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England falls short on early cancer diagnosis goals

The ambition to diagnose cancer in its earliest stages in England is “seriously off target”, according to a new report by QualityWatch, a research programme by the Nuffield Trust and The Health Foundation

A rise in urgent referrals in recent years has contributed to delays, along with patients finding it difficult to raise concerns about cancer with GPs. Inequalities in diagnosis, particularly among young people, those in deprived areas, and patients from ethnic minorities, was also highlighted by researchers.

Experts said that while family doctors are “highly trained” to identify cancers, the issue remains a challenge in primary care because some symptoms can be vague.

The NHS Long Term Plan said the health service is aiming to diagnose 75% of cancer patients when the disease is in its early stages by 2028.

However, analysis of NHS data by QualityWatch said “our current course shows we are seriously off target”.

More than 320,000 people in England were diagnosed with cancer in 2021 – the equivalent of some 900 a day – the report said, with the number of urgent cancer referrals rising since 2009 to more than two million in 2020/21.

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Source: Medscape, 24 April 2024

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England campaign targets seriously ill patients avoiding hospitals

A government campaign has been launched to encourage people who are seriously ill with non-coronavirus conditions such as heart attacks to seek help amid concerns some are avoiding hospitals.

The campaign, which will be rolled out this week, aims to encourage people to use vital services – such as cancer screening and care, maternity appointments and mental health support – as they usually would.

The NHS chief executive, Sir Simon Stevens, said delays in getting treatment posed a long-term risk to people’s health.

He stressed that the NHS was still there for patients without coronavirus who needed urgent and emergency services for stroke, heart attack, and other often fatal conditions.

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Source: 25 April 2020, 

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England appoints ambassador to shake up women's health

England's first women's health ambassador is calling for "one-stop shops" where women can sort out their health needs.

Dame Lesley Regan, also a practising doctor, wants to make it easier for women and girls to access care such as contraception and smear tests in the community.

Her new role aims to close the "gender health gap". She will also support the upcoming government-led women's-health strategy.

"At the moment, we waste a lot of resource in telling girls and women that they cannot have things," she told BBC News.

"So you might go off to your doctor or gynaecologist or heart specialist and get told, well, you cannot have a smear here, even if it is due, or you need to go somewhere else for this, that and the other.

"We should make it very, very easy for people to access this out in the community - why do you need to go to a secondary or tertiary facility for things that are very easy to provide?"

Instead, she wants health hubs where women could "go for half a day and get all these things sorted out" and then get on with their lives.

"A one-stop shop is what I want for myself and what I want for my daughters and I'm sure it is what every other girl and woman wants and what every man and boy wants for the women in their lives, to be looked after that way," Dame Lesley said.

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Source: BBC News, 17 June 2022

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Energy drinks increase stillbirth risk but pregnant women’s caffeine guidance is confusing

Expectant mothers are being warned about potentially confusing guidance on consuming caffeine while pregnant, as research suggests energy drinks could have potentially deadly consequences for their babies.

A new report by Tommy’s Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre claims to have established a 27 per cent rise in the risk of stillbirth for each 100mg of caffeine consumed.

Researchers compared stillbirths to ongoing pregnancies among 1,000 women across 41 hospitals from 2014 to 2016 as well as interviewing women about their consumption of caffeinated drinks. They adjusted for demographic and behavioural factors, such as age and alcohol consumption, to determine whether stillbirth was linked to caffeine.

One in 20 women were found to have increased their caffeine intake while pregnant in spite of evidence some caffeinated drinks put babies lives at risk. However, experts say that calculating precise intake can be difficult, and guidance on limiting caffeine is not consistent

The NHS recommends pregnant women keep their daily caffeine intake below 200mg whereas the World Health Organization stipulates 300mg as the safe amount to consume.

Tommy’s, a leading baby charity, called for both the NHS and the World Health Organisation to rethink such guidelines, but refused to outline a specific limit - saying it was the NHS and World Health Organisation’s responsibility to decide the recommendations in light of their new study.

