This is my YouTube short this morning:
You can watch it here.
The transcript is:
The NHS is being dumbed down.
What I mean is that people who are fully qualified in some areas, like paramedics, are seeing people in surgeries. GP surgeries where they're not fully qualified and physician associates who can do some tasks in hospitals are doing quite inappropriate things, like surgery.
This is a potential disaster in the making because if you are seen by or treated by a person who is not fully aware of all the issues that might arise as a consequence of the complaint you present with, they could miss your symptoms, they could misdiagnose you, they could as a consequence leave you with major health issues in the future.
This is a problem that should not exist.
It's the consequence of austerity.
And it's not fair to the people in the NHS who are doing this, and it's not fair to you.
Ask your politicians about it.
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I beg to differ. The issue is one of outright bullying – it comes from the top down. And it starts with politicians. Politics is what is poisioning this whole country, with corruption and being bought by the very rich / media. Politicians have refused to fund the NHS properly but demand impossible targets. They set these for NHSE, then they get handed down to , now the Integrated Care Boards. Failure to meet targets puts your job at risk. Dare to have the temerity to suggest the targets are not possible and your job is at risk.
The NHS is a a saga of the man kicks the dog, dog attacks cat, cat goes for mouse etc.
I worked as a senior manager and watched my boss be bullied and he in turn bullied me (and others). I was fortunate, at least in my time there was some money, so it was possible to meet targets, at least in part if not in whole. The next part of the picture was the endless reporting on “achievement” where a partial achievement eg a new service was established, but only covering a small part of the area but was reported as if the target had been 100% achieved. As a consequence the centre never got an accurate picture of what was really going on.
Stop the bullying, stop the attacks on any whistleblower. Introduce no fault compensation where things go really badly wrong, and allow people to raise concerns without being in fear of their job. Acknowledge that at the moment that with the chronic underfunding and staff shortage there will be lots of unsafe practice, but until the politicians have some honesty nothing will improve.
However undeserved the position of the monarchy, I really don’t feel they are at fault for the rot in this country. I’d give far more blame to Rupert Murdoch.
Physical Associates have also been in GP surgeries for sometime, and there is now specific funding to increase them. GPs are being made redundant instead!
https://www.plsetoday.co.uk/news/breaking-news/practice-makes-gps-redundant-in-favour-of-arrs-staff/
Could this be part of a plan to encourage those of us who can to go private to ensure we are actually seen by a properly qualified person? NHS care will be second rate but good enough for the poor !
PAs have already been linked to patient deaths. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-66211103
in 2010 NHS had 70% satisfaction and miinmal waiting lists and was top of OECD health systems now 24% approval and near bottom of OECD health systems.
Deliberate destruction
Pretty much what the Tories did last time they were in power. They can be relied on to trash the NHS.
This came into my e mail – you might want to publish it- interesting implied threats.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dr Julia Patterson
Subject: The General Election campaign is upon us…
Date: 31 May 2024 at 14:17:32 BST
To:
Reply-To:
Every Doctor
I have written this paragraph several times, and deleted it several times, and now I’m writing it again. It’s difficult to write this, or anything quite frankly, at the moment, because campaigning organisations are under the microscope. There has been a lot of fear in recent years about the decline of our democracy, and the punitive measures that are being steadily stacked up to silence the people who are speaking up.
This is tough, and it presents itself in many different ways.
It presents itself through the editorial line of the mainstream media, who frame the issue of NHS privatisation as if it is part of a fictional “hard-left political agenda”, regardless of the fact that:
1. It is happening as we speak.
2. The majority of the public consistently oppose NHS privatisation.
3. There is no evidence that it helps.
It presents itself through the online bots and trolls, some of whom are actual people who organise themselves in dubious corners of the internet to attack progressive campaigners, and others that are bots, directed at particular campaigns.
