NHS doctors are warning that care being delivered across the health service has deteriorated in the past 12 months, according to a survey by the British Medical Association.
This may be driven in part by chronic staff shortages, which the BMA warns is forcing doctors to "juggle patients".
Seven out of ten hospital doctors (71 per cent) warned there are gaps on shift rotas in their department, but only 65 per cent reported gaps when asked the same question in May 2017.
Forty-seven per cent of GPs said they have one of more vacancies at their practice and three quarters of these had been unfilled for more than six months.
BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said the results show growing concern among doctors that they are unable to provide the standards of care they want because of a lack of staff and funding.
He said the NHS "urgently needs a long-term solution to the staffing and funding pressures" it faces.
NHS Confederation chief executive Niall Dickson said the workforce shortages were the biggest issue facing NHS organisation today.
These shortages appear to already be undermining care.
The BMA survey received responses from 900 doctors, and found:
- 67 per cent of believe the delivery urgent and emergency care services have worsened in the past 12 months
- 72 per cent thought mental health provision had suffered in this period
- 71 per cent of respondents felt that access to GP and primary care services had become more difficult
This is despite Theresa May saying in her response to MPs who called for a cross-party solution on sustainable funding for the NHS, that the Government was executing the NHS' own plan, the Five year Forward View.
The NHS received less than half the funding it asked for in the Autumn budget, and eighty-six per cent of respondents to the BMA survey warned the financial sustainability of the NHS has gone downhill in the past year.
Dr Nagpaul added: "As doctors, we want to be able to provide the best possible care for patients, but access and quality of care are being affected by staffing and financial pressures.
"The result is delays in patients being treated, and doctors juggling large numbers of patients to compensate for staff shortages.
"This isn't safe for patients and it isn't sustainable for doctors."
More @ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ortages-hospital-ward-shortages-a8172821.html
Good thing we're leaving the EU so that all the qualified doctors, nurses and NHS staff that join can be told to get to fuck and we give our jobs to pureblood British citizens.