Professor Alexander Heazell, an author of the study, said: “Caffeine has been in our diets for a long time, and, as with many things we like to eat and drink, large amounts can be harmful – especially during pregnancy. It’s a relatively small risk, so people shouldn’t be worried about the occasional cup of coffee, but it’s a risk this research suggests many aren’t aware of."

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Source: The Independent, 18 November 2020

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Energy costs risk humanitarian crisis, says NHS leaders

Rising numbers of people will fall sick and see their health worsen unless the government takes further action to limit energy price rises, the NHS says.

The NHS Confederation said the UK was facing a "humanitarian crisis". The group, which represents health bosses, said many people would face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes or having to live in cold and damp conditions.

But ministers said action was already being taken and the NHS supported. This includes £400 payments to every household this autumn to help pay energy bills.

However, in a letter to ministers, NHS leaders said that rapidly rising energy prices, along with other cost-of-living pressures, will still leave individuals and families facing impossible choices.

They warn that if people are forced to live in cold homes and cannot afford nutritious food, then their health will quickly deteriorate and the NHS will be left to pick up the pieces.

Cold conditions can lead to a rise in respiratory conditions, and in older people can also increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and falls.

Cold homes are already linked to 10,000 deaths a year, the NHS Confederation said.

The group warned the risk of ill-health linked to the energy crisis would come on top of what many expect to be one of the toughest winters on record because of the combination of flu, norovirus and Covid outbreaks.

As well as leading to more sickness and illness, the NHS Confederation said it would also have a major impact on mental health and well-being.

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Source: BBC News, 20 August 2022

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Endoscopy shortfall is here to stay, NHS warned

A leading doctor has warned that trusts will struggle to get back to anything like pre-covid levels of endoscopy services and will need to prioritise which patients are diagnosed.

Endoscopy procedures are part of the diagnostic and treatment pathway for many conditions, including bowel cancer and stomach ulcers. Most hospitals have not done any non-emergency procedures since the middle of March because they are aerosol generating — meaning a greater covid infection risk and need for major protective equipment.

Although some areas are now starting to do more urgent and routine work, capacity is severely limited.

Kevin Monahan, a consultant gastroenterologist at St Marks’s Hospital, part of London North West Healthcare Trust, and a member of the medical advisory board for Bowel Cancer UK, said the time taken for droplets to settle in rooms after a procedure can be up to an hour and three quarters, depending on how areas are ventilated. Only then can the room be cleaned and another patient seen.

Dr Monahan said his trust had restarted some endoscopy work and was currently doing around 17 per cent of its pre-covid activity. “We can provide a maximum of about 20 per cent of normal activity — and that is using private facilities for NHS patients,” he said. “I am not at all confident we will be able to double what we are doing now, even in three to four months’ time."

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Source: HSJ, 12 June 2020

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Endoscopic smoke poses ‘significant health risk’ to surgeons

Gastrointestinal procedures that generate high levels of smoke pose significant health risks to operating room personnel.

This is according to a recent study that suggests endoscopic smoke has the toxic equivalent of one cigarette per procedure over the course of a career.

Trent Walradt, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and lead author of the study, explained: "Surgeons in the operating room have regulations and guidelines to mitigate smoke exposure, but that does not exist for gastrointestinal endoscopy. When you’re using cautery, it generates a smoke plume. We wanted to know whether the smoke produced during some of our endoscopic procedures is dangerous."

The results were presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024 in Washington, US.

Staff at risk included those attending certain smoke-producing endoscopic gastrointestinal procedures, including a procedure that uses electrical current to remove polyps.

Chris Thompson, director of endoscopy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and principal investigator, said: "Over the course of a career, endoscopic smoke may pose significant health risks to personnel in the endoscopy suite. If you're doing four or five procedures a day, that’s five cigarettes a day. Over the course of a week, it’s like you're smoking a pack of cigarettes. That's not acceptable."

