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More than a quarter of GPs work beyond safe hours every week
New BMA negotiator to take on firearms licensing row with the Government
14:35 A GP’s open letter inviting Prime Minister Theresa May to spend a day at his practice has been shared thousands of times on Facebook.
Dr Ben Spriggs, a GP in Bury St. Edmunds, writes: ’Dear Mrs May, consider this an open invite.
‘Come spend a day with me. Come and see if you can deal with 32 patients at 10-minute intervals (or maybe over 50 if I’m the emergency doctor) with everything from heart attacks to mental health problems, never knowing what’s coming through the door next. Come and see how many I send to hospital? Perhaps two or three in a week of nearly 200…
’Come and see if you can do this unlimited care all for £136 per patient per year – a sum that won’t even insure a pet. See if making me do this seven days a week for even less funding will make one bit of difference to the NHS crisis that chronic underfunding by your Government of social care, primary care and hospital trusts has caused…
‘See if this will encourage young doctors to join the fantastic profession that I love? See if this will encourage my briliant experiences colleagues to delay their retirements?
‘See if you take up my offer. No? I suspected as much. Because unlike me and my colleagues Mrs May, you simply don’t care.’
13:20 There is a hidden cohort of women in their 40s and 50s who are suffering with eating disorders, reports the Telegraph.
The University College London study found that 3% of women they surveyed had recently suffered, while 15% said they had suffered from an eating disorder at some point in their life.
’Our study shows that eating disorders are not just confined to earlier decades of life, and that both chronic and new onset disorders are apparent in mid-life,” said lead author Dr Nadia Micali, from UCL and the Department of Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.
09:45 The number of top NHS bureaucrats who earn more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000 salary has doubled in three years, according to the Daily Mail.
The two highest paid officials are Professor Sir Mike Richards, chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC, and Frances Gould, the lead public health microbiologist for the North East, on £240,000, reports the paper.
NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens earns £195,000, while three of his NHS England colleagues earn over £200,000 – chief finance officer Paul Baumann, national director of operations and intelligence Matthew Swindells, and Dr Jonathan Fielden, director of special commissioning.
The paper says this comes as Mr Stevens told MPs last week of how the NHS is underfunded.
