The crises in general practice and social care are exacerbating the extreme winter pressures on NHS trusts, the chair of Doctors\u2019 Association UK (DAUK) has told national radio listeners.\r\n\r\nMs Helen Fernandes said successive governments have failed to realise that the perilous state of general practice and social care is adding to the NHS winter crisis each year.\r\n\r\nSpeaking on BBC Radio 5Live, Ms Fernandes said general practice and social care needed urgent support.\r\n\r\nShe said: \u201cThere are two elements that the incumbent government and previous governments don\u2019t seem to really get their head around that are the fixers that need to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first is social care. Social care is underfunded and overstretched and can\u2019t look after patients properly in the community.\r\n\r\n\u201cPeople get into hospital when they don\u2019t need to because there\u2019s a crisis social care can\u2019t deal with. And then they can\u2019t get out of hospital afterwards.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe second element, and the big part of the NHS that can keep people out of hospital, are GPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGPs are in their own crisis and are not able to provide the care for their patients. It needs urgent review and support, as does social care.\u201d\r\n\r\nMs Fernandes said conditions in NHS hospitals across the country were \u2018extremely challenging\u2019 for frontline medical staff.\r\n\r\n\u201cI currently am not working on the frontline and am probably pleased and relieved with that,\u201d said Ms Fernandes, a consultant neurosurgeon based in Cambridgeshire.\r\n\r\n\u201cLots of our members are and my colleagues are.\r\n\r\n\u201cI would have to say there\u2019s a mix of resignation, acceptance, despondency, and hopelessness, but still people are striving to get the best outcomes and care for the patients they\u2019re desperately trying to help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Fernandes explained to listeners the circumstances around when an NHS trust might declare a critical incident.\r\n\r\nShe said there wasn\u2019t a set formula, but tended to be triggered by long waits in A&E and in ambulances outside hospitals, and a shortage of beds.\r\n\r\n\u201cA critical incident sends a message to those who are trying to come to hospital to think carefully,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt may put social services and GP practices on alert if they can do more, which largely they can\u2019t.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt also helps the staff feel we are working under difficult circumstances, and it\u2019s not our fault.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Fernandes spoke about the experience of her 99-year-old grandmother, who was admitted to A&E with pneumonia and flu earlier this week.\r\n\r\nShe was initially put on a trolley and told she faced a 21-hour wait to be fully assessed and admitted.\r\n\r\nMs Fernandes said: \u201cThe staff were lovely. Her care was really good. They moved her to a bed quite quickly.\r\n\r\n\u201cI explained it to the rest of my non-medical family, who were appalled but, given these headlines are regularly seen, everyone begins to understand that this is our new normal for our NHS.\u201d\r\n\r\nPlease support our work by becoming a member<\/a> or donating to our Go Fund Me<\/a>.\r\n\r\nListen again to Ms Fernandes’s interview on BBC Radio 5Live.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_TjMFcfhyi4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The crises in general practice and social care are exacerbating the extreme winter pressures on NHS trusts, the chair of Doctors\u2019 Association UK (DAUK) has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dauk-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dauk.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}