Urgent, practical steps

Now DAUK is calling for urgent, practical steps to protect staff and patients. These include:

• FFP2 and FFP3 masks for frontline healthcare workers
• Free flu and Covid vaccinations for healthcare workers who want them
• Implementation of clean air standards (HEPA/Ventilation)

DAUK warned that without immediate steps, the toll on patients and staff will continue to mount. Dr Matt Kneale, DAUK co-chair, said: “The sickness levels in frontline doctors and healthcare workers mean we’re facing a state of emergency in our hospitals.

Black swan event

“Ministers will tell you this is a ‘black swan’ event, but it isn’t. “In July last year, the Covid-19 Inquiry handed the Government a blueprint to prevent this exact scenario. They chose not to act on it. “It is heartbreaking to stand on the frontline and watch history repeat itself less than two years after the Hallett Report. “We entered this winter with 98% bed occupancy, with no slack, no buffer and no action plan.

Flu season

“This is not only a bad flu season, it is the inevitable result of political negligence. “They had the recommendations. They ignored them. Our patients and colleagues in the NHS are paying the price.” NHS England figures show the current H3N2 “subclade K” flu wave has driven a 55% rise in flu admissions in a week. An average of 2,660 patients are hospitalised per day. Emergency departments are reporting extreme pressure as they are faced with rising infections alongside high rates of illness among healthcare workers.

NHS workforce

Dr Kneale said: “It’s infuriating to witness a preventable crisis unfold. “It’s a crisis that is placing intolerable strain on the NHS workforce and endangering vulnerable patients. “We need the Government to act now.” DAUK committee members are all volunteers. They campaign on the issues facing doctors in their own time. Please support their work by joining DAUK or donating to our GoFundMe.

DAUK’s chair Ms Helen Fernandes said: “We’d like to congratulate Sir Keir Starmer on becoming the new prime minister.

“We’d urge him and his government to engage meaningfully and to work collaboratively with DAUK and other health care bodies to ensure the NHS receives the support it needs.

“The NHS continues to provide excellent care to patients across the country despite it being chronically underfunded for the past decade.

“As a result of that underfunding there are issues regarding pay, working conditions, staff shortages, training, access to jobs, buildings and estates, the list goes on, all of which is causing disquiet and anxiety.

“We’ve set out steps we believe are needed to ease some of the pressures on the NHS and stand ready to engage in productive dialogue and action to achieve these goals.”

We set out our manifesto for general practice last month, here, on the 76th anniversary of the NHS, are the steps for the wider service.

Cross-party collaboration

Take the NHS off the political agenda and make it a cross-party collaboration. This will avoid the inevitable disruptive reorganisations that come with each government. We need stability and not more reform or reorganisation.

NHS workforce

The most valuable resource the NHS service has is its staff, but years of disinvestment, bad planning, poor wellbeing and retention issues have led to a workforce crisis.

Plans to cut NHS waiting lists by asking staff to deliver 40,000 more appointments a week through evening and weekend clinics are undeliverable and will not solve the crisis.

We need investment in staff, better pay, improved working conditions and cutting bureaucracy to free up time with patients.

Social care

Social care remains a major obstacle to healthcare provision in hospitals. Tens of thousands of hospital patients are fit to be discharged but cannot because of a lack of available social care.

Increasingly primary care and even ambulance services are picking up the pieces.

Investment in social care would free up beds, cut backlogs, reduce pressures on primary care, and ensure people are cared for in the correct way.

General practice

Invest £3 per month per head of population to achieve a return to real terms funding last seen in 2015. That’s the equivalent of the price of cup of coffee per month.

Review the additional roles reimbursement scheme (ARRS) to allow more flexibility to hire GPs. Currently there’s a shortage of GP roles but a trained and willing workforce, with millions of patients waiting for appointments and GPs overworked.

Aim for ratios of patient to GP full-time equivalent of 1:1600 patients – and even lower in deprived areas – to reduce pressure ensure all patients have equitable access to GPs.

Relieve pressure on GPs by shortening secondary care waiting lists.

Non-doctors

Concerns around the role and regulation of physician associates need to be addressed. Patients are being put at risk by the roll-out of non-doctors and proposals for their regulation is blurring the lines with qualified doctors.

NHS estates

Long-term planning and funding for buildings and estates. A decade of underinvestment has left buildings crumbling. We need room for everyone, including any plan to expand places for healthcare students.

IT infrastructure

Outdated and fragmented IT systems put pressure on frontline medics and keep them from spending more time with patients.

Investment is needed to modernise NHS IT systems and improve efficiency.

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According to the British Social Attitudes survey fewer than a quarter of people (24 per cent) were satisfied with the NHS in 2023.

It is a five per cent drop from the previous year and down 46 per cent from the highest-ever recorded satisfaction rating of 70 per cent in 2010.

The biggest reasons for dissatisfaction with the NHS were waiting times, staff shortages and a lack of Government investment in the service.

Steve Taylor, DAUK’s GP spokesperson, said: “After 14 years of austerity, cuts and underinvestment, these figures come as no surprise to me, and I’m sure to many who work in the NHS.

DAUK’s GP spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor says a lack of funding lies behind the drop in public satisfaction with the NHS

“There are a lot of reasons for public satisfaction in the NHS being at its lowest level including poor leadership and poor decisions.

“The most important one is a failure to invest adequately in all areas of the service, particularly in the areas that would make the most difference, such as general practice.

“Getting a GP appointment was one of the biggest frustrations for people, but if we look at general practice, it accounts for 1.3 million appointments every day, almost double the total number of appointments in all other areas of the NHS.

“Despite this, general practice receives just 5.4 per cent of the NHS budget and has had funding reduced by 20 per cent in real terms per patient since 2016.

“It’s led to the number of GPs falling by seven per cent, and yet GPs are doing 20 per cent more appointments.

“It seems to me the blame lies with MPs and not GPs.” 

The Red Cross in 2017 said the NHS was in humanitarian crisis. And that was following 2 people dying on a trolley waiting to be seen.

Dr Yaso Browne, DAUK Lead Editor

Interviewed alongside other healthcare staff Dr Yaso Browne speaks about the reality of working in today’s NHS. She explores the impact skeleton staffing on waiting times and patient safety, as well as discussing the impact of under-resourcing on doctors and healthcare professionals.

63% of doctors say they are burnout at work, and unfortunately 430 healthcare professionals have committed suicide in the UK.

Dr Yaso Browne, GP and DAUK Lead Editor