THE chronically underfunded NHS is collapsing and doctors are being forced to apologise to patients because they cannot provide adequate care, the British Medical Association (BMA) warned today.
Dr Phil Banfield of the doctors’ union described the “frighteningly common situation where dying patients are forced to sleep in a corridor or on a chair while hospitals are falling apart and ambulances are stacked outside emergency departments.”
Addressing the opening day of the union’s annual conference in Liverpool, Dr Banfield, who chairs the BMA council, argued that the health service’s 75th birthday on Wednesday “threatens to be a wake.”
He told delegates: “We see hospitals failing and falling apart and ambulances stacked outside emergency departments.
“We look patients in the eye and apologise when we’ve not been able to provide the care and treatment we have been trained to give.
“All around us the NHS is collapsing. Where we are today is not the result of the [Covid-19] pandemic, nor due to new economic challenges precipitated by war in Europe — we’ve been warning of catastrophe for 10 years and it’s now arrived.
“This devastation has been wrought by successive UK governments.”
Referring to Downing Street’s belated NHS workforce plan, which was finally published late last week, Dr Banfield added: “Thank you for a costed workforce plan at last, but this ignores that the crisis is now, the crunch is today.”
In the document, ministers commit to doubling university places for medical students, launching a new apprenticeship scheme for doctors and shortening medical degrees, but pay is not a priority, despite the issue provoking ongoing national strike action across the health service.
“Investing in medical school places while refusing to reverse years of pay erosion is illogical,” Dr Banfield insisted.
On this week’s NHS anniversary, he said: “I remain immensely proud to work as a doctor in an organisation I truly believe in.
“But as we know, waiting lists have never been higher, cancer targets are missed, emergency departments are overwhelmed.
“What’s the government’s response? Heap more work on an already burnt-out workforce. Repeat lines to the press about how much they value doctors while simultaneously cutting the value of pay. Taking the nurses’ union to court — shameful.
“This NHS is far removed from the one we want to be celebrating at 75. Its birthday threatens to be a wake.”
