The U-turn may help to end wave of strikes, though funding it could require cuts to key services
Steve Barclay has privately conceded he will have to increase his pay offer to NHS staff, in a U-turn that may help to end the growing wave of strikes.
However, the Treasury has made clear he will have to find any new cash from within the existing health budget, raising the prospect of cuts to key services.
Continue reading...In what NHS calls ‘never events’, items including swabs, blades and drill bits left in patients 291 times in England in 2021-22
A rising number of medical foreign objects, including wire cutters, scalpel blades and drill bits, have been left inside hospital patients after surgery in England, new figures reveal.
Blunders involving a “foreign object accidentally left in body during surgical and medical care” led to 291 “finished consultant episodes” in 2021-2022, official data shows.
Continue reading...Lib Dems say face-to-face GP bookings ‘almost extinct’ in some areas as their survey shows a rise in self-prescribing
Almost one in four people have bought medicine online or at a pharmacy to treat their illness after failing to see a GP face to face, according to a UK survey underlining the rise of do-it-yourself treatment.
Nearly one in five (19%) have gone to A&E seeking urgent medical treatment for the same reason, the research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows.
Continue reading...Doctors warn of a backlog of patients and ‘deteriorating health’, with calls to 999 down 25% during paramedics’ 24-hour stoppage
The NHS is bracing itself for an influx of patients between now and Christmas after thousands of people deferred seeking treatment during the ambulance workers’ strike on Wednesday.
Senior doctors are warning that the decision by many people in England and Wales not to request help while paramedics were staging a 24-hour stoppage will leave the NHS struggling to cope at a time when hospitals would traditionally be scaling back their services for the festive break.
Continue reading...Crammed wards, burnt-out GPs, patients waiting hours for ambulances – the health service is at breaking point
Inside the dimly lit command centre at King’s College hospital, staff arriving for the first beds meeting of the day are greeted with a warning: the hospital is already under strain. “So, we are under pressure this morning,” the head of nursing, Naomi Hosking, informs colleagues stood around her in a semi-circle. No one registers surprise. “We’ve got a lot of patients in ED [emergency department] with little space to see new patients, so we need to get some early movement.”
It’s 8.32am and ED – maximum capacity 60 – is packed, with 61 patients inside. The oldest is 98; the youngest 30 days old. Later, that pressure will intensify: the number of ED patients – in beds, on trolleys or in chairs – will more than double to 137.
Continue reading...Labour highlights issue to back up pledge to invest heavily in addressing shortages
The number of operations cancelled by the NHS in England because of staff shortages may have doubled in three years, with an estimated 30,000 not proceeding because no staff were available to perform them.
At least a third of cancelled operations were those that were deemed urgent, according to the analysis by Labour. It suggested at least 2,500 cancelled operations for cancer patients and 8,000 on children.
Continue reading...Serious illnesses among estimated 5m people in England who could not get an appointment in October may have been missed
Millions of people in England are struggling to get GP appointments and as a result some will not have serious medical conditions diagnosed until it is “too late”, Labour has warned.
The party has made new estimates based on the latest GP appointment figures for England with GP patient survey data.
Continue reading...Exclusive: More than 4,000 European medics have chosen not to work in NHS since Britain left EU, data reveals
Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals.
The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Doctors suffering ‘moral distress’ at their powerlessness to help most vulnerable, says head of the Royal College of GPs
Ill patients are refusing sicknotes from their GP because they cannot afford time off work, while physicians suffer “moral distress” at their powerlessness to do more to help the most vulnerable, the new leader of Britain’s family doctors has revealed.
More patients are experiencing asthma attacks or other serious breathing problems because they cannot afford to heat their homes, said Dr Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, while many have reported deteriorating mental health due to financial stress.
Continue reading...Campaigners say poorest people will suffer most as NHS is ‘neglected and private practice becomes the norm’
Rishi Sunak is registered with a private GP practice that guarantees that all patients with urgent concerns about their health will be seen “on the day”.
