Dr Mary McCarthy: NHS needs a rescue package – right now!
While the Government is wilfully ignoring junior doctors' concerns about the unfair, politically-driven contract it plans to impose, senior doctors are worried about the impact this imposition will have on the NHS and the future of patient care.
Three things have happened over the past week which make this clear. Firstly, the chairs of 22 medical colleges wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister urging that the imposition of the contract be halted, that the junior doctors' strike be postponed and that negotiations recommence in the hope of finding a resolution to a conflict that should never have got this far.
Secondly, 1,000 doctors signed a letter to the PM asking him to intervene in the junior doctors' dispute, stop the imposition of the contract and resume negotiations.
Lastly, doctors this week received notice from the British Medical Association (BMA) of a special representative meeting, which has been called to discuss the current crisis in the NHS, to talk about the low morale among doctors – which is leading younger ones to leave England and older ones to retire – and to propose possible solutions.
The BMA represents all doctors, ranging from junior hospital doctors and medical students, to army doctors, GPs and senior consultants. To realise that doctors at all levels and across all specialities are equally concerned about the NHS just shows the scale of the problem.
We have seen years of cuts and "efficiency" savings trim away what was already a lean and efficient health service. The staff ratios to patients are so tight that sometimes it isn't safe. Rotas are having to be stretched and twisted just to make sure that wards are covered with enough nurses and doctors. GP waiting times have increased, and hospital outpatient appointments are having to be cancelled and rebooked at short notice. There aren't enough beds to care for the growing elderly population that we have in this country and social care has suffered from financial restrictions just as badly as the NHS has.
There are motions being put forward to a separate annual meeting later in the year to ask that funding for the NHS is increased to the level of funding that other European states have. We are not poorer than other European countries – in fact we are richer than almost all of them. Increasing funding to an average EU level shouldn't be a problem. Doctors just need to convince the Government that the NHS is too valuable to be allowed to collapse. Our NHS needs a rescue package – and it needs it now.