…and it presents itself through formal mechanisms, which have allegedly been set up to keep things safe, and yet are actually weaponised as ways to shut people up who are legitimately calling attention to worrying developments in our society.
When we set up EveryDoctor, we thought that we would be a target for all of these things, and more, and we were correct. We have been warned at various points, by various powerful people, that we should be “very careful”. It’s never been clear, to be honest, what “being careful” was meant to involve, but we have become a target for a lot of smear attacks and unwelcome attention. What have we done to deal with all of that? Well, we’ve just stuck to the things we’ve always done. We’re a doctor-led organisation, after all, and so we behave just like any doctors do. We record things meticulously, we take confidentiality very seriously, and we check our facts rigorously.
When we were approached by the Electoral Commission last year for a meeting, to speak about our activity ahead of the upcoming election, we assumed that many other campaigning organisations had been similarly approached. Assumed it was par for the course. Now, I can’t say this with absolute certainty (because I am not in contact with absolutely every campaigning organisation in the UK), but I meet with a fair few, and no other organisation I have spoken to were asked to have a meeting with the Electoral Commission ahead of the General Election.
What does this mean? Well, it might not mean anything at all. But it might also mean that we are being scrutinised, and that perhaps we will be made an example of. There are complicated, difficult-to-understand rules about how campaigns can behave, and which donations should be declared, and what spending, and when.
Since that meeting, we have endeavoured to try to understand the rules and to implement them to the best of our ability. We have attended other meetings, we have sought advice, we have kept notes.
We registered as a “non-party campaigner” organisation several months ago. We thought this would be the safest way to maintain the ability to speak up about important issues as the election approached. Some of the rules have recently changed. From the advice we have received, it seems like these new rules will be tested out through “case examples”, meaning that despite best efforts, some campaigning organisations may unintentionally fall foul of the rules, and be punished accordingly.
Does this feel enormously stressful? Yes it does. But we can’t allow it to silence us.
Why am I telling you this? Honestly? Because we started this organisation to let the light in; because we believed that the healthcare system was broken and needed to be fixed. We still believe that, and we think this is the worst time possible to go silent.
We’re not going to go silent. In fact, we’re about to start a new campaign.
Back in January, we raised the funds to run a public poll about what thousands of
people thought about NHS privatisation. We’re now building a huge public awareness campaign, providing as many people as possible with information packs, posters, videos and more, and together we’ll be approaching political leaders too. I wondered if we should wait until the election was over; wait until the coast seemed clear. I bet a lot of people would like us to do that.
But we’re not going to do that. Why? Because the NHS is the number one electoral issue for the public, and privatisation is the number one thing destroying our public healthcare system, and we need to speak up loudly, now more than ever.
If there’s one thing that’s stronger than bullies, it’s community.
You are our community, and we value you more than we can say.
3 final quick things, and I’ll be back in touch with more info about our new
campaign very soon:
1. If you join as a member here, you’ll be powering everything we do, and you can sign up to our Monday yoga classes, and join our online community,
and come along to all of our free member events too. We would love to have
you (and we need as many people as possible to come on-board. It’s harder to
silence a huge crowd of people campaigning, than just a few.)
Become an EveryDoctor member today – everyone is welcome!
2. Almost all of the signed copies of my book “Critical” have now been ordered (!).
The book is about how politicians are betraying the NHS, and how we can fight
for it. Every copy ordered from our shop contains a £5 donation to EveryDoctor.
If you’d like a copy, please click here:
Order a signed copy of “Critical” here!
3. Pens! This might seem like a small thing, but it’s not! All merchandise orders
support our work. We have about 100 of our lovely pens left, and I would love
them to find a home with people who want to fight for the future of the NHS! (I
wonder if we can find a home for every last pen today…?)
Order your lovely pens here!
I don’t believe in bluffing to our community. Over the past few weeks I have felt
daunted, intimidated and worried that we are being watched very closely, or
that someone is going to attempt to implicate us in wrong-doing, despite us
doing everything we can to follow the rules. I’ve come through that now though. It might happen, but we are here to fight for the NHS, and we cannot stop now. In fact, we need to get even louder, because the NHS is under threat.