He added: "We’re in the early phases of this, but I think our findings are very important and, quite frankly, a little concerning and surprising."

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Source: Surgery, 25 June 2024

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Endometrosis: Hundreds of patients share their heartbreaking stories - and why the NHS is failing them

People from across the UK have shared their heartbreaking experiences of living with endometriosis - as they say the NHS is “failing” them.

Living with the inflammatory condition is an uphill battle, from getting a diagnosis to navigating daily life and even accessing healthcare. For Endometriosis Awareness Month, National World launched the campaign Endo the Battle to amplify the voices of those living with endometriosis across the UK and highlight the challenges patients face.

This campaign surveyed members of the public to share their stories with endometriosis. They received almost 400 responses, highlighting delays in getting a diagnosis, the crippling costs of paying for private care and knowledge gaps within the healthcare sector.

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Source: The Scotsman, 11 April 2025

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Endometriosis: Young woman 'pleading' for hysterectomy

A 23-year-old woman who begged doctors to remove her womb to relieve chronic pain says the surgery is being refused due to her age and childless status.

Hannah Lockhart has endometriosis, a condition that can cause debilitating pain, heavy periods and infertility.

Although she has always wanted her own children, Hannah says her daily pain is now so severe she wants a hysterectomy.

"It's heartbreaking that just because I'm so young I have to keep suffering," she told the BBC's Evening Extra.

Ms Lockhart, from Bangor in County Down, has been in hospital seven times in the past year because of crippling pain from endometriosis.

"Every single day I'm taking morphine, I'm taking different tablets for nerves to try and stop the pain and nothing works," she said.

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Source: BBC News, 14 April 2021

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Endometriosis: Women in Wales waiting 10 years for diagnosis

The wait to be diagnosed with endometriosis has increased to almost ten years, a "devastating" milestone say women with the condition.

It now takes almost a year more than before 2020 to be diagnosed, according to research published by Endometriosis UK, which is setting up new volunteer-led support groups in Wales.

The wait in Wales is also the longest in the UK, the research found.

The Welsh government said it knew there was "room for improvement".

"Nobody listened to me, and to feel like women are still going through that 20 years after my diagnosis is horrific," said Michelle Bates. The 48-year old from Cardiff was diagnosed aged 25 after suffering with "harrowing" pain from age 13 onwards - a 12-year wait.

"I went back and forth to the GP with my mum, who was the only one who believed in my pain," she said.

The study by Endometriosis UK, which is based on a survey of 4,371 people who received a diagnosis of endometriosis, showed almost half of all respondents (47%) had visited their GP 10 or more times with symptoms prior to receiving a diagnosis, and 70% had visited five times or more.

It also found 78% of people who later went on to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis - up from 69% in 2020 - were told by doctors they were making a "fuss about nothing", or comments to that effect.

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Source: BBC News, 18 March 2024

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Endometriosis: Urgent action required to stop women with this excruciatingly painful condition being let down for years

In ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed For Men’ author Caroline Criado Perez writes about Rachael, a woman who suffered years of severe and incapacitating pain during her period. 

It takes, on average, eight years for women in the UK to obtain a diagnoses of endometriosis. In fact, for over a decade, there has been no improvement in diagnostic times for women living with the debilitating condition. You might think, given the difficulty so many women experience in having their symptoms translated into a diagnosis, that endometriosis is a rare condition that doctors perhaps don’t encounter all that often. Yet it is something that affects one in ten women – so what is going wrong?

Read the full article here in The Scotsman

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Endometriosis: 'Women's health at bottom of Welsh NHS wait lists'

A woman who has been waiting three years for a hysterectomy says she feels she and other women have been pushed to the bottom of the list.

Jessica Ricketts, from Barry, is one of 164,000 patients who have been on various NHS waiting lists for more than a year, compared to less than 7,000 two-years-ago. But it will take another three years to tackle the backlog.

