and heath facilities struggle to function or close completely in the violence. Volunteers have set up 24-hour helplines on messaging platforms including WhatsApp, staffed by hundreds of doctors and specialists.

Only 16% of hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, are operating at full capacity, according to the World Health Organization. Last week at least four people, including a child, were killed in an airstrike outside East Nile hospital in north Khartoum, while Médecins Sans Frontières reported that El Geneina teaching hospital, in west Darfur, was looted on 28 April. Doctors in the country are reporting death threats and on Monday two volunteers who were working to reopen a hospital in Bahri were released after being held for days by the army.

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Small businesses offered tax breaks for going green in federal budget – as it happened

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This blog is now closed

Marles on Australians caught in Sudan conflict

Asked about Australians caught in Sudan and the conflict there, Richard Marles says “there are still options out of Port Sudan which is on the Red Sea, which is, I think it’s about 800km out of Khartoum” to leave “what is obviously a deteriorating situation”:

There are ferries there and there may be other options coming out of that. I mean, the important thing is this – Australians in Sudan, and there do remain a number of Australians in Sudan, really need to make sure that they register.

We will continue to work with friends and allies and do everything that we can within our power to provide options for Australians who want to leave. Because we understand how difficult this situation is now.

Ultimately, our ambition is to establish a production line with companies in this country which would provide for the manufacture of those long-range strike missiles and doing as much of that as possible in the next couple of years. We hope that we can begin with the assembly of the strike missiles that go in the Himars system. But we want to build on that so that we’re actually manufacturing the full suite of these weapons in Australia.

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