The BMA has launched a survey of members in a bid to find out what makes them want to work for the NHS.
The ‘Caring, supportive, collaborative: a future vision for the NHS’ project, will survey doctors across the UK in a bid to inform the health service what it needs to do to ensure it is an environment that doctors want to work in.
BMA chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said this comes as ‘the NHS is in a perilous state’.
According to Dr Nagpaul, a GP in north west London and the former chair of the BMA’s GP Committee, the project is ‘a vital opportunity to engage in an honest and robust conversation about the future of the NHS’, as well as a ‘a chance to set a vision for what a caring, supportive and collaborative health care system should look like’.
‘Given the current crisis within the health service, with increased waiting times, rising bed occupancy levels and extreme pressure in hospitals and general practice, we must define a future NHS that is properly resourced in which doctors are able to provide the best care for patients,’ he said.
‘We must strive for a healthcare system that ends division between services and is instead based on collaboration – one that enables all doctors and healthcare staff to work as one team across boundaries, and put patient care above organisational or financial targets.’
It comes as the number of full-time equivalent GPs in England decreased by 1,200 from September 2016 to September 2017, despite a Government pledge to grow numbers by 5,000 between 2015 and 2020.