Welsh government's plan to tackle long waits is due to be published later.

But for Jessica, she remains in pain with endometriosis despite six gynaecological surgeries over the past 10 years and is now waiting for the hysterectomy.

"Every day there's some sort of pain and I'm in pain right now," she told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.

"My fear is that the endometriosis - because obviously I'm just waiting - is now in my diaphragm, and so I get pain on my left side.

"With every day almost, which used to just be cyclical and now it's gone a lot worse."

Jessica is keen to see what the Welsh government's plan to cut waiting times is, but she believes women's health "seems to be at the very bottom of the pile".

She added: "I think it's even more important now than ever, to really push the women's health side of things. We have it takes on average 10 years for a diagnosis of endometriosis.

"As women we have to fight to even get past the GP who is severely under-trained in this department.

"And it's just seems to be that because we're women. We're told that you know, just suck it up really and carry on and it needs to be a fairer system, particularly for the women of Wales and we need to stop pushing it to the bottom of the pile."

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Source: BBC News, 26 April 2022

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Endometriosis: 'I thought I would die from period blood loss'

A woman with stage 4 endometriosis said she was told she needed to "be more positive" before her diagnosis - despite heavy blood loss and pain.

Anna Cooper, from Newbridge, Wrexham, started her periods at 11 and by the time she turned 14, her mother was pushing for a referral.

Since then she has had 13 surgeries, with a 14th due in the coming months.

She said: "It is not taken seriously enough. It seems to be that we are just not being heard at the minute."

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Source: BBC News, 9 September 2021

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Endometriosis surgery delay 'caused irreversible damage'

An endometriosis sufferer has said her reproductive organs are so damaged by a three-year delay for surgery, it has affected her ability to have children.

Claire Nicholls, 29, has been in pain for years with the condition - which involves tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing elsewhere.

Ms Nicholls said she was passed from "pillar to post" and for 10 years, medical professionals did not seem to believe how much pain she was actually in.

She has stage four endometriosis, which is the most severe and widespread.

"The pain can be excruciating, at times I can't get out of bed and I have also had to attend the emergency department," she said.

After opting to go private, her surgeon said he was unable to see many of her organs due to the amount of scarred tissue caused by the delay in surgery.

"He told me the scarred tissue and adhesions were all around my organs... they couldn't remove it all as it could have damaged other organs including my bladder - it was just too severe," she said.

Northern Ireland has the longest gynaecological waiting lists in the UK, according to a professional body. It is calling for two regional endometriosis centres.

The report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found 36,900 women in Northern Ireland are on a gynaecology waiting list - a 42% increase since the start of the pandemic.

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Source: BBC News, 25 October 2022

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Endometriosis care needs urgent improvement, MPs say

Endometriosis care across the UK needs urgent improvement and diagnosis times need to be cut in half, a report by MPs says. It found an average wait for a diagnosis was eight years and that has not improved in more than a decade.

Endometriosis affects one in 10 women in the UK and causes debilitating pain, very heavy periods and infertility.

Nadine Dorries, minister for women's health, said awareness was increasing but there was still a long way to go.

More than 10,000 people took part in the All-Party Political Group inquiry which found that 58% of people visited the GP more than 10 times before diagnosis and 53% went to A&E with symptoms before diagnosis.

The majority of people also told MPs their mental health, education and careers had been damaged by the condition.

About 90% said they would have liked access to psychological support but were never offered it, with 35% having a reduced income due to endometriosis.

Helen-Marie Brewster, 28, from Hull, has been told by doctors that her only remaining treatment option is a full hysterectomy. She had symptoms throughout secondary school but was only diagnosed when she left education.

"GPs ask me to explain to them what endometriosis is, because they don't know. They're the ones who are meant to help."

