Meeting of the Parliament 15 September 2021 (Hybrid)
Our NHS is in crisis. It is not simply under extreme pressure, as the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care say. The NHS in Scotland is overrun. It is crumbling from historical and systemic failures of Government to plan, resource, manage risk, listen and act. The writing on the wall was clear before the pandemic.
Let us be frank. We need to accept the extent of the crisis, we should deploy strategies for learning from failures and we need a plan. I do not mean a headline number or a sum of cash but a detailed plan that is underpinned by credible clinical pathways. I appreciate that that is no easy task, and I will illustrate why.
Behind the stats on A and E waiting times and patients trying to get through to their GP and beyond the unedifying comments from the health secretary advising sick patients to think twice before calling for an ambulance, endangering life—cabinet secretary, your words matter in medicine—this is what is happening. This week in my GP practice, the phones were as usual ringing off the hook. We have calls from patients who need to be seen in the pain clinic or to get an operation, but with no appointment date in sight, they are quite rightly ringing up, desperate and pleading for help. There are also new patients who have developed a lump or bleeding, and they are also trying to call us. It is demand on top of demand.
Let us be clear that GPs are working hard. GPs are seeing patients. GPs up and down the country are pulling out all the stops. However, they are overrun because the system is failing them. We need the capacity to be able to see more patients face to face. We never stopped seeing patients face to face, but we want to see more. GPs see patients whose management would change from being seen, but there are other patients we would love to bring in, such as an elderly patient who just wants to come in and be seen. However, the system is failing us and we are being overwhelmed.
Beyond my own practice, the picture across the NHS is shocking. More than 600,000 patients are waiting on hospitals. Those are the same folks who are calling wanting to know whether their family doctor can do more—something, anything—to help. I am afraid that, sometimes, they cannot, so patients go on suffering.
That has a knock-on effect on accident and emergency, which faces huge demand, such as from a patient with persistent abdominal pain who just wants—needs—to be seen by a specialist. All the while, Covid cases are soaring, piling even more pressure on to our fragile system and its exhausted staff in wards and intensive care departments.
Let us be frank—this is not a system that is simply under extreme pressure. It is an NHS in deep crisis. Two years ago, before the pandemic, morale was low. Healthcare workers struggled through the winters, but things got a bit better in the summer, and we just coped. The pandemic has exacerbated the problems and brought them into sharp focus. There is a perpetual state of winter crisis. The conveyer belt is jammed.
Let me explain. The NHS is a conveyer belt. As a GP, I see a patient and either treat them or put them on the conveyer belt to be seen in secondary care by the hospitals. They are then treated and drop off the conveyer belt. However, what is happening just now is that I am putting patients on the conveyer belt and they are going nowhere. They are still suffering, so they quite rightly come back to me again and again. They are not getting the help that they need. We need hospitals to start running at capacity again—in fact, we need them to run at more than capacity to catch up. We need more staff.
As NHS professionals, we have no choice but to carry on, because our patients’ lives depend on us. However, as a parliamentarian, I call on the Scottish Government to start producing details on how it plans to save the NHS under its watch. The system is failing our GPs and we need help.
As a declaration of interest, I note that I am a practising doctor. I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.
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