An article in the Observer reports the as more NHS trusts in England report budget deficits health leaders warn that waiting lists will rise.  

Hospitals are being forced to cut medical staff, threatening their ability to care for patients, senior health leaders have warned.

NHS trusts are reporting budget deficits after the chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave England’s health service £2.5bn extra funding, which only covers inflation and pay increases.

The 49 surgeries were originally owned by US corporation Centene, via its UK subsidiary Operose, but in December 2023, Operose was sold to HCRG Care, owned by the UK private equity group Twenty20 Capital.  

This new research on healthcare from the University of Oxford is in and the verdict is damning: privatisation leads to worse care.

This is an article from October 2022.  When Peggy Woodward began her career in the NHS in the early 1970s, women could stay in hospital for up to 10 days after giving birth - not because there were complications, but because it was just the norm. She has seen pressures on the NHS progressively get worse over the years, and spoke of a "bullying culture" and long shifts where taking a lunch break is too often seen as a privilege, rather than a legal entitlement.  

Below is a link to an article highlighting the dangers of physician associates.  Trainee physician associates (PAs) are being employed by the NHS to work with patients despite having no medical training.  

There are already growing concerns about the escalating use of these 'cut-price medics' – who are supposed to assist doctors and nurses with routine duties after two years' training.

Pulse, which is an online website for medical professionals, has the above titled article dated 21st February 2024.  The anaesthesia associate (AA) role should be ‘terminated as economically unviable’, new economic modelling has suggested.  Here is a link to the Pulse article. 

John Pilger's death in December 2023 reminds us of his commitment the NHS. And here we recall his 2019 documentary, The Dirty War on the NHS, which he said went "to the heart of the struggle for democracy today". Britain's National Health Service, the NHS, was the world's first universal public health service. 

Designed to give millions of people "freedom from fear", the NHS today is under threat of being sold off and converted to a free market model inspired by America's disastrous health insurance system, which results in the death every year of an estimated 45,000 people. 

Are you are being seen by a Doctor or a Physician Associate? 

1. Do you think the use of Physician Associates  (PA)  will help GPs treat patients?

2. Do you fear that they might be used as "substitute" for GPs?

3. Under what conditions would you feel comfortable having a  consultation with a PA instead of a  GP? 

4. Do you have any other thoughts on the use of PAs? 

You might take the opportunity to share your thoughts with us.

Please feel free to state why or why not. 

To help you answer these questions here is some useful information....

Grants and bursaries were vital tools in encouraging students to train to become the future nurses and midwives that our NHS needs

Along with thousands of other NHS nurses my training to be a nurse and midwife in the 1980s was hospital-based and for me it was at Bristol Royal Infirmary. In those days you were paid a monthly wage and offered cheap subsidised accommodation as well.

After a variety of changes to the nurse training curriculum over the following decades by 2013 the government announced that all registered nurses were to be graduates to ‘deliver high quality health care in the transformed NHS’ (announced by Health Minister Ann Keen in 2009).