Doctors Protest, whilst patients suffer due to NHS Out of Hours Fiasco

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Junior doctors protest in Glasgow over the recently introduced recruitment tests for specialist training posts. Effectively making the tests harder than in years gone post so one would assume that only the more capable would be selected for the posts.

Because of this junior doctors are protesting in an attempt at trying to trivialise the tests due to the extra depth covered during the testing process.

You would have thought, as with any other sector of the economy that the employer decides the selection process, rather than the candidates! But as we see again not where the NHS is concerned. Where increasingly the general public is coming to the conclusion that the primary purpose of the NHS is to feed those on the NHS gravy train from cradle to grave.

Some 30,000 doctors have applied for some 22,000 posts, so I guess the next demonstration will be to request that another 8,000 posts are made available.

However the number of doctors protesting is in question, with no clear numbers quoted other than an estimated 200 in Glasgow, perhaps those protesting are the ones who may have failed their recruitment tests ?

Meanwhile, patients continue to suffer due to GP's abandoning out of hours patient care following the 2004 GP contract debacle. You will have seen in recent days doctors doing the rounds on TV News shows, employing their bedside manner into hoodwinking the public with statements such as GP salaries were cut by £6000, in exchange for much of after hours patient care being outsourced to organisation's that have been shown to be failing to provide adequate patient care.

What the smooth talking doctors fail to explain is that there has been NO cut in GP pay, on the contrary GP's have enjoyed a pay rise bonanza with increases of between £40,000 and £80,000 to date being the norm. Why should the GP work out of hours when the government has given GP's a pay rise of between £40k to £80 for doing less work. No wonder GP's have abandoned the out of ours patient care that has traditionally been the role of GP's which was valued at £6000 per annum.

If you listen to commentary you would be under the impression that GP's were forced to hand over out of hours care to primary care trusts. If so you would be mistaken for GP's chose to abandon patients as what can only be described as idiots in the government chose to allow GP's to hike salaries by obscene amounts through inept contracts.

Patients are needlessly dieing due to greed and avarice replacing welfare for the patient. This is just one example of why the NHS despite a tripling in its budget is failing to deliver. The resources are NOT going on the patients but being literally pocketed.

Whilst GP's perform less work for far more pay, whilst at the same time demonstrating against any market orientated reform that would bring order and better accountability to those that ride the NHS gravy train .Increasingly patients are being forced to seek effective patient care & diagnoses outside of the NHS for both in hours and out of hours health services. This boom in private health services is set to continue as the NHS continues to fail its patients.

Another example of the wanton waste of tax payers resources are reports that the £12 billion system to computerise the NHS, basically does not work !

By Nadeem Walayat

(c) MarketOracle.co.uk 2007 - All Rights Reserved.

Comments