Doctors Association UK (DAUK) has written to health secretary James Murray urging the introduction of clear national standards to ensure patients referred to hospital by a GP are assessed by a doctor.

DAUK GP co-leads Dr Sarah Jacques and Dr Steve Taylor wrote to Mr Murray following coroners’ reports into the deaths of nine-year-old Dylan Cope and eight-year-old Ethan Hanson.

They were both urgently referred to hospital by their GPs with suspected appendicitis but, according to the coroners’ findings, were not assessed by a doctor after arriving at hospital.

The letter has been featured by The BMJ, Pulse and Doctors.net.uk

In it, Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor called on the government to introduce national standards requiring patients urgently referred to hospital by a GP to be assessed by a doctor.

The letter also asks to ensure that no patient with undifferentiated symptoms is assessed or discharged without doctor oversight.

DAUK has invited Mr Murray and Department of Health officials to discuss the proposals.

Read the letter in full.

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Doctors Association UK (DAUK) GP co-leads Dr Sarah Jacques and Dr Steve Taylor highlight the cases of nine-year-old Dylan Cope and eight-year-old Ethan Hanson.

In both cases, the children were appropriately assessed in primary care and urgently referred to hospital by their GP.

However, according to the coroners’ findings, neither child was assessed by a doctor after arriving at hospital.

Patient safety

Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor’s letter states: “These cases raise serious questions about the safety of current assessment systems in emergency departments and the roles of non-doctors.

“When a GP refers a patient to hospital, that referral represents a clinical judgment that is the equivalent of a medical consultant opinion in the community, and thus necessitates a further medical assessment.”

DAUK is urging health secretary James Murray to introduce clear national standards to ensure patients referred by GPs are assessed by a doctor on arrival in hospital.

They are:

• Any patient referred by a community GP to hospital by a GP must be assessed by a doctor in the hospital.
• No patient presenting with undifferentiated (undiagnosed) symptoms should be allowed to be assessed or discharged without the approval of a doctor.
• We ask the Secretary of State to review the current status of assessments in emergency departments to ensure patient safety is the priority and that doctors are involved in all cases of undifferentiated care and GP referrals.

Improvements in clinical practice

In their letter, Dr Jacques and Dr Taylor said: “It’s vital we ensure that the issues identified by the coroners in the cases of Dylan Cope and Ethan Hanson lead to improvements in clinical practice.”

DAUK has invited Mr Murray and Department of Health officials to discuss the proposals.

Read the letter in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

That is the question posed by DAUK’s GP co-leads Dr Steve Taylor and Dr Sarah Jacques in the latest episode of the Not the NHS Again podcast.

Titled The Health Bill – Wes Streeting’s worrying leaving gift, it sees Dr Taylor and Dr Jacques explore the implications of the Government’s new Health Bill and what it could mean for patient privacy and public trust.

They discuss how the proposed legislation would see significant changes to the way health data is managed, including the creation of a single patient record and the transfer of greater control over NHS data to the Secretary of State.

Not The NHS Again

Listeners will also hear about:

The breakdown of the proposed abolition of NHS England and its real motives

• How the new single patient record could change the doctor-patient relationship
• Why there’s a serious concern about data being used for profit, not patient care
• The risks of losing local control and the increased influence of tech giants like Palantir
• What the shift in legislation means for patient opt-outs and data privacy safeguards

Listen to The Health Bill – Wes Streeting’s worrying leaving gift.

Not The NHS Again is a collaboration between Keep Our NHS Public and DAUK.

All episodes are available on Spotify and YouTube.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Jacques highlights the difficult balancing act of supporting valued team members and maintaining the financial sustainability of practices against a backdrop of rising employment costs and limited contract funding.

Writing a blog for Nursing in Practice, Dr Jacques said: “The challenge for partners is not a lack of willingness to reward staff, but the financial pressures practices are currently under.”

General practice funding

Dr Jacques’s blog examines the realities behind pay decisions, the impact of the 2026/27 contract settlement, and why wider reform of general practice funding is essential if practice nurses are to receive equitable and competitive pay.

She said: “Ultimately, the issue of practice nurse pay cannot be separated from the wider funding model for general practice.

Read Dr Jacques’s blog for Nursing in Practice.

DAUK is run by frontline doctors for frontline doctors. Please support our work by donating to our GoFundMe.

Dr Steve Taylor, DAUK GP co-lead, contributed to BMJ article on the alarm among doctors and health experts about the proposals to hand the health secretary sweeping new powers to control patients’ data.

The plans are included in the new NHS Modernisation Bill.

Dr Taylor told the BMJ and posted on social media that a single patient record sounds appealing in principle but, as a GP, he can already access hospital records, blood test results, and scan results.

Single patient record

He said: “The selling point of the single patient record was the fact that you wouldn’t have to repeat yourself 10 times to every clinician or nurse that you met.

“But the reality is, even within hospital contexts the patient is the best person to tell you what’s in their patient record.”

Dr Sarah Jacques, DAUK GP co-lead, has spoken to GP Online and to Pulse Today to express concern at the new Health Bill and single patient record.

Read the article in the BMJ in full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Sarah Jacques, GP co-lead for the Doctors’ Association UK, warned the plan risked undermining patient confidentiality, professional accountability, and public trust.

Speaking to GP Online, Dr Jacques said that while GPs broadly support better communication and appropriate information sharing across the NHS, the current proposals appear to extend beyond improving patient care.

Serious unanswered questions

She said: “In principle, I believe GPs support better communication and appropriate information sharing across the NHS.

