The NHS does not have enough medics to staff beds in “surge hubs” for Covid patients being set up at hospitals around England, a representative of health service managers has warned.

The chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, said that an “emergency staffing model” will be needed, with recently retired doctors and nurses and experienced volunteers called in if the additional capacity is needed.

And a member of the committee of the Doctors Association UK, neurologist Dr David Nicholl of University Hospital Birmingham, warned that many clinicians within the NHS are “really, really anxious” about the rising pressure on staffing within the service.

“The biggest threat is staffing at every level,” Dr Nicholl told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Speaking to my colleagues in critical care, they tell me they have less staff than they had 12 months ago. 

“That, frankly, is because people are burned out from last winter. A lot of people are really, really anxious about what what’s going to happen next.”

Read the full article here

“The NHS could not function without its foreign born workers. Around 169,000 people, or 13% of the workforce was born outside of the UK.”

Radio 4 interviewed DAUK’s Dr Pushpo Hossain on NHS Overseas Workers Day last Friday:

Would you like to continue working in the nhs?

“I really love working for the NHS and I would like to call it my home. But unfortunately it is our fate as an international health care worker, we are on temporary visas and cannot obtain permanent residency…we have to be on temporary visas for five years before we can apply for the Indefinite Leave to Remain, which also comes with an exuberant fee of around £3000 per applicant.”

Will your salary be affected by this proposed 1% pay increase? 

“To be honest, it feels very, very insulting…for some of us [the 1% pay increase does not even cover] the £3000 that is required for the Indefinite Leave to Remain application. So how are we being recognized? How is this being fair to all these international health care workers…we have put our lives on the line and is this how they want to reward us?”

“Just getting up for my night shift that I’ve had to pick up because two of our colleagues have come down with COVID and so now there is a rota gap.”

“I caught COVID in the first wave and I followed all the COVID PPE guidelines, you know, all the PPE that I had couldn’t stop me from getting COVID. I felt really sad and scared for the people who were saying that they did not have PPE because it’s just such a terrible disease. It’s very scary.”

Dr Pushpo Hossain

“This is the story of the UK government’s desperate 12 billion pound scramble to kit out the NHS for COVID. And the tens of millions of items of PPE bought at taxpayers expense that now can’t be used as planned. It’s pretty devastating for those who work on the front line and know so much money is being wasted when it could have been invested in our frontline services.”

Matt Hancock has been criticised for a “disgustingly disrespectful” claim that there was never a national shortage of personal protective equipment during the pandemic.

Doctors and MPs condemned the UK health secretary as “deeply insulting” on Tuesday after he insisted that his team had delivered protective equipment for frontline NHS staff in the “teeth of a pandemic”.

Doctors groups said they had helped deliver 45,000 masks to hospitals that lacked adequate supply at the start of the crisis and that the families of healthcare workers who lost their lives to Covid had raised concerns about the protection they received.

Amid the first wave of coronavirus, NHS staff were photographed with poorly fitting PPE, with some having to make gowns themselves from bin bags.

Hancock said that while there were “individual challenges in access to PPE”, they “never had a national shortage, because of my team”.

He was addressing a high court ruling over failings in publishing details of coronavirus-related contracts. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This has all been looked into in great detail. It’s only because of the transparency that I support that we can ask questions about these contracts.

“And what’s more, it’s easy to ask these questions, but what is hard is to deliver PPE in the teeth of a pandemic.”

Dolin Bhagawati, from the medical campaign group Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), said Hancock’s comment that the NHS did not face a national shortage of PPE during the first wave of the pandemic “is disgustingly disrespectful to the memory of frontline colleagues who died from Covid-19 while raising concerns about inadequate PPE”.

He said frontline staff did not imagine having to provide their own makeshift protective equipment, “raising our concerns for weeks only for them to be ignored”.

DAUK delivered 45,000 masks to hospitals that lacked adequate supply. “We are not imagining mourning the colleagues that treated Covid-19 patients with inadequate PPE,” Bhagawati said.

He added: “This callous disregard for the experience of shell-shocked NHS staff in order to save political face is beneath contemptible.”

Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/23/hancock-criticised-for-claim-there-was-no-national-covid-ppe-shortage

Dr Katie Sanderson, committee member of DAUK and junior doctor working in London spoke out on the care of COVID patients during the second wave.

“I found it much scarier this time. We are much better at looking after these patients. I think we know how to treat them much better. The volume of people turning up who are really unwell is just unremitting and the concern is how are we going to manage over the next few weeks – looking after people well takes time.”

“There’s a finite number of staff available. And so I suppose every new admission just means less time for everybody else.”

DAUK’s Dr Katie Sanderson spoke to BBC Radio 4 about her concerns as a frontline hospital doctor for the weeks ahead:

“I found it much scarier this time because we’re very well set up. We are much better at looking after these patients. I think we know how to treat them much better. But the volume of people turning up who are really unwell is just unremitting, and I think that’s already the case now. And the concern is how are we going to manage over the next few weeks. Looking after people well takes time, and there’s a finite number of staff available. And so I suppose every new admission just means less time for everybody else.”

Dr Katie Sanderson, DAUK

Listen in below to Dr Sanderson,

1. The assurance that the deaths of their colleagues will be properly investigated.
In the first instant that means making sure that they’re all referred to Coroner’s, as deaths that are potentially unnatural, or occur as a result of employment.

2. Universal death in service benefits.
All of us are worried about dying as a result of being infected with coronavirus at work. People’s families shouldn’t be concerned about facing financial hardship if a member of their family,who is a health care worker, dies.

