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16:25 The Local Government Association has urged the NHS and councils to ‘do more’ to tackle issues surrounding children’s mental health, the Guardian reports.
In a new report, the LGA highlights initiatives such as giving school pupils presentations at assemblies on mental health and affected children getting peer mentors to help them to cope.
The LGA said: ‘Schools, health visitors and children’s centres should become more involved in efforts to tackle the growing number of children and young people with anxiety and depression’ adding that they were ‘deeply concerned by the substantial number of cases’.
14:20 Professor Terence Stephenson, chair of the GMC, has said that Brexit will not affect the registration status of any doctor already on the register – but it could have implications for the way doctors are regulated in the future.
In a letter to doctors, Professor Stephenson said: ‘Withdrawing from Europe will inevitably have implications for the way we regulate doctors’ although it ‘should not have any impact on the registration status of any doctor already on the register.’
He added: ‘Doctors from the rest of Europe have made and continue to make a vital contribution to the UK’s health services and to the medical research for which this country is held in high esteem.’
11:45 The existing shortage of nurses in the UK is likely to continue and could get worse in the years to come, experts have warned.
The warning follows a report published earlier in the year on the nursing workforce compiled by the Institute for Employment Studies for the Migration Advisory Committee.
The authors of the report cited the ‘ageing workforce, poor government planning and issues around Brexit’ as the key problems contributing to the ongoing nursing shortage, the BBC reports.
The publication of the report was initially put off during the EU referendum campaign, but its stark findings have now been revealed in full.
It criticises workforce planning in the NHS – citing the 17% cut in nurse training places between 2009 and 2013 – while since then the numbers have been increased but this has come too late, the report concluded.
9:40 Junior doctors could take further strike action after health secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that he will impose the new contract, despite a majority of doctors rejecting it.
Dr David Wrigley, a BMA council member, said that junior doctors ‘had they ability to take more strike action’, and that the BMA’s ‘national committee are now taking stock and deciding what the next steps will be’, the Lancashire Evening Post reports.
It comes as junior doctors and medical students in England voted to reject the new contract deal by a clear majority.
With a turnout of 68% – around 37,000 junior doctors and medical students – 42% voted in favour of the contract, while 58% voted against, the BMA said.
