The NHS crisis shows the self-sacrifice of staff can no longer prop up the system (BMJ, January 2023)

Summary

In this article, published by BMJ Opinion, author David Raven says: 

"Emergency care staff have been working under the shadow of a slow moving catastrophe for years".

David, emergency medicine consultant and divisional director of urgent care, provides several examples of data and high level concerns raised that attempted to forewarn of these dangers.

He argues that blaming Covid and high levels of flu for the pressures provides a false narrative to the reality and that the relentless hard work of staff is not enough to compensate for the challenges they face in what he says is a dysfunctional system.