MD, one of medicine’s sharpest observers writing in Private Eye 1646 (April 4-17th).
Today’s NHS is full of angry consultants whose extra shifts attract punitive pension contributions, and even angrier resident medics who are already exhausted and can’t get onto training schemes. The chances of hitting the 2029 target [getting the waiting lists down to <18 weeks!] looks slim. Perhaps physician associates have been fast tracked to get waiting times down?
Of course, physician associates do not have a qualification that is recognised outwith the UK: they can’t leave for sunnier climes, hence the government’s infatuation. Some of us think they do not have a meaningful clinical qualification at all.
With regards to waiting times, they are now the worst I have ever seen. Choose your specialty here and see what medial care looks like in Edinburgh Scotland’s capital city. (The link was forwarded to patients by my GP’s practice.) And to think this was once a genuinely famous centre of medical excellence.
For an urgent skin cancer referral the wait is close to 20 weeks. My second publication, a single author paper in the BMJ published over 40 years ago, documented how misleading NHS statistics were. Then, it was incompetence, now it is— pardon the metaphor — malignant intent. Going forward, I expect the skin figures to be gross underestimates.