Doctor’s searing chronicle of NHS piles pressure on Hunt

[Northerner]

A junior doctor’s gripping account of working on the NHS’s frontline is likely to cause discomfort for Theresa May and the health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Dr Rachel Clarke’s book chronicles how rota gaps, exhausted staff and risks to patient safety make a mockery of ministers’ claims to be creating a “world-class” health service. Leading medics believe that the honesty, humanity and unflinching detail in Clarke’s book, Your Life in My Hands, which is published this month, will deepen public concern about the state of the NHS as it enters the 70th year since its creation by the postwar Labour government in 1948.

“Dr Clarke has written a blockbuster, a page-turner, a tearjerker,” said Professor Neena Modi, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. “This is a from-the-heart account of the wanton erosion of a magnificent ideal – healthcare free at the point of need, funded through general taxation and available to all. It is a love song for the wonderful National Health Service that has embodied – to an extent unequalled anywhere in the world – the principle that healthcare is not a commodity but a great duty of state.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/01/junior-doctor-rachel-clarke-nhs-lament-jeremy-hunt

 

[trophywench]

A junior doctor’s gripping account of working on the NHS’s frontline is likely to cause discomfort for Theresa May and the health secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Be nice if it did - but don't think I'd put money on it, Alan.

 

[Pumper_Sue]

My GP who is about the same age as me has had six months off work due to stress and has now said he is leaving the practice due to not being able to cope with the workload any more. He told me he loves his job but it's either resign and locum part time with a massive wage cut or end up completely broken, He has 3 kids a disabled wife and a mortgage to pay.

It's been obvious for a long time he isn't well and as I said to him No1 comes first which is you and your health. I shall miss him greatly as he is a GP in a million.

 

[grovesy]

Be nice if it did - but don't think I'd put money on it, Alan.

I have come to think that Mr. Hunt is teflon coated.
Pumper_Sue I am not suprised at GP leaving, around here where it was not uncommon for GP'S to work till the late 60s or even 70, many are going or gone early.

 

[trophywench]

Yes - both things @grovesey said.

I wonder if he is though - we can't know whether he really thinks this or that - or just has to toe the party line?

This is why I could never be an MP - I couldn't toe the line, if I didn't agree with that line - cos I have a conscience - and what it says is a lot louder and far, far blunter than Jiminy Cricket ever was. No bloody job is worth a penny piece, if you can't live with yourself.