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Found 490 results
  1. News Article
    A “most accomplished fraudster” was paid between £1m and £1.3m by the NHS during the nearly two decades she posed as a qualified doctor after forging a degree certificate, a court has heard. Zholia Alemi, believed to be 60 years old, worked as a psychiatrist in the UK for 19 years after claiming to have qualified at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, a trial at Manchester crown court heard. The defendant is accused of 20 offences, including forgery and fraud, which she denies. The jury heard Alemi’s case was that she was appropriately qualified and documents demonstrating her qualifications were genuine. She denies 13 counts of fraud, three counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, two counts of forgery and two counts of using a false instrument. Read full story Source: The Guardian (paywalled)
  2. News Article
    TV presenter Dr Hilary Jones has blasted the Prime Minister over his handling of the NHS, warning it is at risk of collapse. Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the GP shared the experiences of “heartbroken” frontline doctors and said if the situation “doesn’t change very quickly, the NHS is finished”. Dr Jones referred to a group chat between 13,000 doctors who work on the front line and in primary care, where members are sharing stories that show patients experiencing very long delays in receiving treatment. He described how staff are in tears at the end of their shift “and when they return to the next shift, the same patient is still waiting to be seen after 24 hours”. He added: “For Rishi Sunak and the Government to pretend that this is not a crisis when more than a dozen trusts have announced critical incidents is not only delusional, as the BMA say, I would say at the very best it’s ill-informed misjudgment, at the very worst it’s total irresponsibility and incompetence. I have never known anything like this.” Read full story Source: Independent, 5 January 2023
  3. News Article
    Junior doctors across England will walk out for 72 hours in March if a ballot for industrial action is successful, the British Medical Association has told ministers. The BMA confirmed the move ahead of the opening of its ballot on Monday (9 January). The union is calling for real terms pay cuts over the past decade to be reversed, claiming the last 15 years have led to a 26 per cent decline in the value of junior doctors’ pay. Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, said: “Pay erosion, exhaustion and despair are forcing junior doctors out of the NHS, pushing waiting lists even higher as patients suffer needlessly.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 8 January 2023
  4. News Article
    Pupils should learn what health problems they must not bother the NHS with, doctors and pharmacists have said. In a new strategy paper they call for a “wholesale cultural shift” towards more self-care, insisting this could both empower patients and reduce demand. Conditions like lower back pain, the common cold and acute sinusitis can generally be treated without the need for GPs or hospital visits, experts said. They called for the national curriculum to include requirements for both primary and secondary pupils to be taught to treat and manage common health problems at home. Medical students or pharmacists could go into school to offer lessons on “self-care techniques and signposting to appropriate use of NHS services”, they said. The paper is from the Self-Care Strategy Group, a coalition of pharmacy bodies and GP and patient groups. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 9 January 2023
  5. News Article
    Junior doctors have threatened to stage a “full walkout” for three consecutive days in March in which they would not treat A&E patients. The British Medical Association told the government this morning that junior doctors would strike for 72 hours if it is supported in a ballot that opens next week. The association said that “doctors will not provide emergency care during the strike”, which is likely to worsen deadly accident and emergency delays. Hospital bosses said they were “deeply worried” by the BMA’s announcement, urging the government to start negotiating rather than “sitting back and letting more strikes happen”. NHS bosses fear that the BMA will co-ordinate strike action with the nursing and ambulance unions if the dispute is allowed to rumble on. Nurses will strike on January 18 and 19, and ambulance workers are due to walk out on January 11 and 23. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 6 January 2023
  6. News Article
    Hospitals in England have paid out as much as £5,200 for a shift by a doctor through an agency, according to figures obtained by Labour through Freedom of Information requests. That is the latest in an intensifying debate over workforce shortages in the NHS in England. Labour blamed the high agency fees on Conservatives, arguing they had failed to train enough doctors and nurses. A Conservative spokesperson said "record numbers" had been recruited. The most expensive reported shift was £5,234 - paid by a trust in northern England. This covers the agency fee and other employer costs as well as the money going to the doctor. The NHS Confederation said the "staffing crisis" was so "desperate" that NHS trusts were being forced to pay large fees to make sure rotas were "staffed safely". Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "Trusts are having to breach the caps on how much they pay for agency doctors because of the extremely high levels of demand they are facing for their services. "The staffing crisis is so desperate that they either pay these fees or find that their rotas cannot be staffed safely, leading to reduced services for patients. This is particularly true in parts of the country where the NHS can struggle to recruit new staff." Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 December 2022
