… and the issue isn’t about ‘working as a junior doctor’ as we have said above. its about the fundamental issue of them trying to break the system to fix it with their own self interested companies.
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Thanks for the clarification.
The reason I posted that was because this guy has been one of Hunts’ best assets in attempting to shift opinion. Now I suppose that _any _panel would have included _a _doctor on the radio would have included one dissenting voice. However, this chap wasn’t just on the Radio5 program. He’s the poster boy for the government.
His opinion is still valid, of course, but when he says stuff like:-
I barely remember any talk – among colleagues at least – of working hours and patient safety at this point.
…and the article says he isn’t currently practising or training, it’s probably worth pointing out.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/25/why-i-no-longer-support-the-doctors-strike/
Fair enough , and I completely disagree with his views and assume he has a massive alterior motive. A few from med school never went into actual medicine as the degrees simply opened the door to other things. They were no loss to the profession at all, it was obvious to the rest of us on day one that they weren’t there to ‘make people better’.
Just pointing out that FY1s in general have a very good idea of what its all about - many on the picket line you were on would have been FY1
As to the insane need for ‘balance’ Dara O’Brian did a ‘bit’ on balance on Radio5 - equating it with a talk abou the space programme where you had in one corner Brian Cox and in the other a warlock from Dorking who thinks the stars are all pixie dust on a giant sky curtain.
They will always find some idiot to take an opposing view , no matter how spurious. the madder the better as its ‘good radio’
And , just like the papers ts all about sales/ratings - fact is largely irrelevant
Good ol’ Casette Boy up to his cheeky japes again…
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Not that it was ever really in much doubt, but yeah, more proof that Hunt is indeed a lying sack of shite.
Fewer people die in hospital at weekends, study finds
Weekend death rate problem, used by Jeremy Hunt to justify imposing new doctors’ contract, ‘does not exist’
Fewer people – not more – die in hospital at weekends than during the week, according to a major study which contradicts evidence cited by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to justify the imposition of new contracts on junior doctors.
Hunt has repeatedly stated that junior doctors must routinely work at weekends because the higher death rate is linked to lower staffing levels. When the Department of Health and the junior doctors’ leaders failed to agree on weekend working, Hunt announced he would impose a new contract.
But a team from Manchester University has found an apparently simple answer to the question of why the death rate rises at the weekend among patients admitted to hospital as an emergency. Their analysis looks at the numbers of people arriving in accident and emergency (A&E) as well as the numbers admitted to a bed. It finds that there is indeed a “weekend effect”, because fewer people are admitted and they are the sickest patients, leading to a higher death rate than in the week.
In terms of actual numbers, the deaths are fewer. Prof Matt Sutton led the research, which looked at deaths in hospital within 30 days of admission.
“Hospitals apply a higher severity threshold when choosing which patients to admit to hospital at weekends – patients with non-serious illnesses are not admitted, so those who are admitted at the weekend are on average sicker than during the week and more likely to die regardless of the quality of care they receive,” he said.
“As a result, the figures comparing death rates at weekends and weekdays are skewed. The NHS has rushed to fix a perceived problem that further research shows does not exist.”
Hunt’s argument was bolstered by a study published in the British Medical Journal last September, one of the authors of which was NHS England’s medical director, Prof Sir Bruce Keogh. It looked only at patients admitted to hospital – not the numbers coming through A&E. It also found that the patients admitted at the weekend were sicker than in the week, but suggested that having more staff working could reduce the death rate.
The team from the University of Manchester’s Centre for Health Economics dispute that. They looked at all patients attending A&E departments between April 2013 and February 2014. They say the earlier study did not take into account the drop in the numbers. At the weekend, they have found, hospitals admitted 7% fewer patients.
Patients can be admitted as emergencies to hospital either from A&E or directly by their GP. The Manchester study shows a drop in both types of admissions. A&E departments admitted 5% fewer patients and GP admissions dropped by a massive 61% at the weekend.
Overall, says the study, published in the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, patients attending A&E at the weekend are no more likely to die than patients attending A&E during the week.
Rachel Meacock, lead author of the study, said they were surprised by the findings. They embarked on the study following research which found that seven-day working would not be cost-effective for the NHS – a paper which, she said, had been largely ignored.
The latest study, she said, “was just trying to understand it a bit more. We had this weekend effect and nobody understands the cause of it.
“The so-called ‘weekend effect’ is a statistical artefact and extending services will not reduce the number of deaths. Instead, the most likely impact of the planned service extensions will be an increase in the number of less severely ill patients who are admitted at the weekend, further pushing up NHS costs.”