Please support us to do that, however you can. I’ll be in touch very soon about our new campaign- we need to make a lot of noise together,
Yours,
Ju
Dr Julia Patterson
EveryDoctor Chief Executive
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I support Every Doctor and have done stuff with them
See also Roy Lilley’s great newsletters. He is scathing about Streeting.
Thank you for speaking truth to power.
Thank you for acting on behalf of those who have no voice as successive British governments continue to defund and privatise the NHS against the will of their electorate.
Thank you for holding fast against the gaslighting and bullying you receive.
I have experienced the NHS frontlines this week -going with someone needing attention. Possible heart attack. Unknown causes. Undiagnosed still. Extremely fit until Covid came along. Never caught it. Had all the vaccines.
Requiring further tests whenever they can get around to arranging them from whichever other hospital or specialist. Whenever it will happen. No guarantees.
16 hours from contact, 12 hours mostly seating around in a+e waiting for a ‘doctor’ – it was chaotic , inefficient , many young ‘medics’ , many from overseas. Good and determined as they are. There aren’t enough of them. There is no joined up medical service. The cushy easy profitable machines and experts housed in other places.
And it was only by going to a private assessment after months of GP and useless hospital appointments which prescribed gastric meds! That something showed up on a proper cardio stress test! A private one.
That led to the nightmarish day and massive stress which did not help anyone. Seating for hours in a dirty a&e, no free water, no hot drinks , just two giant expensive vending machines selling crisps sweets and fizzy drinks and £2 bottles of water. Tens of £’s to park. Police and their hurt prisoners sharing same space for the same few resources.
It looked and felt like the dysfunctional US system.
This is worse than anything I have witnessed in 50 years of NHS experience. The privatised GP surgeries experienced doctors have had enough and are selling up to new gp’s who are more interested in their budgets and profits. He’ll they have tens of thousands of student debts to repay! The experienced medical pharmacists who insure that the patients aren’t being poisoned with their cocktail of meds being issued by inexperienced GP’s are being forced out through never ending re-organisations. I know this first hand.
Starmer is the undertaker to nail the coffin lead on the free at the point of need and best possible medical treatment made available ethos. Labour so that it can’t be blamed on Tories only.
Not because we can’t afford it , but because we are deemed as undeserving. We must be paying huge insurance premiums encouraged now by cheap monthly ‘come-on’ posters everywhere £20/month. The on purpose degradation of free service to encourage that.
By the end of the next parliament it will have doubled, quadrupled, exclusions will apply and in ten years there will be the multi tier system. Tied in with employment , forcing employees to be American, work long hours , have no holidays, acquiesce.
The rest of us can go hang.
Corbyn warned us with the hundreds of pages of on going negotiations with the US Trade deal for post BrexShit. Trump confirmed everything was on the table, no NHS special protections. Our media nd Starmer and Streeting buried it as they buried Corbyn and Old Labour.
Pretending there is any choice in the various controlled politicians all backed by the same interests is pathetic. It’s us being treated like kids at a Punch and Judy show. And being encouraged to act like excitable kids believing the puppets to be real and independent when they are just the same puppeteer with different silly voices.
It’s the exact same as the US and the current pantomime there. The same in all the western elections across Europe – the game left/right narratives. Meanwhile the multipolar gets on looking after its Peoples, encourages healthy children and educates them for free, cares for its elderly and needy and it’s workers. The difference is daily more stark. I read the Chinese are looking to cure diabetes; the Russians , cancer. The Thai and Indian hospitals are cheap and fast, all your tests done and results provided in hours, I know that through direct experience too.
Apparently Turkey and Hungary still have medical tourism too.
If anyone needs medical attention it would be cheaper and faster to fly across the world! I kid you not.