"Last year I visited the A&E department 17 times trying to find help and pain relief for this condition, even for just a few days so I can keep going. The wait time for diagnosis is so long that in that time it's spreading and doing more damage the longer it is left untreated... We can't carry on like this."

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Source: BBC News, 19 October 2020

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Endometriosis care in Scotland not meeting 'base level'

Clinical care for sufferers of endometriosis is not meeting "base level", according to new research seen by BBC Scotland.

The debilitating condition affects 100,000 women in Scotland and is more common than diabetes, yet it takes eight and a half years to be diagnosed.

Almost half of those with endometriosis are in pain most days.

The study, commissioned as part of the Scottish government's Women's Health Plan, found that services were lacking.

The charity Endometriosis UK said the condition costs the UK economy £8.2bn each year in treatment, healthcare costs and loss of work.

It carried out the study and has recommended four main areas for improvement:

  • Implementing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and quality standards on endometriosis care across Scotland - the research found that this base level of care "is not currently being met".
  • Building relationships between healthcare services through managed clinical networks to allow for smoother referrals.
  • Increasing education in primary and secondary care levels - including GPs and non-specialist gynaecologists.
  • Investment in a public health campaign and improved menstrual education in schools.

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Source: BBC News, 23 January 2022

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End-of-life care will become a legal right

Dying people will be given an explicit legal right to healthcare for the first time in NHS history, requiring every part of England to provide specialist palliative care.

New analysis from the charity Marie Curie shows that about 215,000 people a year miss out on end-of-life care and that without intervention this could rise to 300,000 within 20 years.

The government will back an amendment to the Health and Care Bill in the House of Lords.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a professor of palliative care medicine and supporter of the amendment, said: “This change is incredibly important. For the first time the NHS will be required to make sure that there are services to meet the palliative care needs of everyone for whom they have responsibility in an area. People need help early, when they need it, seven days a week — disease does not respect the clock or the calendar.”

She told the Lords that although “general basic palliative care should be a skill of every clinician”, specialist palliative care was a “relatively new specialty, which is why it was not included in the early NHS legislation”.

The government amendment will introduce a specific requirement for “services or facilities for palliative care” to be commissioned by integrated care boards, responsible for local services under the government’s NHS reforms, in every part of England.

Matthew Reed, chief executive of Marie Curie, said: “If you need palliative and end-of-life care today, the chances of you getting the pain relief, symptom control and support for your family that you need depend largely on where you live, your ethnicity, gender and on what condition you have. This is wrong.

“We welcome the news coming out of the Department of Health and Social Care. The impact of this legal requirement to provide appropriate care to dying people could be transformative — it is one of the biggest developments in end-of-life care since the inception of the NHS. This change has the potential to end the current postcode lottery and make end-of-life care fair for all."

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Source: The Times, 25 February 2022

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End rules stopping thousands of doctors working in GP surgeries, says GMC chief

Thousands of doctors are being prevented from working in overstretched GP surgeries across the UK because of unnecessary “red tape”, leaving NHS patients experiencing “unprecedented” waits for care, the head of the doctors’ regulator in the UK has said.

Charlie Massey, the chief executive of the General Medical Council, said barriers that stopped medics from being deployed to meet areas of high demand, such as in primary care, must be removed urgently if the NHS workforce crisis was to be resolved and access to care improved.

“Red tape is stopping the UK from making the most of many of its skilled and experienced doctors,” he said. “Without action, patients will suffer.”

The regulator will on Tuesday call for a relaxation of rules so the fastest-growing part of the medical workforce – skilled doctors in non-training roles – can undertake a wider range of work beyond hospitals, such as in GP surgeries.

“There are no easy answers to the challenges facing the NHS. There is no army of new doctors coming over the horizon, so part of the solution must be to make sure that we have more doctors in the places that patients need them,” Massey said.

“The government should make a start immediately by changing the performers list criteria so more doctors are allowed to work alongside GPs. That needs to be done urgently.

