Nhs

Portrait of the week: Lee Anderson defects, Ireland rejects and Kate photoshops

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said that Britain needed to build new gas-fired power stations to ensure energy security. GDP grew by 0.2 per cent in January. The number of people of working age classed as economically inactive rose to 9.25 million, compared with 8.55 million in February 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics. Among those aged 16 to 34, economic inactivity was rising; among those aged 35 to 64 it had fallen. Long-term sickness accounted for 2.7 million people not in work, 600,000 more than four years ago. The National Health Service employed more than two million for the first time, more than a third of public-sector workers.

The NHS says trans women should breastfeed babies. This is unforgivable

There are a fair few trans women – men who want to be seen as ladies – who long to breastfeed real babies, and some who actually give it a good go. A few years ago this would have seemed unthinkably surreal, but I’m afraid this is the new reality and you’ll just have to get used to it. A man who wants to breastfeed first takes hormones to grow breast tissue. Then he uses a technique adapted from something called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol, which was designed to help adoptive mothers breastfeed: he takes hormones and a hefty dose of an anti-nausea medication called domperidone and then begins an intense

In search of a second epiphany

When I go home to America next week for Christmas, I’ll go to church – the one my family and I used to attend every Sunday, a few towns over. I visit intermittently throughout the year when I’m back home, but I always go on Christmas Eve. The routine is the same: I sit quietly in the pews, sing along to the carols, and hope to have a second epiphany.   I had my first epiphany – that God exists – when I was a child. This, I’m sure, is the result of having two religious parents who raised me in the church. When I tell my British friends that I

Rishi’s smoking ban inspired me to light a cigarette

What has Rishi Sunak’s government achieved in its first year? The highlights include a renegotiated Brexit policy and setting more practical net-zero deadlines. But Sunak asked the country to judge him on his ability to deliver his pledges set out at the start of the year. If polls are to be believed, voters are preparing to do just that. Inflation is falling, but that’s largely due to interest rate hikes announced by the Bank of England. The economy is growing, but barely. The NHS waiting list keeps rising – 7.6 million now in England alone. On this last point, no doubt the six-figure salaried consultants who keep striking deserve part

How do I know I’m an adult? I’m given unsolicited feedback

Adulthood was once determined by age, but now we’ve extended childhood far beyond the teenage years. If the government gets its way, the next generation will never grow up: there are reportedly plans to ban cigarette sales to anyone born after 2009. This would mean that, come 2060, 50-year-olds could be begging their elders to pop into the local corner shop to buy them a pack of 20. We need a new metric of adulthood, and I have a proposal. The real mark is not an age or any particular milestone, it’s really when you receive your first piece of unsolicited feedback. It’s a grim but unavoidable rite of passage: having personal

Could I be pregnant?

At the age of 59 I thought it was time to get my body thoroughly examined. So last week I trotted off to a health clinic in west London. Not surprisingly, I got a mixed report. Mostly As and Bs, a couple of Ds, and several must-try-harders. The health check consisted of an hour with a man in green hospital scrubs, who I think was a nurse, followed by an hour with a female doctor. It was all trundling along nicely – my weight and BMI were both within the ‘healthy’ range – when something unexpected happened. After attaching electrodes to my body for the purposes of carrying out an

Letters: Stop talking, Rishi – and take action

Sick note Sir: Kate Andrews illuminates how, for us British, the successful diagnosis of a major medical condition is frequently a matter of chance and, even then, usually occurs later than it should (‘Why are the British so anti-doctor?’, 2 September). The near asymptomatic nature of many serious conditions combined with the cultural pressures of stoicism and reluctance to be the bearer of bad news allows many cancers, for example, to run free for years before discovery. In addition, while treatments from the NHS can be brilliant, they vary enormously across the country in terms of accessibility and availability. James Wilson  South Beddington, Sutton Spare the Rod Sir: I was

Why won’t my British friends see a GP?

Having lived in the United Kingdom for almost my whole adult life, I like to think I’m well assimilated. I stopped trying to make pleasantries with strangers a long time ago. I skip dinner to stand outside the pub in the dark. Apart from my accent (though Americans tell me that’s changed, too) I think I can just about pass as British. But never for long. At some point, someone starts talking about a health worry or new ailment, and I tell them to see the doctor. Suddenly, the jig is up, and I’m an outsider again. I’m now very familiar with the British aversion to seeking medical care. Still,

Letters: The Lucy Letby killings shouldn’t mean we lose trust in all NHS managers

Murder mystery Sir: I once made a diagnosis of a very rare condition too late to cure the patient. She was nevertheless grateful and thanked me, though my conceit evaporated when she asked: ‘What took you so long?’ I suspect the managers at the Countess of Chester Hospital must feel as I did (‘Hospital pass’, 26 August). Murder was not on the top of their differential diagnoses. Many senior clinicians who have had leadership roles in NHS hospitals bear the scars of conflicts with management, though perhaps not as deep as those of the Chester paediatricians.  We would nevertheless acknowledge that most managers are dedicated, conscientious professionals committed to the

Why can’t NHS managers spot a serial killer?

No one who has paid any attention to NHS scandals over the past few decades should be at all surprised by the way in which managers at Lucy Letby’s hospital repeatedly dismissed concerns about her. When worried consultants produced considerable evidence to show that the nurse was present at every single event where a baby had dramatically collapsed or suddenly died, they ended up being the ones in the firing line. Management even forced them to apologise to Letby personally at an HR meeting, to which, bizarrely, the nurse brought along her parents. Doctors are suspicious of the calibre of those managing them, and the managers are often on the

Will the NHS learn from Letby’s murders?

