The Prime Minister has previously told NHS staff “We owe you more than words can say” Now he must back up his rhetoric with action

Dr Kaveri Jalundhwala-Vice Chair DAUK

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Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden appeared on This Morning where she reacted to Conservative MP Desmond Swayne, who encouraged anti-vaxxers and said the NHS were “exaggerating”

Shaking her head, Dr Samantha replied: “I just can’t even, when you’re a member of the NHS and you are giving your all and spending 16 hours in PPE and working seven days a week, working yourself into the ground to keep patients safe.

“To hear that from somebody representing the government is really upsetting and it’s not acceptable, the pictures that you see of ambulances, queues down the road, they are real, and they have sick patients inside.

“And if the Tory MP wants to see that they are very welcome to volunteer in my ICU, where we are short-staffed, to help turn patients on to their fronts, so that they can fight for their lives.”

“And if the Tory MP wants to see that they are very welcome to volunteer in my ICU, where we are short-staffed, to help turn patients on to their fronts, so that they can fight for their lives.”

Read the report in The Mirror here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-begs-covid-sceptical-tory-23400306

(David Oliver – NHS Consultant Physician writes) The High Court ruled last week that Matt Hancock had acted unlawfully in failing to publish details, within 30 days, of dozens of contracts awarded without competition for good and services – especially PPE during the pandemic. 

In his interview since, the Health Secretary didn’t seem bothered or sorry. 

He came out all guns blazing, laughing it off, running down the studio clock by saying his focus during Spring 2020 had been on “saving lives” and working tirelessly to procure the best PPE, as if that made the law breaking okay.

There was no apology. No acknowledgement that he had done anything wrong or breached the ministerial code or Nolan Principles for public office, which require honesty, integrity and transparency.

But PPE supplies to frontline staff in health and social care are no laughing matter and the court ruling is the latest in a long line of Government PPE failings.

A BMJ Study in December showed that hands on staff working with patients are around 7 times more likely to be admitted to hospital as Covid-19 patients than people in other roles. Thousands more are still suffering from “long Covid”.

It is a basic moral and legal requirement for employers to give staff in any job the equipment they need to stay safe at work. And NHS staff are government employees or contractors. 

We have come into work surrounded by Covid-19 week after week for year now. We don’t need applause. We don’t want “hero” status for doing our jobs. But we do feel badly let down and Hancock’s attitude hardly helps.

The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee concluded this month that many healthcare workers had been “put in the appalling situation of having to care for people with Covid-19 without sufficient PPE to protect themselves from infection” and that “as PPE stocks ran perilously low” some were “forced to re-use single use items”.

The PAC also found that social care staff in care homes and home care services had struggled even more to get the right PPE, with the NHS being prioritised. Theirs is very hands on work, going from home to home or room to room to care for vulnerable citizens for low pay.

November’s National Audit Office report on Covid-19 procurement condemned, in unusually strong terms, the Government’s serial incompetence, lack of transparency, slow responses and poor value for public money in procuring PPE from the private sector. 

It was clear that there had been cronyism, with many contracts going to friends or party donors.

The Doctors’ Association UK has collected responses from over 1500 members about failings in supplying them with basic PPE items and another 200 members who were ignored, threatened, silenced or bullied by local bosses when they complained.

Read the full article here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/david-oliver-ppe-supplies-frontline-23553116

The NHS is facing a chronic shortage of GPs, as new figures show family doctors are quitting at a rate of three a day.

GP surgeries in England lost nearly 300 full-time doctors in the three months before Christmas, according to official NHS stats.

They were over-stretched even before the pandemic – expected to take on more work with no extra time to do it.

And now the extra pressures of Covid-19, including helping to deliver Britain’s world-beating Covid jab rollout, have left many facing burnout.

New doctors can’t be trained quick enough to replace them – with a shortfall of 7,000 GPs expected by 2023.

Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “GPs and our teams want to provide safe, high-quality care to our patients and we can only do this with an adequate workforce. We desperately need more GPs working in the NHS.”

The figures, revealed in NHS Digital’s latest GP headcount, show the Tory government’s 2015 promise of delivering 5,000 new GPs by 2020 was a sham.

In fact the number rose by just 717 – from 34,429 at the end of September 2015 to 35,146 on December 31 2020.