3. Protection for those from other countries.
We know that health care workers come from across the world and they have a whole array of Visa situations. If you die serving this country your family should not face deportation and this country should look after your family. This is a huge huge source of anxiety for many people.

For the first time Charlie Massey publicly stated that his decision to appeal the fitness to practice (MPTS) verdict, and pursue Dr Bawa-Garba in the High Court was wrong.

Giving a much need explanation Mr Massey stated:

‘The GMC wasn’t involved in the criminal process whatsoever. So the question that came to me was whether or not that criminal conviction itself should lead to suspension or erasure. The tribunal decided to suspend Dr Bawa-Garba. The advice that I had at the time was that the tribunal had acted unlawfully and went behind the criminal judgement in terms of her responsibility for Jack Adcock’s death. I said at the time that I felt I had no option but to appeal that decision. The High Court decision have upheld that view and then the Court of Appeal overturned that view. It clarified that that legal advice I had was with hindsight not correct and I completely accept that. If that case came up now that Court of Appeal judgement would mean that I wouldn’t have appealed that case.’

DAUK welcomes the Charlie Massey’s comments and are pleased that it has now been accepted by the GMC that their decision to take Dr Bawa-Garba’s to court to have her erased from the medical register was wrong.

Dr Batt-Rawden who interviewed Charlie Massey said ‘We very much welcome the GMC’s acknowledgment that their actions in the Bawa-Garba case were wrong. It was refreshing to hear such honesty from the GMC, and for the first time some evidence of genuine reflection and learning. However, it will take more than this to win back the trust of doctors and repair the damage done to the medical profession. Doctors will be no doubt be asking why it took so long for the GMC to take responsibility for their decision making in a case which has not only damaged morale against the frontlines, but also had a negative impact on patient safety. It is a shame that it has taken 16 months of lobbying from DAUK to get us to this point, but I am hopeful we can now start to move on, and work with the GMC on moving from a culture of blame, to one of learning.’

CONTACT

Contact@dauk.org

NOTES TO EDITORS

1.Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden presented a documentary on BBC Radio 4 aired at 2000 on 10th June 109 on why doctors are leaving the NHS. As part of this episode she interview Charlie Massey, as well as senior representatives of the BMA, RCEM and NHS Providers.

2.DAUK is an independent lobbying group formed in response to the GMC’s actions in the Bawa-Garba case. It’s first action as an organisation was to co-ordinate a letter to Charlie Massey protesting his decision to take Dr Bawa-Garba to court in a letter signed by over 4500 doctors and several MPs.

3.DAUK called for a public investigation into the GMC’s handling of the case which was held by the Health Select Committee in October 2018.

4.DAUK have given evidence to both the Williams Review and the GMC commissioned independent review into gross negligence manslaughter and culpable homicide.

Coverage in Pulse:

The GMC’s chief executive has admitted the legal advice the regulator received during the Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba case was wrong and if the same case were to take place now he would not try to have a doctor barred from practice.

Charlie Massey said he ‘completely accepts’ the legal advice he was given to pursue the striking off of Dr Bawa-Garba – who was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence following the death of a six-year-old patient – was ‘not correct’.

In response, Dr Batt-Rawden said: ‘The acknowledgment that his decision to appeal the MPTS verdict in Dr Bawa-Garba’s case was incorrect was long overdue and will be welcomed by doctors and the public.

‘DAUK wrote to the GMC as far back as February 2018 in a letter signed by over 4,500 doctors in protest of the GMC’s appeal against Dr Bawa-Garba. In that letter we brought to light that the Professional Standards Authority had found this decision to be “incorrect” and “without merit” and that the MPTS “considered all relevant principles and applied the case law appropriately”.

‘DAUK also pointed out that the Supreme Court established that professional tribunals were better placed than courts to determine professional competence in 2016. We were therefore astonished by the GMC’s actions in this case. We were pleased that DAUK was found to be correct in the Court of Appeal in August 2018 and that Dr Bawa-Garba was rightly restored to the medical register, something we have long fought for during our Learn Not Blame campaign.’

She added: ‘To my knowledge this was the first occasion that Charlie Massey accepted publicly that this decision was wrong. This represents a crucial first step in repairing the damage done to the medical profession by the Bawa-Garba case.

‘The GMC still has a long way to go in regaining the trust of doctors, but for the first time in this interview I saw that some genuine reflection and learning had taken place. I hope this signals change in tone from the GMC and we look forward to working with them in moving from a culture of blame, to one of learning.’

Read the full article here:

http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/gp-topics/legal/gmc-chief-executive-admits-bawa-garba-legal-advice-was-wrong/20038855.article

Sharing her heartfelt personal experiences of frontline working in Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care Sammy spoke of the toll this has had on her life. To get to the root of the problem she asked the tough questions that many doctors want answered by our medical establishment.

The half an hour episode as part of the My Name Is series included raw and candid interviews with hard hitting questions to Charlie Massey, Chief Executive of the General Medical Council, Saffron Cordery, Deputy Chief Executive of NHS Providers, Dr Taj Hassan, President of RCEM as well as Dr Jeeves Wij, Chair of UK JDC amongst others, holding these organisations to account for their decisions.

To give a balanced view of the frontline she speaks to a number of practicing junior doctors from a variety of specialties such as Emergency Medicine, Surgery and Intensive Care who give a first hand account of the pressures faced in the NHS currently.

The programme was be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 20:00 on Monday 10th June 2019. Catch up with the episode below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005t3h