  7. News Article
    A warning has been made over the possible side effects of a common NHS antibiotic by a coroner after a newly retired senior doctor died by suicide. "Respected and experienced" consultant cardiologist Robert Stevenson had no history of depression or mental health problems before he started a course of ciprofloxacin. But just over a week later, the 63-year-old went for a walk and messaged his wife to tell her he had left a note under his pillow. He was later found dead in a nearby wood. The note he had left was said to be "uncharacteristically confused and illogical" with "baseless concerns" that he might have AIDS after taking an online HIV tester kit, an inquest heard. The hearing was told Dr Stevenson hadn't been told about a "potential rare link" to suicidal behaviour in patients who took the drug, as this wasn't in line with medical guidance. Now, coroner Martin Fleming issued a warning to highlight the risk of taking the antibiotic, which is prescribed by the health service for serious conditions. Read full story Source: The Mirror, 20 June 2023
  8. News Article
    Investigators have begun a further review of how a major trust handles disciplinary and professional standards cases, including allegations leaders had targeted some doctors with referrals to the medical regulator, HSJ has learned. The claims were part of a raft of concerns raised about University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust over recent months, including BBC Newsnight reporting that a large number of General Medical Council referrals had led to no action; and claims of whistleblowing doctors “being bullied… by the threat of referrals to the GMC”. One external review of UHB, whose report was published in March, already examined the issue, and said it had identified 17 cases which contradicted Newsnight’s claim, with two referrals resulting in criminal conviction and removal from the medical register. It said there was “nothing exceptional” about the referral numbers or types at UHB, or their outcomes, but also noted that medical staff told the review about “dysfunctional processes for maintaining higher professional standards”, and “expressed a perception that there was a rather rapid process to escalate to a GMC referral”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 21 June 2023
  9. News Article
    Junior doctors could indefinitely withdraw labor, and strike for three days a month until next year, the medics’ union leaders have warned. Hundreds of junior doctors gathered outside the largest NHS conference of the year, NHS Confedexpo, on Thursday chanting “pay us fair, pay right, we don’t want to have to strike”. The British Medical Association’s junior doctor committee co-chair Dr Rob Laurenson warned junior doctors may next escalate strike action in an “indefinite withdrawal of labour”. NHS England boss Amanda Pritchard said the strike is a “serious risk to patient safety” and industrial action “creates risk and upheaval”. She said tens of thousands of appointments will be affected. Read full story Source: The Independent, 15 June 2023
  10. News Article
    Retired doctors will have an option to “keep caring” and re-join the NHS to carry out outpatient appointments in a new initiative to help reduce waiting lists. From autumn, newly-retired doctors will be able to sign up to a new digital platform where they will be able to offer their availability to trusts across England to perform outpatient appointments, either virtually or in person. NHS hospitals will choose the consultant whose skillset and availability best matches the appointments they need covered, which are scheduled and arranged with patients in the normal way. More than four-fifths of people on the waiting list require an outpatient appointment such as a follow-up for cardiology or rheumatology – rather than a surgical procedure. Consultants carrying out remote appointments could be based anywhere in England, which can help those hospitals in areas with higher demand. Those requiring a face-to-face appointment or follow-up will be seen in the usual way. Speaking at NHS Confed Expo, Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive, said: “Ahead of the NHS 75th birthday in July, this new platform is an innovative example of how we are constantly adapting the way we work to benefit patients by helping to reduce waiting times as well as supporting staff. “Using this digital tool will help us to match patients with retired doctors who we know are keen to stay working in a flexible way so they can keep caring for patients, as well as allowing us to expand capacity to see even more patients – and faster. “NHS staff have already made excellent progress against our Elective Recovery Plan – and this platform will not only help us continue to reduce the longest waits but it will also help us slash agency spend, using the existing capacity of experienced doctors who still have so much to offer the NHS”. Read full story Source: NHS England, 14 June 2023
  11. News Article
