Patient Safety at Risk: UK Needs Complete Overhaul of Government to Heal NHS' Wounds, Academic Says

The National Health Service (NHS) in England is facing the biggest personnel shortages in its 74-year history; chronic understaffing now plagues every department, creating a "serious risk to staff and patient safety," a recent study warns.

"It is very concerning because unfortunately it will harm and affect the most vulnerable people in the community," says Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at The University of Exeter Medical School. "It is harmful to poor people, less educated people, less able people, less able to fight their corner people. And I see this already whereby people who have got the money can find alternative ways of getting their medication or treatment or management sorted. People who haven't got anything - they are just vulnerable and left to their own devices. And for a rich nation like the United Kingdom, it is a shame. It is an absolute shame to not invest in the health and well-being of its people."

The cross-party Health and Social Care Committee has released a report indicating that the NHS in England is short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, with hospital waiting lists reaching a record high of nearly 6.5 million in April.

According to the study, "an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade." The British MPs argue that the present government "have shown a marked reluctance to act decisively" to tackle the unfolding crisis.

“We now face the greatest workforce crisis in history in the NHS and in social care with still no idea of the number of additional doctors, nurses and other professionals we actually need," said Health and Social Care Committee Chair Rt. Hon Jeremy Hunt. "NHS professionals know there is no silver bullet to solve this problem but we should at least be giving them comfort that a plan is in place. This must be a top priority for the new Prime Minister."

The emerging situation is not an unfixable problem, according to Pankhania. Even though a solution can be found, politicians from this government appear unwilling to fix it, he argues.

Meanwhile, the NHS crisis originates in decades of erroneous policies and experiments conducted by both Tory and Labour governments, the senior clinical lecturer highlights.

"The successive governments starting with Labour have been experimenting with different models of healthcare delivery," the academic says. "It started with Margaret Thatcher who introduced an element of separating a provider and purchaser, and we introduced unnecessary competition into the health service. And then that leads to a lot of wastage of money with bureaucracy rather than just delivering it. Then subsequent governments have, in their wisdom, cut acute care so the number of hospital beds, etc. has been reduced."

The coronavirus pandemic exposed acute problems at the NHS which the government has yet to address. Still, the situation is getting worse, as inflation is skyrocketing and the cost of living crisis rages on.

"There is a cost of living crisis," says the academic. "Energy costs have gone up. And more people cannot afford to heat their homes. So these poor people are more likely to suffer from chest infection. These poor people are more likely to smoke. These poor people are more likely to work in hazardous environments where their lungs can be damaged. So these poor people are exposed to harmful things at home, in the environment and in the workplace."

While prices are going up, the British leadership remains reluctant to provide a pay raise to healthcare workers which would be in line with inflation, which increased to 9.4% in June. Last month, delegates at the annual British Medical Association (BMA) conference instructed the union to achieve a 30% pay raise within the next five years. According to NHS unionists, their demand is by no means excessive, given that British medics have suffered a real-terms pay cut of 30 percent since 2008. Meanwhile, professionals are increasingly leaving the NHS, thus making the problem even more acute.

"Tragically there is a lot of existing goodwill which is being worn away every day," Pankhania says. "And the goodwill is always there. But people who can see that this is an insurmountable mountain decide to leave. So I have young, well-qualified, junior doctors who wish to leave. We have nurses who wish to leave."

The academic believes that the present UK government deserves a great deal of blame for the unfolding crisis as it has generally made Britons "poorer and less resilient." At the same time, Pankhania has no illusions with regard to a new Tory cabinet and its capability of giving a boost to the country's healthcare sector.

"The new government, the new Prime Minister of the Conservative Party? No chance. They are the same shortsighted rubbish. What we need is a complete change of government in the United Kingdom," the senior clinical lecturer concludes.