NHS ‘warning lights’ cannot be ignored any longer, say doctors
“WARNING lights” about the state of Scotland’s NHS cannot be ignored any longer, doctors’ leaders have insisted.
It came as a new survey found more than nine out of 10 medics believe the health service needs more cash to continue providing existing levels of care.
British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland chair Dr Lewis Morrison said: “As we roll out a complete Covid vaccination programme and life starts getting back to normal, there can be no going back to what was normal in the NHS.
“Because that normal was a normal of understaffing, under-resourcing and unrelenting pressure.”
Scotland has now recorded more than 120,000 cases of coronavirus since the pandemic began, with a further 967 announced yesterday.
The daily test positivity rate was above 12 per cent for a second day.
Dr Jackie Taylor, president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, told the BBC that some non-urgent care will have to be paused in Scotland due to the impact Covid-19.
A survey by BMA Scotland found 61% of doctors think the service is funded “well below” the amount required. Meanwhile, 92% believe the NHS will not be able to continue to provide the current range of services it does into the future without additional financial resources.
More than a third (36%) of doctors said staffing levels in their workplace had deteriorated in the last five years.
And half (50%) said they had experienced a situation where “the pursuit of targets has resulted in pressure to overturn clinical judgement”.
The initial findings of the survey were released as Dr Morrison insisted the “undoubted problems” that existed in the NHS before the coronavirus pandemic must be fixed.
With a new, faster spreading strain of Covid-19 having arrived in the UK, he said that “the first part of the year will likely remain very difficult, for the country and our NHS”.
Dr Morrison warned: “Simply getting through will be hard enough.”
But with vaccinations against Covid-19 now being rolled out, and with Holyrood elections taking place in May, he said the NHS now had a “real opportunity for change that cannot be missed”.
Dr Morrison used his festive message to insist: “We can ignore the warning lights about the state of our health service no longer.”
He said the results of the BMA Scotland survey, which was conducted in November, showed that “doctors are working in a system which simply isn’t funded sufficiently to even keep doing what it does at the moment”.
He added: “Staffing levels are either getting worse or simply not keeping up with demand and the system is often based on blunt targets can be used to side-line clinical judgement.”
He demanded a “clear and unambiguous plan to fix recruitment and retention issues”.
Dr Morrison also insisted action was needed to tackle the “target-driven culture many of us work in” in the NHS, saying this can lead to “bullying and a blame culture which does little to improve patient care”.
He stressed: “The backlog of healthcare delayed by the pandemic, and all the new healthcare needs that will arise as a matter of course, cannot be dealt with if we do not fix these issues.”
Dr Taylor told BBC Breakfast that medics would have to focus on “urgent work” and the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine programme before other treatments could take place.
She said: “Everybody has been working over the last nine months to try and ensure that we catch up with the backlog, and we will continue to do that. But the harsh reality is that some places that are under pressure, some of that non-urgent work will have to be paused, we have to focus on urgent work and we have to be able to roll out the vaccination programme.”
Referring to the relaxation of rules on Christmas Day, Dr Taylor said: “I think it is absolutely right that the restrictions were only flexed for that day but, inevitably, there will be a cost for this.”
Yesterday, public health officials in Dumfries and Galloway expressed concern about the impact of rising cases linked to an outbreak in Wigtownshire.
Doctors are working in a system which simply isn’t funded sufficiently