NHS England said: “This analysis confirms the fundamental point that patients admitted to hospital at weekends are sicker, and need to have the right medical cover available, ensuring patients can see a senior doctor as soon as possible.”
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if I was sick on a Friday, I would sooner be admit straight away, than be told “meh we’ve seen worse, you’ll have to suffer through till Monday” srs.
We knew much of this anyway. A junior doctor on Question Time pointed out that the government’s definition of weekend included Friday and Monday. Without those days, weekends are actually safer.
Looking more and more like a load of total and utter shite. We’ve already had doctors leave the country for better work regimes. How many more?
Originally posted by @KRG
Not that it was ever really in much doubt, but yeah, more proof that Hunt is indeed a lying sack of shite.
Fewer people die in hospital at weekends, study finds
Weekend death rate problem, used by Jeremy Hunt to justify imposing new doctors’ contract, ‘does not exist’
Fewer people – not more – die in hospital at weekends than during the week, according to a major study which contradicts evidence cited by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to justify the imposition of new contracts on junior doctors.
Hunt has repeatedly stated that junior doctors must routinely work at weekends because the higher death rate is linked to lower staffing levels. When the Department of Health and the junior doctors’ leaders failed to agree on weekend working, Hunt announced he would impose a new contract.
But a team from Manchester University has found an apparently simple answer to the question of why the death rate rises at the weekend among patients admitted to hospital as an emergency. Their analysis looks at the numbers of people arriving in accident and emergency (A&E) as well as the numbers admitted to a bed. It finds that there is indeed a “weekend effect”, because fewer people are admitted and they are the sickest patients, leading to a higher death rate than in the week.
In terms of actual numbers, the deaths are fewer. Prof Matt Sutton led the research, which looked at deaths in hospital within 30 days of admission.
“Hospitals apply a higher severity threshold when choosing which patients to admit to hospital at weekends – patients with non-serious illnesses are not admitted, so those who are admitted at the weekend are on average sicker than during the week and more likely to die regardless of the quality of care they receive,” he said.
“As a result, the figures comparing death rates at weekends and weekdays are skewed. The NHS has rushed to fix a perceived problem that further research shows does not exist.”
Hunt’s argument was bolstered by a study published in the British Medical Journal last September, one of the authors of which was NHS England’s medical director, Prof Sir Bruce Keogh. It looked only at patients admitted to hospital – not the numbers coming through A&E. It also found that the patients admitted at the weekend were sicker than in the week, but suggested that having more staff working could reduce the death rate.
The team from the University of Manchester’s Centre for Health Economics dispute that. They looked at all patients attending A&E departments between April 2013 and February 2014. They say the earlier study did not take into account the drop in the numbers. At the weekend, they have found, hospitals admitted 7% fewer patients.
Patients can be admitted as emergencies to hospital either from A&E or directly by their GP. The Manchester study shows a drop in both types of admissions. A&E departments admitted 5% fewer patients and GP admissions dropped by a massive 61% at the weekend.
Overall, says the study, published in the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, patients attending A&E at the weekend are no more likely to die than patients attending A&E during the week.
Rachel Meacock, lead author of the study, said they were surprised by the findings. They embarked on the study following research which found that seven-day working would not be cost-effective for the NHS – a paper which, she said, had been largely ignored.
The latest study, she said, “was just trying to understand it a bit more. We had this weekend effect and nobody understands the cause of it.
“The so-called ‘weekend effect’ is a statistical artefact and extending services will not reduce the number of deaths. Instead, the most likely impact of the planned service extensions will be an increase in the number of less severely ill patients who are admitted at the weekend, further pushing up NHS costs.”
NHS England said: “This analysis confirms the fundamental point that patients admitted to hospital at weekends are sicker, and need to have the right medical cover available, ensuring patients can see a senior doctor as soon as possible.”
This is not news, I recall this being talked about previously. The reason why there are fewer deaths in actual terms is that the life threatening operations are carried our during the week and not the weekends.
If you removed the deaths from operations from the figures, I wonder what it would look like.
The original study that was touted by the governmentr said in its conclusion ’ these figures are not to be taken out of context and extrapolated to infer that more deaths occur at weekend’ which of course it was.
During the week - Routine stuff +emergencies
During the w/e - emergencies
You cannot compare the two
however by massaging the mathematics the figures would look better, if they did a shit ton of varicose vein operations and eye clinic appointments on a sunday then yes , proprtionatly the number of deaths would go down.