“However, the current proposals appear to go far beyond improving direct clinical care and raise serious unanswered questions about confidentiality, governance, liability, transparency, and public trust.

“I think one of the biggest concerns is around the GP data controller role. Yet there has been very little clarity about what happens to those responsibilities under the single patient record model.

Health Bill

“GPs need to know whether they will still retain legal and professional liability for information that may ultimately be shared more widely or potentially altered by external organisations and providers.”

DAUK’s concerns around the Health Bill and the creation of a Single Patient Record have also been reported in Pulse Today.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Sarah Jacques, DAUK GP co-lead, has called for the new Health Bill to include stronger safeguards and transparency measures.

Speaking to Pulse Today, Dr Jacques expressed concern that the new Health Bill grants ministers sweeping powers over access to patient data.

Health Bill

She said the proposals showed ‘a total disregard for our personal information and the consequences of sharing that information with the powers that be’.

And she warned that expanded access could ultimately be driven by financial interests rather than patient benefit.

Dr Jacques said: “With what they are proposing, certain groups have unfettered access to identifiable data. It’s not what a single patient record should really fundamentally be about.

Data grab

“It should be just for the clinician and the patients. It shouldn’t be for groups of people to do data grabs for their own benefit.

“I don’t necessarily disagree that we perhaps need more information for research and things like that, but there has to be a different way of going about getting that information, and it needs to be transparent.

“We need to know who is asking for it, why they’re asking, and when they’re accessing that information.

Understand the implications

“We need to understand the implications of what it would be someone shared that information for research purposes.

“Nobody’s going to have a say in any of that in the current guise of the bill.”

Read the article in Pulse Today full.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

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GP co-lead Dr Steve Taylor highlighted the work of DAUK on fit notes during an interview on national radio.

Dr Taylor was discussing a survey by BBC that found that hundreds of GPs have never refused to sign a patient off work for mental health issues.

Some respondents told the BBC they were frustrated with the current system, saying providing fit notes should not be part a GP’s role.

Fit notes

The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) GP co-leads Dr Taylor and Dr Sarah Jacques last year took part in discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions about the future of fit notes.

Ahead of the meeting, DAUK surveyed GPs to ensure their views were represented.

The survey found:

• 69% of GPs said fit notes should not remain part of their remit
• 85% felt a new service should take responsibility for issuing fit notes
• 46% supported a return to four weeks self-certification
• 51% did not favour self-certification by patients
• 94% reported that refusing a fit note negatively affects the doctor/patient relationship

Dr Taylor, speaking to Tom Swarbrick on LBC, said: “The majority of respondents said they didn’t think GPs were the best people to issue fit notes.

Work health

“I wasn’t expecting that many, but the majority did agree with the survey the BBC have done that actually it’s hard for GPs to assess health in work.”

He added: “GPs usually only hear one side of the story.

“The person in front of us says they are struggling to work, but we don’t know the workplace situation or the employer’s perspective.

Self-certify

“What worked well was during the pandemic when people could self-certify for a month.

“And so the conversations were occurring between the employee and the employer.”

Listen to Dr Taylor’s LBC interview on the DAUK Instagram.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

Dr Sarah Jacques, GP co-lead, represented DAUK at the event to launch the Solve the Maze campaign, a joint drive by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and the Patients Association.

It brought together policymakers, clinical leaders, patient advocates, and frontline clinicians.

The campaign has three main aims:

• Every patient should be able to navigate their care
• Every patient should be able to see their GP when they need to
• Every patient should be able to access information about their care

Dr Jacques said: “At DAUK, we strongly support the core message of this campaign.

“Frontline GPs see daily how complex, fragmented pathways create unnecessary stress for patients and increase administrative burden for clinicians.

“An NHS that is easier to navigate is essential not only for improving patient experience, but also for enabling GPs to spend more time delivering clinical care rather than managing bureaucracy.”

Professor Victoria Tzortziou Brown, RCGP chair, said: “Decades of underfunding and poor workforce planning have left GP numbers far behind where they need to be, and it’s our patients who suffer when they have to wait too long, particularly for an appointment with a GP they know and trust, for appointments that are too short.  

“The government has committed to ‘thousands’ more GP but we now need to see a detailed, fully funded plan to recruit, employ and retain the GP workforce patients need.”  

Read Dr Jacques’s blog on the launch on the DAUK Substack.

We are a non-profit campaigning and lobbying organisation led by frontline doctors, for frontline doctors. We are volunteers and our collective aim is to give frontline workers a voice to be heard.

Please support our work by contributing to our crowd funder.

The article is titled Why doctors are uniquely vulnerable to domestic abuse.

It features Dr Ellen Welch, DAUK co-chair, and Dr Sarah Jacques, DAUK GP co-lead, and their work highlighting the ‘silent pandemic’ facing NHS workers.

NHS Domestic Abuse Awareness Day

Dr Welch and Dr Jacques are also campaigns co-leads for the Medical Women’s Federation. They are co-ordinators of NHS Domestic Abuse Awareness Day, which took place for the first time in December.

The article includes the real-life stories of NHS workers who have experienced abusive relationships. It also highlights the research and work being done on the issue.

Read the article in full in this week’s BMJ or on the BMJ website.

Find out more about NHS Domestic Abuse Awareness Day

DAUK committee members are all volunteers. They campaign and speak in the media about issues facing doctors in their own time. Please support our work by joining DAUK or donating to our GoFundMe.