Why is A&E struggling? The BBC gives several reasons but one in particular stands out…staff shortages due to doctors emigrating to Australia for the good life.
That stands out particularly because yesterday Nicky Campbell held a phone-in asking ‘Is A&E in crisis?’.
One caller was a doctor called Ali who told Campbell that the problem stemmed from changes introduced to the doctor training programme by Patricia Hewitt under Labour and that doctors were on a mass exodus to Australia and New Zealand.
Campbell suddenly lost interest in Ali.
Now wouldn’t any journalist worth his salt pounce upon that and demand to know what changes were made, how they effected the training and why it had such a negative effect and is the programme still being used?
Campbell showed not the slightest interest for some reason even when another senior doctor came on and said Ali had hit the nail on the head and that the major issue was indeed a shortage of doctors which had its roots in issues going back 7 years or so.
Funnily enough doctors in 2007 were saying:
Hewitt should resign over NHS, say doctors
Curiously there is no mention of this in this BBC look at this issue from March 2014:
A&E doctors heading to Australia ‘for a better life’
No mention of it today either.
But then the NHS is safe in Labour’s hands…despite Andy Burnham, shadow health minister, wanting to cut spending on the NHS and privatise it.
In a 2010 Andy Burnham said in an interview with the New Statesman:
Burnham: Cameron’s been saying it every week in the Commons: “Oh, the shadow health secretary wants to spend less on health than us.”
NS: Which is true, isn’t it?
Burnham: Yes, it is true.
Oh yes, another issue…European legislation:
Obliging doctors to adhere to the European Working Time Directive has had an effect on patient care and on medical training with the Royal College of Surgeons of England reviewing research in 2009 and finding that there were not enough surgeons to fill rotas if they worked only 48 hours a week. They further noted that 90% trainees were exceeding their rostered hours on a weekly basis, 85% reported coming in to do operations on their days off, only 25% felt the working patterns held by their human resources departments accurately reflected their actual working hours, and 55% reported being pressured to falsely declare their actual hours worked. More than two thirds felt the quality of their training and operative skills had deteriorated as a result of shift-working patterns brought in to meet working time regulations, and 71% felt the reduction in working hours had not led to any improvement in their work/life balance.
The Association of Surgeons in Training have stated that they believe 65 hours a week is required to gain the necessary training opportunities, and that 80% of respondents to a survey they ran would support an opt-out of the European Working Time Regulation (EWTR) to protect training.
Lorry drivers (who , erroneously in my opinion , sometime call themselves professional drivers ) have seen that as well . Many went to Canada , USA , Australia for a better life ( funnily enough , not to the EU ) while Poles , Ltuanians , etc came here .
Oh well , birds do migration as well .
Tis not only the medical profession that is leaving for Oz and NZ. Many of the indenous population from other professions, and the skilled, are buggering off to pastures new, to be replaced with ……..
Despite Paris, the BBC have been finding the time this evening to amplify Miliband’s NHS attack line; ‘Cameron is blaming the patients for the NHS crisis’. An accusation so tenuous and feeble, I missed Cameron’s insult – if of course he actually said anything of the sort. But hey – the BBC have to do their best.
BUT if they want to play the blame game, how about this? This being part of Andy Burnham’s evidence to the Stafford Hospital Public Inquiry (evidence which strangely echoed, word for word, his predecessor Ben Bradshaw’s evidence – they weren’t colluding were they?)
This is what Burnham said in his evidence about the 1200 deaths at Stafford, on Labour’s watch, “I remain very puzzled why at local level there wasn’t ‘noise’ about this trust.
Burnham blaming the patients and their families and the people of Staffordshire for Labour’s failings. What hypocrisy.
Why no challenge from the BBC?
The BBC are happy to blame everyone but immigrants.
In reality massive popualtion growth plays a very big part in the NHS crisis, made worse by the fact that some immigrants who see themselves as transient or do not speak English do not even bother to sign up with a GP< hence have no option but to go straight to A&E when something goes wrong.
But no elderly people get the blame,. drunken young people having accidents, Brits emigrating.
Yes. All of those old people filling up the maternity wards to over-flowing
why I am so against mercy killings or whatever they are called as they will give the nhs an excuse to start killing off old people
In PMQ’s David Cameron stated that Millibant had told a senior person at the BBC that he wanted to ‘weponise the NHS’. Cameron asked him to deny it but he was unable to. This would fit with the constant bombarding regarding A&E on every News bulletin.
Had that been the other way around we would 24/7 have been fed, not the problems facing the NHS, but the fact that a political party was suggesting the BBC should assist him in his quest. But most telling is the fact that Milliband felt comfortable conveying that proposal to a senior member of the totally ‘impartial’ BBC.
Another contributing libtard factor to consider with the NHS omnishambles is the fact that, when we aren’t pinching third world doctors many home grown medical students are female – who soon go part-time, or get pregnant and leave altogether. You go grrlls!
The best question I have heard all week on this subject:
Eamonn Holmes: With a 92% success rate, can A&E really be described as in crisis?
Andy Burnham: blah blah blah blah blah (naturally he answered a different question.
Hmmmm…. if A&E standards, and achievement of them, really are higher, as I have heard said on the news, than most other countries in Europe (if not the world), then does that mean that European healthcare systems are not just in crisis, but in fact, in total meltdown….really ?
And indeed, if you look at the current A&E waiting time attainment levels of NHS Wales (incredibly, and systemically lower than that of NHS England), run by the current Labour government there, just a basket case, and why aren’t Miliband, Milburn and Co. not jumping all over their mates in Wales for their incompetence and inability. Oh, perhaps because they might just point a finger back at Mr Burnham and claim that they at least hadn’t unnecessarily sanctioned 1300 deaths ?
Many logistics companies work to 98% and above on millions of daily transactions. They usually meet those targets and yet very few people have much good to say about them.
92% is not great but it is better than 90% and the 92% refers to non urgent cases not life threatening accidents!
i mean,i am no brain scientist but even i can work that if you increase the population since 1997 when labour was in power by 10 million people the health service was bound to collapse.that is the issue with the exception of ukip that these 3 other straw men from these so called mainstream politacal partys just wont talk about because they are politacaly correct cowards and charlatans.thats that.
It was all a part of Labour’s plan to educate doctors here but employ doctors from outside the UK. We have excellent education here, and Labour recognised the monetary value of that (rather than the social value) so opened up the borders to use Britain as a centre for ‘knowledge trading’.
Honestly, a political party that maintains it exists in the interests of ‘everyday people’ (HA!), but can only see the world through the eyes of an abacus that consists of nothing but beads whose values can be changed according to the political will of the party, but that will still add up to the same total, no matter what!
Labour, and those who vote for them, are ignorant beyond belief. Ched Evans claims that his failure to secure a place at Oldham Athletic was down to ‘mob rule’.
Well Ched, that’s life! Get used to it! That’s democracy in a nutshell – people who know nothing about politics voting for people who know nothing about how to run a country!