If you look at raw data the truth is there, whatever the day - very sick people go to hospital , get healthcare but still die. During the week its drowned out by numbers of patient contacts.
Emergency care is avaliable in the NHS 24 hours a day 365 days a year, even when strikes are going on.
As said multiple times this isn’t anthing to do with deaths - make the skeleton staff we have left in the NHS work routines as well at weekend ( which means cleaners, ODA, clerical, nurses, pharmacists, porters) which they simply can’t do with the current resource. The system falls over and Virgin et al come rushing to the ‘rescue’ . Making everyone rich apart from the poor bastards who now can’t afford to see their own GP as a private healthcare system has snuck in through the back door.
Private companies provide a service for one reason alone - to make a profit.
they couldn’t give a shit about anything else.
Two more of my colleagues have quit this week leaving us desparately short. there was a paper published that has clearly shown that general practice is on a knife edge. To bury this Hunt has said he’ll enter negotiations with the juniors.
It’s cynical, its wrong and above all its desparately sad.
If anyone gets any opportunity to voice their opinion, please do, time is running painfully short
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I don’t do serious that often but hear me out.
Tonight one of my close relatives is waiting for an ambulance.
The doctor attended 24 hours ago.
The ambulance was finally called at 6pm today, and was due within two hours.
After having to call it again when the first deadline was missed, the eta for it is now after midnight.
The hospital is full - there is a queue outside, there are no beds even when the ambulance does arrive, which is likely to be at least four hours later than scheduled - there will probably follow a four hour wait in the car park until a rushed admittance is attempted so a box can be ticked.
The NHS is broken, and is clearly being dismantled by this goverment.
How do they sleep at night when there are families all over the country who are seeing their seriously ill relatives being abandoned by a government that many of them supported, and by a system that they spent a lifetime financing, reassured that it would care for them when they needed it most?
Seriously, Jeremy Hunt, David Cameron - how do you fucking sleep at night?
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In light of what Rallyboy has put above.
My younger brother had a stroke the ambulance was called and eventually turned up 4 hours later. This ambulance came from Eastleigh, My brother was in Blackfield at the time of his stroke. The ambulance station at hythe was still in operation but non available as they had been used in other areas as far afield as Portsmouth and Lyndhurst.
My brother did not survive the stroke after 4 days on a life support machine the plug was pulled. If the medial facilities to put him on oxygen had arrived earlier he may have survived.
Yes the NHS is broken.
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Sorry to hear your story Phil. Sad.
I have to own up to some ignorance here as to the meaning of the term Junior Doctor.
I naively thought Junior Doctor meant a newly qualified (one who has just left medical school) doctor perhaps working in their first real post. And that they would be a Junior Doctor for a couple of years or similar.
I spent Saturday evening in the company of a mate (Pompey fan) getting drunk and calling Hunt a cunt. We know each other because our families met when our sons were in nursery and they’re still best mates now.
Whilst my son is training to keep the financial systems of the world safe as an actuary, my mate’s son is qualifying to be a doctor.
During the conversation I learned that you can leave medical school and stay a Junior Doctor for, well forever potentially. Unless you go on to qualify as a consultant or a GP, you stay as a Junior Doctor. A period of 10-15 years is quite common, and that’s only if you want to be a consultant.
I might be the only person on the planet that thought these strikers were newly qualified, upstart student types, or that the government was only imposing a contract on newly qualified doctors who should be grateful to have a job fresh out of medical school, but I suspect I’m not.
I don’t think the term Junior Doctor is helpful to the debate.
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Originally posted by @saintbletch
Sorry to hear your story Phil. Sad.
I have to own up to some ignorance here as to the meaning of the term Junior Doctor.
I naively thought Junior Doctor meant a newly qualified (one who has just left medical school) doctor perhaps working in their first real post. And that they would be a Junior Doctor for a couple of years or similar.
I spent Saturday evening in the company of a mate (Pompey fan) getting drunk and calling Hunt a cunt. We know each other because our families met when our sons were in nursery and they’re still best mates now.
Whikst my son is training to keep the financial systems of the world safe as an actuary, my mate’s son is qualifying to be a doctor.
During the conversation I learned that you can leave medical school and stay a Junior Doctor for, well forever potentially. Unless you go on to qualify as a consultant or a GP, you stay as a Junior Doctor. A period of 10-15 years is quite uncommon, and that’s only if you want to be a consultant.