Will the fallout from the Lucy Letby case really lead to lasting change in the NHS? The most prolific killer of babies was able to continue even as doctors raised concerns about her – to the extent that the consultants themselves were forced to apologise to her face for a ‘campaign’ of bullying, rather than their concerns being taken seriously about her presence at the deaths or collapse of all the babies at the Countess of Chester hospital. Now, doctors’ union the British Medical Association has turned on NHS managers, saying the time has come for a reckoning for the ‘unaccountable’ bosses. NHS managers are often unfairly maligned: politicians like

Where were the longest A&E waits?

The bare platform A 112-space car park built to serve the railway station in the Cambridgeshire village of Manea was used by just three cars in its first week. — The station, formerly a ghost station with one train a week, has been revived but even so is only served by two trains every hour. — Yet had it not been for the Civil War, it could have been the capital of England. Charles I planned an English Versailles there, surrounded by a great city called Charlemont – all built on land reclaimed from the fens. Thanks to the war, however, nothing ever got built. — The name Charlemont lives on

How the Tories plan to take the fight to Labour on the NHS

Brace yourselves for health week. After the rip-roaring success of the government’s ‘stop the boats’ week, you might forgive the NHS for looking a bit scared that now ministers have the health service on their media grid for the coming days. As with last week’s focus on illegal immigration, the government is kicking off with a series of pre-briefed stories in the Sunday newspapers about the health service – and it’s striking how many of them are designed to take the fight to Labour. There’s the claim in the Sun by Welsh Secretary David Davies that Sue Gray, who is about to become Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, ‘dragged her

Rishi’s target creeps away as NHS backlog climbs

Yet another of Rishi Sunak’s five targets looks to have slipped out of reach. Waiting lists for NHS treatment in England have climbed to another record high and now stand just shy of 7.6 million. There was a slight improvement for the longest waits: those waiting more than a year dropped slightly but still stand at a staggering 383,000. A very unlucky 314 have found themselves languishing on the lists for more than two years. Ministers gave the NHS a target to clear waits of more than 65 weeks by April next year, but there’s been little progress on those either. NHS managers were quick to blame strike action –

Testosterone transformed my life. Why won’t GPs prescribe it?

Last summer, I became a participant in a covert drugs deal. I have never considered doing anything illegal, but I was desperate. This is how it happened. I was on a weekend away with friends, some of whom were women in their forties and fifties. I discovered that one friend, who lives an ex-pat life in a Middle Eastern country with fantastic private healthcare, had recently been given testosterone gel as part of her HRT medication. She had noticed a sharp and very welcome improvement. She reported feeling more alert, less forgetful, more able to get up off the sofa and be active and less likely to anxiously sweat the

Letters: How to reform the NHS

How to reform the NHS Sir: During the pandemic I and millions of others went out every week and clapped for the NHS (‘National health disservice’, 8 July). But if you’ve experienced it lately, it’s a dystopian nightmare. Appointments regularly cancelled, paperwork missing, 1950s administration. It appears the only thing being managed at the NHS is its decline. A working group of trusted business leaders should consider ‘best practice’ at excellent private and public hospitals in the UK and across Europe, and implement reform of the service immediately. The Tories don’t have the bottle or anyone with the talent to get this under way. All the reform talk is coming

Did the NHS need a service at Westminster Abbey?

14 min listen

The NHS marks its 75th anniversary today, and in Westminster, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer attended a service at Westminster Abbey in honour of the organisation. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews about why there was a church service for the NHS and whether Rishi Sunak’s time would have been better spent at Prime Minister’s Questions. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Isabel Hardman

Let us pray for the NHS

Why was there a service in Westminster Abbey thanking God for the NHS today? Some 1,500 NHS workers, many in uniform, packed into the Abbey along with politicians to mark 75 years of the service. As a celebration of the work those people have done, it was a good event: the Dean of Westminster, David Hoyle, paid tribute in his sermon to the ‘sheer bloody-minded persistence of tired, stressed, wonderful people in the NHS’. There were testimonies from healthcare workers who had treated sickle cell patients and children with cancer from Ukraine. And of course there were readings from Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and an address from NHS chief

Rishi Sunak needs to turn his attention to mental health

Will the government meet its NHS target? Health Secretary Steve Barclay was asked about this when he did the broadcast round this morning, arguing that even though there were record waiting numbers, the government had successfully reduced the longest waits. But as Fraser wrote this week in his Telegraph column, Rishi Sunak is having to face up to the chance that he might miss this (and most of his other) five ‘priorities’ which he said the British people should judge him against at the next election. But voters might be paying a little less attention to another area of care where things are visibly going backwards: mental health. When I

Why Putin should watch his back

How secure is Vladimir Putin? His Presidential Security Service consists of 2,500 personnel, his Federal Protective Service of 50,000 troops and the National Guard, essentially his personal army, of 350,000. What could possibly go wrong? Roman emperors might have had a view. It was Augustus who invented the Praetorian Guard (27 bc), a personal, prestigious protection force of 9,000 men, based in Rome and accompanying him abroad. It did not start well. The second emperor Tiberius came within an ace of being displaced by his captain of the Guard Sejanus. The next (insane) emperor Caligula was murdered by conspirators, including a Praetorian, and the Guard hauled out a terrified Claudius