“But beyond technical changes there is also a need for fresh thinking in the way our health services are structured and in how teams of health professionals work together. We can’t keep doing things the same way they have always been done, or nothing will change."

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Source: BBC News, 18 October 2022

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End racial disparities in maternal deaths

An MPs' report is calling for faster progress to tackle "appalling" higher death rates for black women and those from poorer areas in childbirth.

The Women and Equalities Committee report says racism has played a key role in creating health disparities.

But the many complex causes are "still not fully understood" and more funding and maternity staff are also needed.

The NHS in England said it was committed to making maternity care safer for all women.

The government said it had invested £165m in the maternity workforce and was promoting careers in midwifery, with an extra 3,650 training places a year.

Black women are nearly four times more likely than white women to die within six weeks of giving birth, with Asian women 1.8 times more likely, according to UK figures for 2018-20.

And women from the poorest areas of the country, where a higher proportion of babies belonging to ethnic minorities are born, the report says, are two and a half times more likely to die than those from the richest.

Caroline Nokes, who chairs the committee, said births on the NHS "are among the safest in the world" but black women's raised risk was "shocking" and improvements in disparities between different groups were too slow.

"It is frankly shameful that we have known about these disparities for at least 20 years - it cannot take another 20 to resolve," she added.

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End of life care ‘not working’ for dying people or their families, say campaigners

The UK spends £11.7bn on people’s health in the last year of their life, largely on hospital care even though most would rather die at home or in a hospice.

The stark disparity is “robbing many tens of thousands of dying people of the chance to remain where they want to be in the final chapter of their life”, according to Marie Curie. A report from the charity has revealed that, in all, Britain spends £22bn a year on health care, social care and welfare benefits for people who will be dead within 12 months.

Of the £11.7bn spent on health needs, £9.6bn (81%) goes to hospitals and out of that, more than two-thirds, £6.6bn, is used to provide emergency care such as in A&E.

The findings come as MPs consider how to introduce assisted dying for people with a terminal condition who have less than six months to live. The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill has prompted widespread agreement that end of life care needs a dramatic expansion.

“Through inadequate community care for people in the final year of life, we are currently robbing many tens of thousands of dying people of the chance to remain where they want to be in the final chapter of their life. It is inexcusable and it cannot be ignored any longer,” said Dr Sam Royston, Marie Curie’s executive director of research and policy.

“No one wants to be calling an ambulance in the middle of the night because they can’t get the support they need at home, or facing long stays in hospital when they don’t want or need to be there, but that is the shocking reality for far too many dying people.”

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Source: The Guardian, 5 February 2025

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End NHS staff shortages now, Boris Johnson told

Doctors, nurses and NHS bosses have pleaded with Boris Johnson to spend billions of pounds to finally end the chronic lack of staff across the health service.

The strain of working in a perpetually understaffed service is so great that it risks creating an exodus of frontline personnel, they warn the prime minister in a letter published on Wednesday.

They have demanded that the government devise an urgent plan that will significantly increase the size of the workforce of the NHS in England by the time of the next general election in 2024.

Their intervention comes after the latest NHS staff survey found that growing numbers of them feel their work is making them sick and that almost two-thirds believe they cannot do their jobs properly because their organisation has too few people.

NHS poll shows rising toll of work stress on staff health

The letter has been signed by unions and other groups representing most of the NHS’s 1.4 million-strong workforce, including the Royal College of Nursing, British Medical Association and Unison. NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, which both represent hospital trusts, have also endorsed it, as has the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, a professional body for the UK’s 240,000 doctors.

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Source: The Guardian, 21 April 2021

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End GP partnership model to help A&E waits, says NHSE lead

The NHS needs to take more “radical” steps to improve emergency care waiting times, including making primary care a salaried service, a senior national clinical lead has said.

Chris Moulton, clinical lead for emergency medicine for NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time programme, said the health service “cannot continue” its current approach to addressing long accident and emergency waits and the harm they cause.

