‘I am struggling a bit to see where the crisis is.’
John Humphrys in his own interview on the BBC’s nursing shortage ‘crisis’ in the NHS
The BBC has been headlining with the news that there is a shortage of nurses in the NHS and foreign nurses are having to be recruited, at great expense, by the shipload.
Trouble is, much like its claim that Jeremy Hunt was misleading us on the figures for deaths at the weekends, this is a story generated, it seems, only in the minds of the BBC itself for its own reasons and purposes.
Here is their web report….a report which misses out the absolutely crucial information that we only found out on the Today programme….trouble is, it seems the BBC only found out at the same time, found out that their story is complete bunk….hence John Humphrys’ reaction….’I’m struggling a bit to see where the crisis is?’ Yeah…that’s because there isn’t one. Clearly either the BBC reporters did not research the story properly or they didn’t care that it was wrong and went ahead anyway in the hope that it was a ‘scoop’.
The whole piece began at 08:13:32 where we heard that patients were getting the care they needed with the help of agency staff, but John Humphrys interviewed Ian Cummings (08:19), chief executive of Health Education England who gave the lie to the BBC narrative.
The reason there is a ‘shortage’ of nurses? Not because there is a lack of recruits, not because nurses are fleeing the profession but because……because the government is looking to recruit far more nurses, 24,000 more, in response to Mid-Staffs and other quality failings that have been found. The ‘shortage’ is man-made if you like…in fact it is a ‘shortage’ in part generated by the BBC which has campaigned relentlessly for more nurses.
Are we recruiting more overseas nurses now as a response? No…in fact we had more foreign nurses here in 2004/05 than we do now…and the level of overseas recruitment has been dropping. Is there a shortage of applicants to be nurses? No…there are 20,000 training places and 60,000 applicants. Will patients suffer (as John Humphrys asked numerous times)..No.
It was at this time (08:22) Humphrys gave up and said he was struggling to see where the crisis was. That’s because there isn’t one. The NHS is coping until the new recruits filter through…the timescale is that it takes 3 to 4 years to recruit and train a nurse…hence by 2019-2020 the NHS should have all the homegrown staff it needs…and until then it will employ agency and overseas staff.
This is a non-story about a crisis that isn’t a crisis…a shortage of nurses that is only a shortage because the government is looking to recruit 24,000 more nurses in order to improve the quality of service.
The BBC should be applauding, instead it fabricates an entirely ficticious, negative tale about a crisis. Why?
Good find!
Another aerated souffle of a bitch and stitchup from “Our BBC”.
As soon as ANY report from the BBC starts with
“Figures obtained by the BBC show that…”
Or-“the BBC has learned that…”
Or-“a report commissioned by the BBC will show today that”-especially on their slow days( ie when they`ve not been found fiddling either with kids or with their footage!)
you just KNOW that it`ll be another dead bird as spat out by the BBC cat, on the tiddle rag of Corbyn and Abbott.
Doctor Fiddlys Facebook…can always tell that they`re lying when their mouths move! To quote big Meg!
Got to admire them though-glitter all over their noses, balsa wood stuck to their Oxbridge sweat pants and glue all over the place…and up it goes on Fannys Fridge…well done Beeb!
Maybe I`d have given John Craven a bit more respect had I known that Newsround would turn out to be Bronowski and Clark rolled into one in hindsight.
The BBC only worry about the NHS when their own medical supplies with Matron are running low…the BBC used to like the idea of getting the laughing gas over the weekend,,,about the only way Susan Calman-Calamity gets a wry smile, I“d say.
Humphries is getting a bit past his sell-by date and sometimes gets in a bit of a muddle but he is the only one who with any sort of regularity spikes the invented non-story ‘crises’ for what they are.
The rest of the Toadies sit back and allow the endless left wing foaming, frothing, and self-righteous narratives completely uncritically.
Just another piece of evidence of the non stop bias of the BBC. They are an organisation that has not the slightest regard for the truth , or for the journalistic standards which they laughably claim to uphold or for the impartiality which their source of funding demands they respect. They have an agenda and they are determined to push it down our throats. Surely an increasingly large proportion of the UK population must see that the BBC is a leftist propaganda instrument, nay fog horn, that cannot be trusted.