The west London clinic used by the prime minister charges £250 for a half-hour consultation and, unlike most NHS GPs across the country, offers appointments in the evenings and at weekends, as well as consultations by email or phone that cost up to £150.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Steve Barclay not tasked with manifesto commitment, raising fears that shortage of doctors in England will continue
Rishi Sunak has fuelled concerns that the government will miss its target of recruiting 6,000 more GPs in England, which was promised in the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
The prime minister omitted the pledge from his appointment letter to the health secretary, Steve Barclay, laying out expectations for what should be delivered by March 2024.
Continue reading...The patient, who had been avoiding visits to her eye doctor due to Covid, complained about feeling something foreign in her eye
A California eye doctor has said an elderly patient who came in complaining of blurry vision ended up having 23 disposable contact lenses in her eye.
“To this day, she herself does not understand how it took place,” Dr Katerina Kurteeva, a Newport Beach ophthalmologist, told a local TV news channel. “She’s still baffled by it all.”
Continue reading...Robert Hadden, a former gynecologist, was accused in 2016 of sexually abusing female patients for over two decades
Two New York hospitals have agreed to pay more than $165m to 147 former patients who have accused a former gynecologist of sexual abuse and misconduct.
Columbia University Irving Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian announced the agreement Friday. Last year, the two hospitals reached a settlement to establish a $71m compensation fund with 79 former patients.
Continue reading...The chancellor says the move will save 28m people £330 on average next year
Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time, a demographic milestone for a state that was designed a century ago to have a permanent Protestant majority, my colleague Rory Carroll reports.
Thérèse Coffey is deputy prime minister as well as health secretary. Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, and responding to a question from the former Labour MP Ed Balls, who was presenting, she said that as deputy PM whould be would “chairing things like the home affairs committee and different elements like that”. But she rejected claims this meant she would be doing the health job part time. She said:
I’m conscious that in two weeks we’ve already pulled together our plan for patients and we will continue to develop that.
I don’t think it will be a case of being part-time ... We don’t have fixed working hours.
Continue reading...Health experts encourage doctors to talk about nutrition and socio-economic circumstances
Children’s doctors plan to help poor families cope with the cost of living crisis and its feared impact on health, amid concern that cold homes this winter will lead to serious ill health.
In an unusual move, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) is issuing the UK’s paediatricians with detailed advice on how they can help households in poverty.
Continue reading...New health secretary’s demand to improve patient access to GP care in England is immediately criticised by family doctors
No patient should have to wait more than two weeks to see a GP, the new health secretary will demand , in a move that has already been criticised by family doctors.
Thérèse Coffey will on Thursday set out a new “expectation” that everyone seeking an appointment with a GP should get one within 14 days while outlining a major plan to tackle the NHS’s growing crisis.
Continue reading...Medical regulator and board agree to strengthen industry standards after review revealed unsafe practices and misleading advertising
Cosmetic surgery practitioners will be policed by a dedicated enforcement unit for the first time in Australia as part of an industry-wide crackdown by the national regulator.
The $1bn industry will undergo significant reform after an independent review highlighted cases of misconduct.
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Continue reading...PM hopeful co-authored pamphlet that also called for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% and abolition of universal child benefit
Liz Truss called for patients to be charged to see their GP and for doctors’ pay to be slashed by 10% in a pamphlet she co-authored in 2009, the unearthed document has revealed.
The Tory leadership frontrunner also wanted to see the universal child benefit abolished in the report, which she co-wrote with six other people when she was deputy director of the Reform thinktank.
Continue reading...Pandemic may have changed decision-making, according to research published in Journal of Medical Ethics
Doctors are less likely to resuscitate the most seriously ill patients in the wake of the pandemic, a survey suggests.
Covid-19 may have changed doctors’ decision-making regarding end of life, making them more willing not to resuscitate very sick or frail patients and raising the threshold for referral to intensive care, according to the results of the research published in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Continue reading...Exclusive: doctors will use pay row to expose ‘desperate state’ of NHS after years of government neglect, Prof Philip Banfield warned
A doctor’s strike is “inevitable” and will expose how dangerously threadbare the Conservatives have left the health service, the profession’s new leader has said.
In his first interview since taking over as the British Medical Association’s chair of council, Prof Philip Banfield warned ministers that doctors will take the fight to them by using a pay dispute to tell the public patients are dying as a direct result of government neglect of the NHS.
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