The challenge of coronavirus requires a radical response. We will overcome this virus, but current legislation falls short – much more must be done. We demand: Full PPE This must include FFP3 masks, visors/protective spectacles, fluid resistant gowns with sleeves and gloves for all health and social care workers dealing with patients and service users […]
Like many people in the UK, I live in a house of multiple occupation (HMO). We make an improvised family of five. Three of us work in the NHS: one junior doctor on a geriatric ward, one junior doctor on a psychiatric dementia ward (me) and one working in administration. The other two are finishing […]
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COVID-19: A GP’s Perspective
As I write we are at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK. We still have relatively small numbers of cases but they are steadily increasing along with, tragically, associated deaths. There is a very fine line between not fuelling mass panic, which is unhelpful, but also in taking sensible precautions. Public health messages […]
The benign intent of the government in its request that citizens self-isolate to protect others against spreading COVID-19 is not in question. But national and international crises can and have been used to justify an erosion of human rights. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) explains that “man-made conflicts, natural […]
In response to Covid-19, Doctors in Unite urges the government to:
• Extend day-one sick pay to those on zero hours contracts, in the “gig-economy” and self-employed members of society
• Ensure that workers are not under pressure to attend work while they are unwell and may inadvertently pass on the disease: both financially and in regards to staffing.
• Allow the NHS to requisite private health care facilities to accommodate effective Covid-19 treatment and quarantine provision if needed
Given the chronic underfunding of the NHS, it is no surprise that rationing appeals to commissioners as a way of limiting expenditure. However, this goes against the NHS Constitution, which establishes that “the NHS provides a comprehensive service, available to all” and “access to NHS services is based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability […]
Recent performance figures show that it is groundhog day once again in the NHS. A series of unwelcome events (missed targets) recur in exactly the same way. But behind these statistics are human stories of unnecessary suffering, that shame those politicians who have tenaciously supported the failed Tory policies of the past ten years. A […]
Michael Walsh, a shoulder surgeon, has been sacked by Spire Healthcare and accused of subjecting scores of patients to unnecessary operations that left many in pain, traumatised and unable to work. This is a depressingly familiar story, with echoes of the case of Ian Paterson, the rogue breast surgeon who also worked for Spire. Paterson […]
Life expectancy is falling for the first time in over a century, driven by growing social inequality and a decade of ideological Conservative austerity. Sir Michael Marmot, the director of University College London’s Health Equity Institute, specifically cited government policy as a driver of worsening health and shorter lives for people in the UK. “England […]
The junior doctors strikes of 2015 were in response to an unprecedented attack on doctorsʼ working conditions, unequal pay and unsafe demands by then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Now, Doctors in Unite stands in proud solidarity with the striking educators, lecturers and researchers in the University and College Union, who have stood shivering on picket […]
Doctors in Unite 