I might be the only person on the planet that thought these strikers were newly qualified, upstart student types, or that the government was only imposing a contract on newly qualified doctors who should be grateful to have a job fresh out of medical school, but I suspect I’m not.
I don’t think the term Junior Doctor is helpful to the debate.
Yep, just you bletch 
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stupid bletch. The only person in the world who can learn things from a Pompey fan.
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Originally posted by @saintbletch
Sorry to hear your story Phil. Sad.
I have to own up to some ignorance here as to the meaning of the term Junior Doctor.
I naively thought Junior Doctor meant a newly qualified (one who has just left medical school) doctor perhaps working in their first real post. And that they would be a Junior Doctor for a couple of years or similar.
I spent Saturday evening in the company of a mate (Pompey fan) getting drunk and calling Hunt a cunt. We know each other because our families met when our sons were in nursery and they’re still best mates now.
Whikst my son is training to keep the financial systems of the world safe as an actuary, my mate’s son is qualifying to be a doctor.
During the conversation I learned that you can leave medical school and stay a Junior Doctor for, well forever potentially. Unless you go on to qualify as a consultant or a GP, you stay as a Junior Doctor. A period of 10-15 years is quite uncommon, and that’s only if you want to be a consultant.
I might be the only person on the planet that thought these strikers were newly qualified, upstart student types, or that the government was only imposing a contract on newly qualified doctors who should be grateful to have a job fresh out of medical school, but I suspect I’m not.
I don’t think the term Junior Doctor is helpful to the debate.
No you are not alone in your assumption there Bletch.
It appears that the HR structure in the NHS is similar to the HR structure in “Are you being served” with Juniors and young Mr Grace ect.
We will probably find that they are run by the same people.
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update
It rolled up 7 hours late, and then headed into a Hampshire hospital that already had a corridor full of patients on trolleys.
The only consolation - I didn’t vote to have this NHS.
They aren’t doing it with my approval.
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Originally posted by @Rallyboy
Seriously, Jeremy Hunt, David Cameron - how do you fucking sleep at night?
I’m sure he does, on a bed of cash.
The people not sleeping are the doctors, nurses, auxillarys and support staff who are unable to provide the service that they want to and the patients need and deserve.
there isn’t one ‘grade’ of junior by the way its FY1, FY2, SHO, Registrar and associate specialist/staff grade. If you have any questions just ask I’m sure either KRG or myself will be happy to shed a little light
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Originally posted by @saintbletch
During the conversation I learned that you can leave medical school and stay a Junior Doctor for, well forever potentially. Unless you go on to qualify as a consultant or a GP, you stay as a Junior Doctor. A period of 10-15 years is quite common, and that’s only if you want to be a consultant.
I might be the only person on the planet that thought these strikers were newly qualified, upstart student types, or that the government was only imposing a contract on newly qualified doctors who should be grateful to have a job fresh out of medical school, but I suspect I’m not.
I don’t think the term Junior Doctor is helpful to the debate.
You certainly are not alone.
I think there has been a deliberate attempt by the government, with media co-operation, to paint them as such. Furthermore, the suggestions that the dispute is being stoked by “radicals” amongst the ranks is laughable. I forget the exact numbers from the ballots regarding the strikes. But it was in excess of 90% for both turn out and support. The idea that these are just a bunch of students and radicals pissed off at having to work weekends has been an intentional smear from day dot.
Thankfully, the doctors are smart enough (no shit) to deal with this, and present themselves in a way that completely dispels any such notion. Also, people generally like doctors. Yeah, everyone has had bad experiences at times, but I doubt there are many people that seriously think doctors do what they do for any reason other than to help people.
If money was the motivator they’d not have gone in to medicine. They clearly have the intelligence to do a job where they could make plenty of that.
Everyone knows what is happening here. This is a deliberate attempt to dismantle the NHS. People are paying with their lives for this, and it’s a disgrace. People didn’t vote for this, even those who voted Tory. Remember all those “We’ll Save the NHS” posters the last few years?
Hunt may well be public enemy #1, but he’ll be fine. Soon as he leaves government/parliament he’ll be on the board of a private healthcare provider. And those same companies will carry on pouring money into the Tories.
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So, looks like the Government and the BMA have come to an agreement on how to move the Junior Doctor’s contract forward, so I guess that means the Conservatives are no longer looking to dismantle the NHS, which is good news for us all!
Yes, it looks like a massive U-turn - they have shelved all plans to dismantle the NHS, and in local farming news, tomorrow I’ll be watching a flock of pigs flying over Southampton Water.
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