Speaking at NHS Providers’ annual conference this week, Dr Moulton said significant changes in primary and community care were needed while caring needs to become a more “respected profession”.

Dr Moulton said: “Tinkering with the system, improving it in small ways, is good, but it’s not going to solve the problem. To solve the problem of emergency care in the UK, we have got to do some very radical things.

“Primary care has got to change. I think that primary care needs to be salaried like the rest of the NHS.

“Community care needs to change. Community care is OK when it works, which is usually for a limited number of hours in the week. Community care perhaps doesn’t need to be 24/7, but it certainly needs to be more available and cover many more hours in the week.”

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Source: HSJ, 14 November 2024

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End ‘natural birth’ bias in midwife job ads, hospitals told

NHS bosses have written to hospitals telling them to stop using language that implies a bias against caesarean sections when advertising jobs in maternity services.

A recent report into an NHS maternity scandal found that a focus on “normal birth” had played a key role in babies dying or being born disabled. Women at the Shrewsbury and Telford trust were forced to undergo traumatic natural births when they should have been offered surgical intervention. 

However, even since its publication, trusts have published job adverts looking for a member of staff “to help us promote normality” or saying that they are “proud of our commitment to normal birth”.

In a letter sent, Dr Matthew Jolly, NHS clinical director for maternity, and Professor Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, chief midwifery officer, ask maternity services “to review the language that they are using about their services, in job adverts, and any other information designed to support decision-making on pregnancy and birth choices”.

The letter continues: “There have been a number of concerns raised about the language used in some NHS trust maternity service job adverts and materials — phrases that suggest bias toward one mode of birth.

“The NHS has a duty to provide safe and personalised care to women and families according to best practice guidance informed by evidence and the changes that are taking place in society, midwifery, maternity, and neonatal care services.

“It is a fundamental requirement of a maternity multidisciplinary team to inform and listen to every woman, respect their views and help them to try and achieve the type of birth they aspire to.”

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Source: The Times, 15 April 2022

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Empowering and investing in midwives could save millions of lives each year

Ms. Martinez is a midwifery student in Tulancingo, Mexico, working in an underserved community. “There is a health care house, but there are no permanent staff,” she explained. “In my community there are many youth pregnancies, and there are no dedicated health staff who could care for women or take care of teenagers.”

This shortage is partly due to a widely held misconception that midwifery is an antiquated profession, she indicated. “I met with doctors and nurses who questioned me: Why was I studying this midwife career? They didn't see room for that.”

Thursday is the International Day of the Midwife, a moment to recognise the enormous contributions of midwives to health care around the world. 

“Not only do their capable hands bring new life into the world, they are champions of sexual and reproductive health and rights, providing voluntary contraception and other essential services, while supporting childbearing women emotionally,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director, in her statement marking the day.

Yet continued lack of recognition hinders not only the success of midwives but also the health and well-being of whole societies. “We will not achieve universal health coverage without them,” said Dr. Kanem, “or realize our aspirations to reduce maternal and newborn deaths, as agreed in the Sustainable Development Goals.”

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Source: United Nations Population Fund, 4 May 2022

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Emergency prescribing and ‘shared care’ withdrawn by GPs

Emergency prescribing and monitoring of patients with severe mental health conditions are among services being cancelled by GP practices as part of “collective action”.

Although the action, primarily over funding, began in the summer, growing numbers of practices are now cancelling local enhanced services, according to multiple board papers and other documents.

A common theme among those being “handed back” or cancelled is prescribing and monitoring for people who have severe mental health conditions, neurological conditions, and other long-term conditions.

Practices are often refusing “shared care” arrangements with secondary care, where patients with long-term conditions, including mental health illness, are meant to be monitored and supported by GPs, but also overseen by specialists. 

These are often funded and determined by integrated care boards locally, as “local enhanced services” or “locally commissioned services”, although they are often similar in different systems.

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Source: HSJ, 20 November 2024

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