YP Letters: NHS is terminally ill, warns Leeds GP
GENERAL Practice has been at the heart of the NHS since it began almost 70 years ago, but sadly, it’s time to face reality. GPs across the country are struggling to cope with falling funding, rising workload and staff shortages.
I have been a doctor in the NHS for 33 years, and a GP in West Leeds for 27 years, and I have never seen staff morale, throughout the NHS, at such low ebb, or the service in such danger of collapse.
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Hide AdAt my practice, I and my team feel these pressures every day, with an inexorable increase in workload and the fact that General Practice has become a catch-all and safety net for health and social problems that overworked and understaffed support services cannot cope with.
The effects of falling funding are myriad, but include not having enough time to deal with patients’ needs properly and, therefore, an inability to deliver the service we would wish to give them. Another less obvious effect relates to recruitment and retention. I would like to retire in a little over two years but our best efforts at attracting a new partner have prove entirely fruitless. Our GP Registrar training post, as with many up and down the country, is vacant.
We (the medical profession and public) have betrayed an entire generation of junior doctors (any doctor working in hospital who is not a consultant). We ask them to work hard at school, attain all the qualifications they need, and subject them rightly to rigorous training through medical school.
Then we impose a “contract” which includes a 30 per cent reduction in pay, expect them to continue to deal with an increasing workload and also expect them to dedicate the best part of the next eight years of their lives, to complete their training and for what? They see their senior colleagues, whether in hospital medicine or General Practice, leaving the NHS early and in their droves.
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Hide AdOnce again, all this has a crushing effect on morale, and will see the cream of our young doctors leaving for careers elsewhere. Your NHS in crisis? Unfortunately, this senior GP believes it is terminally ill.
Please note, the views expressed in this letter reflect my personal opinions.
Reward for such failure
From: Robin Ashley, Sheffield Road, South Anston.
SO the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire is retiring (The Yorkshire Post, March 24))
David Crompton will probably be retired longer than he has worked – just how is that sustainable? We read every day of financial problems in our local services and yet the gravy train rolls on. Another case of reward for abject failure.
PR would cut out fiddling
From: Don Burslam, Elm Road, Dewsbury Moor, Dewsbury.
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Hide AdTHE row over the Budget does show among other things how vital it is that our electoral system should be beyond dispute and challenged.
This is not the case at the moment. For all practical purposes, the results of elections turn on the outcome in around 100 swing seats. The media have now discovered that thousands of undeclared expenses were run up by Tory activists in several recent contests.
All this fiddling could easily be dealt with if we moved to PR. Each and very vote would then be of equal significance and importance. The total vote cast for a party would then be accurately reflected in the number of seats gained and the chronic under representation of minor parties would be corrected at once. It is about time our democracy moved to an honest process rather than the present flawed method.
We must fight this injustice
From: Frank McManus, Longfield Road, Todmorden.
AS a retired Labour councillor and member of the synod of the CofE Dales Diocese, I congratulate the latter in getting a motion through national synod on a 320 to 0 vote, calling on the Government to correct its cruel and callous benefits-sanctions regime which inflicts great hardship on the helpless.
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Hide AdOur Kathryn Fitzsimmons, said that vulnerable folk are losing four weeks income for minor slips of lateness or missing an appointment by mistake. Malcolm Chamberlain gave Sheffield support, noting that a million sanctions were imposed in 2013-4, and which affected 100,000 children. A family was sanctioned for dealing with the police after being burgled.
We need to lobby our MPs and withhold Tory votes if necessary, to remove this perverse injustice.
Christian message
From: Mrs S M Abbott, Melbourne Road, Wakefield..
IT was heartwarming to read various letters/articles, including your own Comment (The Yorkshire Post, March 25), regarding the true meaning of Easter.
We welcome in our country many people of other faiths and are tolerant to people who have no faith, so please let us stop persecuting Christians wherever they may be.