Just another piece of evidence of the non stop bias of the BBC. They are an organisation that has not the slightest regard for the truth , or for the journalistic standards which they laughably claim to uphold, or for the impartiality which their source of funding demands they respect. They have an agenda and they are determined to push it down our throats. Surely an increasingly large proportion of the UK population must see that the BBC is a leftist propaganda instrument, nay fog horn, that cannot be trusted.
On my local ‘South Today’ news programme they regularly tell me that the hospitals are full due to the amount of elderly and frail patients ( cue library footage of old white people ). Not once have they ever mentioned that out of the hundreds of thousands of incomers to Britain every year these people also fall ill, indeed many come here with ailments in the first place.
They are preparing the groundwork for Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs questions.
This isn’t a bBBC problem but Jeremy Kyle has a programme on ITV now entitled ‘Emergency Room’, all about patients with long-term conditions and nothing urgent, but he encourages everyone to think that people should say it’s an ’emergency’ to put even more pressure on hospitals.
The crisis continues on PM but then what do you expect when they had to send a reporter out to the Philippines?
Nothing new there, plenty of nurses looking forward to increasing their pay ten-fold when they get to ‘snowy’ Lincolnshire, (get on message girl, ever since Roger Harrabin there has been no snow in the UK!).
The bbc’s latest report on this topic, from Dominic Hughes in Manilla, states that the Phillipines trains 100,000 nurses a year but only has jobs for 40,000 . This begs the question why a poor country would waste precious resources training 60,000 nurses it doesn’t need. One may also ask why the NHS is so utterly useless at forecasting its need for nurses and meeting demand by training UK nationals. If the decision to increase the number of nurses was decided post the mid Staffs enquiry, why did not training places get stepped up immediately? I can’t help thinking this has much to do with the NHS being a monolithic inefficient organisation just like all nationalised industries have proved to be. Break up its monopoly and get politicians out of trying to direct health provision . It will never work well .
The Philippines deliberately trains nurses for export so that they can send money back home. The nurses know that most of them will end up working abroad.
If we have to import nurses from anywhere the Philippines is the best source – their nurses are properly trained, speak English and are hard working.
As to nurse training for the NHS – the workforce planners are given the base assumptions by the DoH, working from the future shape of the NHS as determined by the politicians. When political priorities change the assumptions are updated, but the training lead time means there is always a “crisis” until the workforce numbers catch up – by which time the priorities and assumptions will have changed again.
As many politicians realise (but won’t say) is that the NHS was ‘unsustainable’ even before the immigrants started to arrive. No matter the left or right politics. In brief the NHS is largely bankrupt and our entire UK tax take will never be able to cover its cost of all life Health cover that we all demand. The huge cost of AIDS medications have not been calculated fully, (HIV infected blood – will be in circulation will soon and will only added to the burden of infected patients – and infected ‘in hospital’ for the first time (as in US)). Another huge cost is current ‘Health Tourism’ which makes the NHS an easy prey for anyone coming to the UK without Health Insurance (i.e. non europeans) for a quick and cheap ‘fix’. Finally the EU will not pick up any of the self-inflicted the cost for UK health care as they have EU ‘alternatives’ and much better ‘Health Insurance’ than we do – and IF we are to remain in Europe then the NHS will have to be funded – by private (or state run) insurance as they have. The BBC for instance rely on private BUPA healthcare not the NHS for the ‘common people’. The NHS is a microcosm of a (possibly benign) communist run enterprise that will simply run out of funding (as population and immigration and disease that was once ‘rare’ is now here in the UK). Increased demand well beyond prediction of only a ten years ago. However I would rather give the NHS £150 rather than the BBC (who often compare their services to the NHS). But like the BBC, the NHS needs privatising into smaller accountable corporations that we can trust. The BBC will at some point ‘turn against’ the NHS when (IF) the EU mission is accomplished its reward will be ‘private healthcare’ not to support the indigenous NHS but help abolish it. There will never be enough money to fund it.
Partial answer to the ‘Crisis’, divert all the money that Al Beeb gets from the ‘TV poll tax’ and use it to train future doctors and nurses. Simples.