And when looking at the number of fully-qualified permanent GPs – excluding locums and registrars – the number has actually dropped from 28,631 to 26,754.

Cheshire GP Dr Rosie Shire, a member of the Doctors’ Association UK GP Committee, said: “It isn’t surprising GPs are leaving the profession. My personal experience is that GPs are burning out through increasing pressure, struggling with low morale and looking at alternative careers.

“We are also seeing colleagues dying from Covid-19. Mental Health services that support all doctors are seeing an increase in contacts from doctors struggling to cope.

“We have been advised we can reduce some non-essential work to enable us to support the Covid-19 vaccination programme, but it is hard to find what part of General Practice work is non-essential?

“Smear tests, diabetes reviews, and baby vaccinations still need to happen to ensure we help people stay as well as they can.

“We were maxed out before the pandemic, and now we are struggling.”

She added: “When the pandemic hit the UK GPs had to change the way they operate virtually overnight.

“We are only too aware the limitations of remote consultations via telephone, video and email, and we still need to call patients to the surgery for face to face appointments.

“Remote consultations involve extra risk, so the GP needs to be even more thorough in the consultation to make sure they understand the problem and communicate the suggested treatment plan.

“This often takes longer than the standard 10 minute GP consultation, which was woefully short to begin with.

“All the staff in General Practice are working as hard as they can, and 5,000 extra GPs on the ground in 2020, would have helped ease the pressures created by the worldwide pandemic.

“Along with other frontline workers, we are struggling to get chance to rest and recharge. At the moment it feels like there isn’t any let up.”

Read the article in full here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fears-doctors-suffer-burnout-nhs-23498066

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that, as of Sunday morning, three quarters of all people over 80 in the UK have been vaccinated.

“(This) is absolutely brilliant progress,” he said, speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday.

“Similar number of care homes, around three quarters and in fact we’ve vaccinated more people in just the last three days than France has in the entire history of this disease.”

Mr Hancock also defended the Government’s decision to delay the second doses of those receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Mr Hancock said the responsible course of action was to get “as many people protected… as quickly as possible” he said.

Mr Hancock said that case numbers were “incredibly high” and the NHS remained under intense pressure.

“There is early evidence that the lockdown is starting to bring cases down but we are a long, long, long way from being low enough because the case rate was incredibly high,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme.

“You can see the pressure on the NHS – you can see it every day.”

It came in response to concerns over delaying the Pfizer vaccine by up to 12 weeks.

Dr Rosie Shire, a member of the Doctors’ Association UK, said studies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine show two doses three weeks apart gave 90% immunity.

“What really concerns us is we don’t know what happens if you don’t give that second dose of vaccination after three weeks.”

“The fact is that people are being vaccinated now and being put into what is effectively an unregulated unlicensed trial, whereby they’re receiving this vaccination on the understanding that they don’t know what’s going on.”

Dr Rosie Shire

Read the full article here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/hancock-reveals-75-over-80s-23375171

The Covid vaccine rollout could turn into a PPE-style fiasco, MPs, doctors and care chiefs warned last night.

Hundreds of GP surgeries and scores of hospitals are still waiting for Pfizer jabs.

Vaccine appointments for the most vulnerable are being cancelled at the last minute because of the delay, doctors say. 

And 12,000 of the country’s 15,000 care homes are not even being considered for jabs right now – with only seven areas of England getting them so far.

Health leaders have also raised concerns many frontline NHS staff are still not being sent for jabs.

On Christmas Eve the Government said 616,933 people in the UK had been given a first dose – 512,594 in England. 

But it’s understood half of England’s 135 trusts are still waiting, along with hundreds of surgeries.

Yesterday MPs warned ministers not to repeat the PPE and testing “shambles”. 

Meanwhile, Doctors Association UK said surgeries have reported failed deliveries of the Pfizer jab. 

Dr Vinesh Patel told of “practices booking in patients, and then cancelling because of promised vaccines not turning up”.

GPs in Warwickshire have 3,500 over-80s to vaccinate at a country club in Leek Wootton. But they received only 975 vaccines last week – with no idea when more will come.

Read the full article here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-vaccine-chaos-appointments-axed-23224793