Nhs

From the moment when Boris Johnson announced that the country was moving from containment to ‘delay’ in handling coronavirus, the world’s biggest healthcare organisation has been on a war footing. What doctors like me have witnessed over the past days and weeks has been nothing short of extraordinary. Trusts in the NHS declared a ‘major incident’ on the evening of the announcement, and emergency plans swung into action within hours. By the time I came into work the next morning, managers, who had been up all night, had already started to implement profound changes to the way in which the hospital and services were run, and this continued over the

As coronavirus sweeps across the country, I am sure people will be reassured to know that the NHS is doing everything it can to address the pandemic, at such times when a health service’s resources are likely to be overstretched. So it must come as exactly no comfort to see what one section of the NHS was highlighting this Friday: Ensuring pregnant trans men get equal quality care. There may be some lucky people who had to read that twice. Or read it more than once and are still labouring under the impression that the headline includes a glaring misprint. Others, alive to the absurdities of the age, will know

I wish I shared the Prime Minister’s confidence about the ability of the NHS to cope with coronavirus. ‘I have no doubt that with the help of the NHS and its incomparable staff, this country will get through it – and beat it,’ he said on Sunday. Not if my experience in A&E last week is anything to go by. I wasn’t keen to visit A&E in the midst of the current crisis, obviously, and had it been my own health I was worried about I would have stayed in bed. But it was Sasha’s, my 16-year-old daughter. She was pushed down some stairs at a party (not deliberately) and

The government has released its official action plan to deal with the coronavirus epidemic, warning people that ‘we are all susceptible to catching this disease’.  During a press conference at Downing Street this morning, the Prime Minister told reporters that the government’s plan involved four phases: ‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’. Boris Johnson said: ‘Let me be absolutely clear that for the overwhelming majority of people who contract the virus this will be a mild disease from which they will speedily and fully recover’.  However, he added: ‘It is highly likely that we will see a growing number of UK cases’. There are currently 51 known cases across the UK.  The four phases involve: 

Now that the Tory party has a mandate for change, it is refreshing to hear that Boris has committed more resources to the NHS and started to reverse some of the government’s blatant own goals, such as the nurses’ bursary cut. But the exponential increasing demand on the service, especially amongst people with more than one chronic condition, and its inability to fill at least 40,000 nursing posts, 10,000 GP positions and 40,000 consultant posts, means money alone will not solve the current impasse. The main problem with the NHS is that it is treated like a religion and doesn’t suffer criticism well. And all attempts by politicians to improve

It’s been a hectic election day for the two main parties. Labour managed to move the conversation to their preferred turf – the NHS – following the story of a four-year-old boy forced to sleep on the floor of an overcrowded A&E unit. As Isabel reports, Boris Johnson’s refusal to look at a photo of the boy during an interview has escalated the story further. Health Secretary Matt Hancock was then sent in to calm things down. But that only ignited tensions further after a row ensued over unconfirmed claims a Tory aide was punched leaving a Leeds hospital with Hancock – which were later shown to be false. Labour

It would be daft for someone to offer you £1.8 billion and you turn it down. That sort of money isn’t to be sniffed at. This is how much Boris Johnson announced he would give to the NHS as an extra funding boost. And I don’t want to seem churlish or ungrateful — after all, those of us who work in the health service are always banging on about how NHS resources are near breaking point. But I have some reservations. The first is the most basic — I’m not sure this is quite the cash windfall it’s made out to be. While Boris has assured us that ‘this is