The BMA’s consultation with doctors and members of the public on their views and perceptions of end of life care and the assisted dying debate is a welcome step forward. A postcode lottery of care is unacceptable and no campaign group involved in the assisted dying debate disagrees with making end of life care a […]
Category: NHS
John Hughes: Why dying should be everyone’s business
Like all non-specialist, palliative care healthcare professionals, doctors have varying degrees of willingness to broach difficult conversations with patients and families, particularly if it is a conversation that is about care as opposed to cure. But a new report from the British Medical Association (BMA) says that doctors need to be having these difficult conversations […]
Sebastian Taylor et al: The junior doctors’ dispute: manufacturing bad faith
The rollercoaster ride of dispute talks between the British Medical Association representing “junior” doctors and the Secretary of State for Health points either to incompetent negotiations or to the political value of failure. Jeremy Hunt has claimed that 15 of 16 points were resolved, and that money was the only remaining issue. Junior doctors disagree. […]
Elizabeth Wortley: What the junior doctors’ strike taught me
Yesterday I came off the picket line having enjoyed some lively conversations with my colleagues. As passing drivers honked their horns in support, one of my colleagues observed that it’s a shame we don’t get together to provide more support for each other regularly. This started a discussion about our attitudes towards each other on a […]
Richard Smith: Does the NHS meet the needs of junior doctors?
Bain, the global consultancy, produces what it calls “a pyramid of employee needs,” and on the day when junior doctors are striking it’s instructive to see how well the NHS is doing in meeting their needs. The bottom of the pyramid is “satisfied employees,” and the very fact that junior doctors are striking suggests that […]
Ian Forgacs: Will senior doctors and the public support junior doctor’s strike action?
Support for their junior colleagues from senior doctors has thus far been strong. What surely must have been almost the entire consultant body at the Royal Free Hospital (505 of them) wrote to The Guardian in their favour, the presidents of (almost) all the Royal Colleges were also behind them in their letter written not […]
Jessamy Bagenal: Junior doctors strike action—frustration and mistrust
Junior doctors received a text on Monday 4 January informing them that the negotiations over the junior doctor’s contract had ended. Industrial action in England is going to proceed. It left one feeling somewhat flat. The first day of industrial action will be on the 12 January when only emergency care will be provided for […]
Samir Dawlatly: The countdown to the 2020 GP conundrum
There can be no doubt that the problems facing general practice are complex and interconnected, and that the answers have proved elusive for many. GPs and the organisations that represent them have been very vocal about the obstacles hampering the ability of grassroots GPs to do their jobs safely and effectively: from increasing workload from […]
Samir Dawlatly: What are the costs of the public sector’s tickbox culture?
One of the responses of the Department for Education to the problem of radicalisation of pupils in schools has been to increase the number of Ofsted inspectors. The issue of home schooled pupils raised the faintly ridiculous prospect of Ofsted inspections of family homes. It seems that the culture of regulation by inspection is pervasive […]
Jessamy Bagenal and Rebecca Kenny: Turning up on the doorstep
Poor Jeremy Hunt he can’t catch a break. As health secretary, one of the few things you could rely on was that your employees, sorry “colleagues” (the term Mr Hunt used when he recently wrote to all junior doctors about contracts), were so busy working that you could make politically expedient changes to the NHS […]