    Some doctors in Australia are using the title “specialist general physician” despite not having completed the training required by law, potentially misleading patients with complex and chronic health conditions that require specialised care, physicians say. After completing a medical degree and postgraduate work experience, graduates can apply to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) fellowship training program. All RACP trainees complete similar foundational training before choosing areas of advanced training to specialise in such as geriatrics, cardiology, general medicine or other areas. General physicians are different from general practitioners (also known as GPs). General physicians care for patients with unusual or complex conditions and see patients either in hospital or those who are referred to them, usually by the patient’s GP. Medical practitioners can only use titles such as “specialist general physician”, “specialist geriatrician” or “specialist cardiologist” if they have completed the advanced specialist RACP training in the corresponding field of practice and have registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra). But Dr Jenna Paterson, a specialist general physician working in Victoria and South Australia, said there are “many, many” doctors who advertise their services to patients as a “general physician” without the qualifications to do so. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023
  12. News Article
    Despite the drawbacks of turning to artificial intelligence in medicine, some US physicians find that ChatGPT improves their ability to communicate with patients. Last year, Microsoft and OpenAI released the first free version of ChatGPT. Within 72 hours, doctors were using the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Experts expected that ChatGPT and other A.I.-driven large language models could take over mundane tasks that eat up hours of doctors’ time and contribute to burnout, like writing appeals to health insurers or summarising patient notes. However, they found that doctors were asking ChatGPT to help them communicate with patients in a more compassionate way. Dr Michael Pignone, the chairman of the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas at Austin, has no qualms about the help he and other doctors on his staff got from ChatGPT to communicate regularly with patients. However, skeptics like Dr Dev Dash, who is part of the data science team at Stanford Health Care, are so far underwhelmed about the prospect of large language models like ChatGPT helping doctors. In tests performed by Dr Dash and his colleagues, they received replies that occasionally were wrong but, he said, more often were not useful or were inconsistent. If a doctor is using a chatbot to help communicate with a patient, errors could make a difficult situation worse. Read full story (paywalled) Source: New York Times, 12 June 2023
  13. News Article
    Almost all routine NHS care in England will be disrupted for three days this week when junior doctors strike in their latest attempt to force ministers to increase their pay. Prof Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said the stoppage would have an enormous impact and lead to huge numbers of patients missing out on planned care. Many thousands of junior doctors are due to stage a 72-hour walkout starting at 7am on Wednesday and continuing until 7am on Saturday. “The NHS has been preparing extensively for this next set of strikes,” said Powis. “But we know that – with the sheer number of appointments that need to be rescheduled – it will have an enormous impact on routine care for patients and on the waiting list, as procedures can take time to rearrange with multiple teams involved.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023
  14. News Article
    Twenty-four doctors have been disciplined by the UK medical regulator in the last five years after accessing and using information from patients’ treatment records without good reason. The General Medical Council (GMC) said it had struck off two of the 24 doctors it had sanctioned after finding that they had undertaken “inappropriate use” of medical records. Another 10 were suspended, 10 were warned about their future conduct, one had a condition imposed on their licence to practise medicine and the other had to undertake not to repeat their behaviour. The 24 cases were among 194 incidents of doctors allegedly accessing medical records without a clinical justification that prompted a complaint to the regulator between 2017 and 2022. Privacy campaigners said it was shocking that almost 200 people had made complaints to the GMC accusing doctors of violating patients’ confidentiality in that way. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 June 2023
  15. News Article
    A group of doctors, including some GPs, has begun legal proceedings against the GMC based on what they say is a failure to act on Covid-19 vaccine misinformation. On Friday, the group, whose members wish to remain anonymous, sent a formal pre-action protocol letter to the GMC, which is a warning that legal action is imminent. In January, these doctors called on the regulator to investigate Dr Aseem Malhotra’s fitness to practise due to what they claim is his ‘high-profile promotion of misinformation about Covid-19 mRNA vaccines’. Dr Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist, campaigner and author, has over half a million followers on Twitter, with most recent posts focusing on the Covid vaccine. The upcoming action, which is led by lawyers from the Good Law Project, is based on the GMC’s refusal to carry out an investigation. Professor Trish Greenhalgh, a GP and academic in primary care at the University of Oxford who has been in touch with the group, told Pulse the ‘scandal is that the GMC do not think it’s their job to investigate doctors who have massive, massive followings on social media and who fan the flames of disinformation’. Read full story Source: Pulse, 5 June 2023
  16. News Article
