Exclusive: walkout over pay due to take place before Christmas
The biggest nursing strike in NHS history is set to take place before Christmas after union officials said that “large swathes of the country” had voted for industrial action.
Patients who are already facing record waiting lists are now likely to see operations and appointments delayed or cancelled. This is set to be the first national strike in the history of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
Continue reading...‘Systemic’ failures at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys trust found to have contributed to self-inflicted deaths
Three teenage girls died after major failings in the care they received from NHS mental health services in the north-east of England, an independent investigation has found.
“Multifaceted and systemic” failures by the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys (TEWV) NHS trust contributed to the young women’s self-inflicted deaths within eight months of each other, it concluded.
In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or by email at jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...‘Complexity and uncertainty’ ahead as NHS struggles to deliver standard of care patients deserve, says Amanda Pritchard
The NHS in England is facing even tougher challenges now than when Covid-19 struck, the service’s boss has said.
The many problems confronting the health service meant it was harder now for it to do its job, and it would become even more difficult, said Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive.
Continue reading...Councils receiving 5,400 new requests for help each day while capacity has reduced significantly
The state of social care in England has “never been so bad”, the country’s leading social services chief has said, with half a million people now waiting for help.
Sarah McClinton, president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), told a conference of council care bosses in Manchester: “The shocking situation is that we have more people requesting help from councils, more older and disabled with complex needs, yet social care capacity has reduced and we have 50,000 fewer paid carers.”
Continue reading...Mandatory programme named after Oliver McGowan, whose mother led a campaign after his death in 2016
Mandatory training for health and care staff in England to support people with a learning disability and autistic people has been launched following a grieving mother’s four-year campaign.
Paula McGowan’s 18-year-old son, Oliver, who had a mild learning disability and autism, died after doctors “arrogantly” gave him antipsychotic medication despite his family’s warnings that they were unsuitable.
Continue reading...Catherine Poole tells prime minister to pay staff more, raising a finger and saying: ‘You need to try harder’
Rishi Sunak got a tase of how the “difficult decisions” he has said will guide spending cuts may go down with the public, when he was challenged by a hospital patient about nurses’ pay.
During a tour of Croydon University Hospital in south London, Sunak met NHS workers and posed for smiling selfies with them, but was confronted by 77-year old Catherine Poole.
Continue reading...Now is not the right time to take this policy forward, says prime minister’s spokesperson
Rishi Sunak has dropped his Conservative leadership campaign pledge to fine patients £10 if they miss a GP or hospital appointment.
The prime minister had told Tory members in August it was “wrong” that there are “15m missed appointments every year NHS” at GPs and hospitals, as he justified the fine as a “tough” measure to change people’s behaviour.
Continue reading...Royal College of Midwives will soon ballot English and Welsh members after below-inflation offer is rejected in Scotland
Midwives in Scotland have voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action over what they described as an “insulting” pay offer.
More than 88% of midwives and maternity support workers (MSWs) in Scotland, who are part of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), voted to strike in a turnout of 61% of eligible voters.
Continue reading...Move will help up to 150 patients a year whose condition has not responded positively to anti-seizure drugs
Up to 150 people a year with epilepsy will have a potentially life-changing new form of surgery on the part of their brain that is causing their seizures, in an NHS initiative.
NHS England is making available a “world-leading” fibre-optic laser beam surgery that would let epilepsy sufferers avoid having to undergo neurosurgery, which is much more invasive.
Continue reading...Paramedics in England missing 117,000 urgent calls each month, as CQC warns of ‘worrying new status quo’
Paramedics in England cannot respond to 117,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals looking after patients, figures show.
The amount of time ambulance crews had to wait outside A&E units meant they were unavailable to attend almost one in six incidents.
673 patients had to wait 10 hours or more to be handed over to A&E staff – NHS guidelines say no one should wait more than 15 minutes.
45,000 patients were delayed for at least an hour and 21,000 for at least two hours – just under the highest numbers ever seen.
While crews spent 558,000 hours attending incidents, they were unable to complete another 117,000 “job cycles”, which equates to 21% of total ambulance capacity – huge rises on the 45,000 job cycles or 7% of capacity in October 2019.
Continue reading...With people aged 65 and over controlling 51% of Britain’s wealth, the logic for investors is simple
• Canadian owners of care homes avoided UK taxes, researchers claim
With a spa, cinema and wood-panelled hall, Reigate Grange in Surrey, where Ann King was abused, is part of a growing trend for luxury care homes. Fuelled by global investors’ desire to capitalise on older people’s property wealth, luxury care applies a cruise-ship sheen to the grittier reality of dementia and the end of life.
The logic for investors is simple. People aged 65 and over in the UK now control 51% of Britain’s wealth, up from 42% in 2008, the year of the financial crash, according to the Resolution Foundation. A large minority of older people can afford £100,000-a-year care home fees because they have houses worth far more that they no longer need. A person in a £1m home who survives for the typical two years of a care home resident would still leave £800,000 in their will.
Continue reading...Hospitals ordered to protect stocks as they fall to critical level amid shortage of staff to take donations
The NHS has declared its first ever amber alert over blood supplies after they fell to a critically low level, prompting warnings that hospitals in England may be forced to cancel operations to protect their stocks.
An NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) official confirmed that overall blood stocks in NHS England were at three days’ worth and levels of O-type had dropped to less than two days’. The normal standard is to hold at least six days’ worth of blood in stock at all times.
Continue reading...Chancellor must top up budgets or face industrial action and further recruitment issues, thinktank warns
More than 100,000 public sector workers would lose their jobs this year if the government refuses to fund higher than expected pay awards for nurses, doctors, teachers and care workers, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The IFS said the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, faced a choice of either topping up public sector budgets or accepting the likelihood of industrial action, further problems recruiting and retaining staff, and a decline in quality of services already under extreme strain.
Continue reading...Major disruption to NHS over winter feared if ballot of 300,000 staff over 5% pay increase results in industrial action
Hundreds of thousands of nurses across the UK are to be balloted about going on strike in a move that risks disrupting the NHS this winter.
For the first time in its 106-year history the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is balloting 300,000 of its members about strike action and recommending that they vote in favour.
Continue reading...Sally Mays’ parents fought for seven years to hear details of chat outside mental health unit their daughter was turned away from
An NHS trust has “not covered itself in glory” in its dealings with the family of a vulnerable young woman who killed herself after being refused admission to hospital, a coroner has found.
The three-day hearing looked at evidence withheld from the original inquest into the death of Sally Mays, who killed herself in 2014 after being turned away from a mental health unit.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
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...Thérèse Coffey announces measure aimed at freeing up beds in hospitals in England before winter pressures
Ministers are setting up a £500m emergency fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible in an attempt to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter.
Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, unveiled the move in the Commons on Thursday as part of her plans to tackle the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays for care.
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...Exclusive: change to registration process will pave way for thousands of staff trained overseas to come to UK, says government
Ministers will introduce legislation as soon as parliament returns on Monday to tackle the NHS’s worsening staffing crisis by making it easier for overseas nurses and dentists to work in the UK.
The move is part of a drive by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, to increase overseas recruitment to help plug workforce gaps in health and social care.
Continue reading...NHS launches autumn drive with jabs offered first to care home staff and residents, and housebound people
Millions of care home residents, staff and housebound people in England will be invited for their autumn coronavirus vaccine booster from Monday.
Health teams will visit care homes and private homes to vaccinate about 1.6 million residents, staff and housebound people in the latest phase of the vaccine programme, NHS England has said.
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