WARNING lights about the state of Scotland’s NHS cannot be ignored any longer, doctors’ leaders have insisted, as a new survey found more than nine out of 10 medics believe the health service needs more cash to continue providing existing levels of care.
A survey by the British Medical Association (BMA) Scotland found 61% of doctors think the service is funded “well below” the amount required.
Meanwhile, 92% believe the NHS will not be able to continue to provide the current range of services it does into the future without additional financial resources.
More than a third (36%) of doctors said staffing levels in their workplace had deteriorated in the last five years. And half (50%) said they had experienced a situation where “the pursuit of targets has resulted in pressure to overturn clinical judgement”.
The initial findings of the survey were released as BMA Scotland chair Dr Lewis Morrison insisted the “undoubted problems” that existed in the NHS before the coronavirus pandemic must be fixed.
With a new, faster spreading strain of Covid-19 having arrived in the UK, he said that “the first part of the year will likely remain very difficult, for the country and our NHS”.
Dr Morrison warned: “Simply getting through will be hard enough.”
But with vaccinations against Covid-19 now being rolled out, and with Holyrood elections taking place in May, he said the NHS now had a “real opportunity for change that cannot be missed”.
READ MORE: Sage expert warns Covid vaccinations unlikely to bring herd immunity by summer
Dr Morrison used his festive message to insist: “We can ignore the warning lights about the state of our health service no longer.”
He added: “As we roll out a complete Covid vaccination programme and life starts getting back to normal, there can be no going back to what was normal in the NHS. Because that normal was a normal of understaffing, under-resourcing and unrelenting pressure.
“Our national debate will focus on the Scottish Parliament elections in May and whatever the outcome, the message to all political parties must be that healthcare deserves better than more of the same.”
He said the results of the BMA Scotland survey, which was conducted in November, showed that “doctors are working in a system which simply isn’t funded sufficiently to even keep doing what it does at the moment”.
Dr Morrison added: “Staffing levels are either getting worse or simply not keeping up with demand and the system is often based on blunt targets [that] can be used to side-line clinical judgement.”
He demanded a “clear and unambiguous plan to fix recruitment and retention issues”
– claiming so far all the ministers had done was “publish a plan to have a plan”.
Dr Morrison also insisted action was needed to tackle the “target-driven culture many of us work in the NHS,” saying this can lead to “bullying and a blame culture which does little to improve patient care”.
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