    A controversial new Florida bill will allow physicians to opt out of performing certain services because of "sincerely held" religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. The bill, part of a "medical freedom" legislative package signed last week, permits healthcare providers to make conscience-based objections to providing medical care and protects them from getting sued or losing their licenses. Critics say the new law could exacerbate health disparities and lead to discrimination against certain groups of patients, including LGBTQ+ individuals and women seeking reproductive healthcare. Psychologists could refuse to treat someone for gender dysphoria, for example. Doctors could refuse to prescribe birth control, administer childhood vaccines, or accept patients with state insurance. Kenneth W. Goodman, professor and director of the University of Miami's Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, told Medscape Medical News the legislation could upset a longstanding precedent. "To deny care based on unspecified and unarticulated 'moral, ethical, or religious reasons' opens the door to neglect, abandonment, and suspicion," Goodman said. "It undermines two millennia of a cornerstone of medical ethics: take care of your patients — no matter who they are." Read full story Source: Medscape, 18 May 2023
  17. News Article
    Healthcare providers caring for pregnant patients in the months after the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade have been unable to provide standard medical care in states where abortion is effectively outlawed, leading to delays and worsening and dangerous health outcomes for patients, according to an expansive new report. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year, individual reports from patients and providers have shed some light on the wide range of harm facing pregnant women in states where access to abortion care is restricted or outright banned. But a first-of-its-kind report from the University of California San Francisco captures examples from across the country, documenting 50 cases in more than a dozen states that enacted abortion bans within the last 10 months, painting a “stark picture of how the fall of Roe is impacting healthcare in states that restrict abortion,” according to the report’s author Dr Daniel Grossman. “Banning abortion and tying providers’ hands impacts every aspect of care and will do so for years to come,” he said in a statement accompanying the report. “Pregnant people deserve better than regressive policies that put their health and lives at risk.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 16 May 2023
  18. News Article
    Trainee medics in a troubled maternity department have flagged concerns with national regulators over the safety of patients, it has emerged. Last year the General Medical Council said it had concerns about the treatment of obstetric and gynaecology trainees at University Hospitals Birmingham and placed medics at Good Hope Hospital and Heartlands Hospital under intensive support known as “enhanced monitoring”. The GMC’s review flagged serious concerns about emergency gynaecology cover arrangements and said there was a real risk trainees would become hesitant and reluctant to call on consultant support. In September it placed additional restrictions on training, due to “ongoing significant concerns about the learning environment and patient safety”. Now it has emerged in board papers for Birmingham and Solihull integrated care board that Health Education England, now part of NHS England, and the GMC carried out a follow-up visit to UHB in late March to review progress. Board documents state that “several patient safety concerns [were] reported by postgraduate doctors in training to the visiting team”, with a subsequent feedback letter from HEE urging immediate changes to dedicated consultant time and job plans. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 May 2023
  19. News Article
    The UK medical regulator has launched an investigation into a “stalker” doctor who accessed intimate details of the health history of a woman who had begun dating the doctor’s ex-boyfriend. The General Medical Council (GMC) is investigating whether the doctor – a consultant at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge – breached their professional, ethical and legal duties to protect the woman’s personal information. The victim has given the watchdog a statement detailing the consultant’s repeated violations of her medical records and documentation that shows what she did. The GMC declined to comment because it has not yet decided to open a formal disciplinary case against the consultant, who could face serious sanctions including a ban on working as a doctor. One of the GMC’s investigative officers is examining the victim’s claims and collecting evidence. The Guardian revealed how the doctor had looked at the victim’s hospital and GP records seven times last August and September, in the early stages of the woman’s relationship with a man the consultant had been involved with for several years. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 15 May 2023
  20. News Article
    The confidentiality of NHS medical records has been thrown into doubt after a “stalker” hospital doctor accessed and shared highly sensitive information about a woman who had started dating her ex-boyfriend, despite not being involved in her care. The victim was left in “fear, shock and horror” when she learned that the doctor had used her hospital’s medical records system to look at the woman’s GP records and read – and share – intimate details, known only to a few people, about her and her children. “I felt violated when I learned that this woman, who I didn’t know, had managed to access on a number of occasions details of my life that I had shared with my GP and only my family and very closest friends. It was about something sensitive involving myself and my children, about a family tragedy,” the woman said. The case has prompted warnings that any doctor in England could abuse their privileged access to private medical records for personal rather than clinical reasons. Sam Smith, of the health data privacy group MedConfidential, said: “This is an utterly appalling case. It’s an individual problem that the doctor did this. But it’s a systemic problem that they could do it, and that flaws in the way the NHS’s data management systems work meant that any doctor can do something like this to any patient. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 May 2023
