Last month DAUK and the Guardian revealed that the anonymous letter had prompted an unprecedented “witch-hunt” by the hospital bosses to try to identify the staff member who had sent the letter. This week the Guardian further revealed that the trust had spent more than £2,500 on handwriting and fingerprint experts. DAUK Chair Dr Rinesh Parmar speaks to The Guardian as the inquest is adjourned.
The Doctors’ Association UK speaks to the BMJ after an internal email to senior clinicians at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust encourages discharging patients ‘earlier than some clinicians would like’ admitting that these patients could come to harm.
Trust bosses at the Royal Cornwall Hospital emailed senior clinicians asking them to consider early discharge. The email acknowledges this cause harm however deems this a proportionate risk. The Doctors’ Association UK Chair speaks to The Guardian, calling the move from NHS managers ‘morally repugnant’.
The Doctors’ Association UK Co-Founder Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden writes for Metro on how the NHS has changed over the past 10 years and what the impact has been on doctors. Sammy cites the blame culture, the pension tax, the junior doctor contract as key causes of rock bottom morale. She also warns that doctors maybe suffering from ‘moral injury’.
NHS England figures release today show that A&E performance is at record low in England. In December, just 79.8% of patients were seen in the Emergency Department within 4 hours, down from 81.4% the month before. This comes following revelations last month that for the first time every major A&E department had failed to hit it’s four hour waiting target in England.
In an email sent to senior clinicians the Royal Cornwall has encouraged doctors to discharge patients before they are ready. This is despite the fact that the Trust has admitted these patients could come to harm, stating that this is a ‘proportionate risk’. Whilst frontline doctors are all too aware of the pressures Trusts are under in the middle of a staffing crisis and a shortage of beds, doctors cannot stand by and watch patients being put at risk.
Dr Rinesh Parmar, The Doctors’ Association UK Chair tells The Independent that the latest A&E wait times figures came as a “direct result of years of underfunding” citing poor morale and spiralling workloads as contributing to a staffing crisis in emergency medicine.
