A Quiet Time for the NHS
400 doctors recently gathered in Belfast for their annual meeting to discuss issues affecting the whole profession. It is a 4 day event and a very busy week discussing issues affecting everyone from medical students up to retired doctors covering medical politics as well as the professional, scientific aspects affecting our day to day work. GPs were angry this year. Angry at how their branch of practice has seen yet more cuts to their budgets and angry with politicians who make out things are OK when those of us working on the front line of the NHS know it isn’t. GP surgeries are closing across the country now. GPs can no longer keep going and are handing their keys back to NHS England. What a shocking indictment on our politicians when their policies and funding cuts bring about the closure of much loved and well respected community surgeries. Patients are the ones who lose out and once a surgery closes it will never come back again. The workload in intolerable with u...