  21. News Article
    Up to 10 junior doctor posts will be reinstated at a small district general hospital after regulators agreed it had improved its learning environment. In 2021, Health Education England removed 10 doctors from Weston Hospital over concerns they were being left without adequate supervision on understaffed wards. The unusual move prompted University Hospitals Bristol and Weston Foundation Trust to launch a “quality improvement approach” to improve its learner and clinical supervision environment. The regulator said the trust had made significant improvements that included: Better staff engagement with the trust leadership at all levels. Better clinical supervision, particularly around shift handovers and senior oversight of clinical decisions. Better learner experience in new training settings in rheumatology and intensive care medicine. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 May 2023
  22. News Article
    Almost one in three UK doctors investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) think about taking their own life, a survey has found. Many doctors under investigation feel they are treated as “guilty until proven innocent” and face “devastating” consequences, the Medical Protection Society (MPS) said. Its survey of 197 doctors investigated by the GMC over the last five years found: 31% said they had suicidal thoughts. 8% had quit medicine and another 29% had thought about doing so. 78% said the investigation damaged their mental health. 91% said it triggered stress and anxiety. The MPS, which represents doctors accused of wrongdoing, accused the GMC of lacking compassion, being heavy-handed and failing to appreciate its impact on doctors. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 April 2023
  23. News Article
    Young doctors just out of medical school working as resident physicians, fellows and interns at major US hospitals are organising unions at an increasing rate, citing long-running problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic and a need to rethink the struggles young doctors face in the profession. The Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of SEIU, added five unionised sites in 2022 compared with about one a year before the pandemic and the surge has continued in 2023 with multiple union election filings. It currently represents over 25,000 residents, fellows and interns across the US, comprising about 15% of all resident and fellow physicians. Hospital management has opposed the unionisation effort, declining to voluntarily recognise the union, encouraging residents not to sign union authorisation cards ahead of the election filing and writing local op-eds in opposition to unionisation. Since going public with their union plans, staff have been sent emails and been invited to meetings to try to dissuade residents from unionising, “often counting on myths around what unionizing would mean”, said Dr Sascha Murillo, a third-year internal medicine resident at Massachusetts general hospital. The unionising campaign took off after vulnerabilities in the healthcare system were exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, with residents working on the frontlines and bearing the brunt of staffing shortages, an influx of Covid-19 patients, and patients who deferred medical care. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 April 2023
  24. News Article
    Medical leaders have called for third-party arbitration to break the impasse on a pay dispute between junior doctors and the government after hundreds of thousands of procedures and appointments were cancelled as a result of last week’s strike in England. The “colossal impact” of the four-day stoppage compounded by a health service already stretched by the coronavirus pandemic and facing workplace shortages has led the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) to intervene and urge both parties to engage with an independent organisation. The AoMRC, the membership body for the UK and Ireland’s 24 medical royal colleges and faculties, said in a statement it was “concerned that a solution has not yet been reached and about the anticipated impact on NHS services and patients that will potentially follow any future action”. It added: “Both parties need to rapidly engage with an independent organisation to work out how the deadlock can be broken for the sake of patients and the wider NHS.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2023
  25. News Article
    A tribunal which allowed a doctor's voluntary removal from the medical register was an "unlawful corner-cutting exercise", a judge has said. Neurologist Michael Watt was at the centre of Northern Ireland's biggest recall of patients. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) allowed him to voluntarily remove himself in 2021. It meant he would not face a public hearing about any fitness to practice issues. More 2,500 patients who were in his care had their cases reviewed - with around one in five having their diagnosis changed. Having already quashed the decision to grant removal, Mr Justice McAlinden delivered a scathing assessment of how the application was handled on Monday. In Belfast's High Court, he described the process where Dr Watt's request was heard without the necessary jurisdiction as a "fiasco". The court also heard how Dr Watt appeared to have a "get out of jail free card" where patients were denied public scrutiny of their medical care. Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 April 2023
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