GPs to vote on shortening their working day by two and a half hours
Doctors are to vote on scaling back their hours. Currently, GP practices are supposed to be open from 8am until 6.30pm daily. But doctors attending a conference…
The NHS is failing to meet the most basic expectations – now is the time for fundamental reform
The mantra for much of the last two years has been “protect the NHS”, a curious reversal of the traditional relationship between patients and the health service….
High earning NHS doctors get even more generous pensions
High-earning doctors and part-time GPs will be thousands of pounds better off for no extra work after their pensions become more generous this autumn. Part-time doctors working…
Family sues surgeon for £200,000 in damages for ‘failing’ to spot five-year-old’s brain tumour
A consultant has been accused of failing to spot a brain tumour that left a five-year-old suffering permanent damage and instead treating him for a simple iron…
The 49 hours that killed my faith in the NHS
Excuse the heresy, but our NHS is irretrievably broken – can we have a new one please? What’s that? You want to know the exact nature of…
The nine-to-five NHS is failing weekend patients
The definition of “universal access to healthcare” appears to be becoming narrower by the day: a grim reality patients living in the area served by the NHS…
NHS ‘ruse’ to bust backlogs could see patients offered guidance rather than treatment
The NHS will be able to claim it is hitting waiting list backlog pledges by asking GPs to seek more advice about their patients, new guidance shows. …
NHS to call on volunteers to drive emergency patients to hospital
Volunteers will be sent to drive 999 patients to hospital, as part of efforts to relieve pressures on ambulance services. The London Ambulance Service (LAS) is to…
Stroke victims face hour-long wait for an ambulance
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said emergency care is “under particular strain” and that increases in ambulance response times and trolley waits are “very concerning”….
This cult of the ‘normal’ birth is dangerous
It was telling how many grandmothers wrote to me, contrasting their own labours more than 30 years ago on efficient, consultant-led wards, with the distress, danger and…
Hospitals, not GPs, are at the heart of NHS failure
Reports abound of the chaos unfolding in A&E departments, with ever louder murmurings that the health service may risk becoming overwhelmed. In response, GP practices have quite…
The NHS model has failed. Until we accept that, nothing will change
The NHS is irreparably broken. Everybody knows it. Indeed it is hard to go to any gathering without hearing tales of woe about cancelled operations, lengthening waiting…
UK watered down requirements for overseas nurses in ‘supercharged’ recruitment drive
In the six months to September 2021 nearly half of people joining the UK nursing register came from abroad: almost 11,000 were trained overseas compared to 13,000…
GPs told to work late to stop A&E crisis this Easter
Patients’ groups said difficulties accessing GP care and a growing crisis in social care mean too many people are already ending up in A&E. Dennis Reed, of…
It is time for the NHS to recover the lost art of convalescence
In his new book, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence, Edinburgh GP and writer Gavin Francis recalls local hospitals, sanatoriums and asylums where patients were once admitted…
Hospitals are still clinging on to cruel Covid rules
At the height of the pandemic, and particularly before the arrival of the vaccines, restrictions on hospital visitors made some sense. The inability of the NHS to…
It’s cruel to deny trans children the chance to think again
Imagine your 13-year-old daughter is depressed and withdrawn and then, one day, she tells you she’s trans and will, henceforth, be known as Sean. You must no…
Widow demands answers from Nicola Sturgeon over husband’s death at hospital amid fears of a cover-up
A whistleblower later came forward to allege that the hospital’s water supply was responsible. After Mrs Slorance raised her husband’s case in November, Scotland’s chief nursing officer…
National Insurance tax rise won’t clear NHS backlog, warn health chiefs
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, also supported the rise, saying it would be “morally wrong” to let “our children pay for our healthcare and our adult social…
The Tories have made a costly error on NHS spending
The National Insurance rise, which came into effect today, is a breach of a Conservative manifesto promise, is piling fresh misery onto households that are already under…
Should we try to cure dwarfism? Ellie Simmonds’s documentary asked a vital question with no easy answer
“Do you want to be taller?” That’s the loaded question that 27-year-old Ellie Simmonds asks an eight-year-old boy receiving growth hormones on the NHS. The triple gold…
Doctors forced into retirement after receiving £9,000 pension tax bills
NHS doctors have been “unfairly targeted” by extortionate tax bills on their pensions, as the system penalised health care workers more than any other profession. One third…
Government and big businesses are treating customers like an inconvenience
It is a common, and growing complaint across Middle England: why are taxpayers treated as supplicants, rather than as empowered consumers? In an interview with this newspaper,…
Sussex GPs to be paid for prescribing hormone blockers to trans patients
Family doctors in Sussex are to be paid extra for prescribing hormone blockers to transgender patients in the first scheme of its kind in the UK. Under…
The NHS is in thrall to a deranged progressive ideology that is harming mothers and babies
It was hard to read. The Ockenden report into the deadly failures of maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is a compendium of incompetence,…