Instruction

Friday, February 20, 2015

Locum and agency staff are costing the NHS argues Camilla Tominey

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Nurse sitting with a patient GETTY POSED BY MODELS

NHS spent £2.6billion on 'casual' consultants

I was riding my bike down an old plank of wood when I slipped. The metal spike went in and out of my flesh like an embroidery needle through a tapestry.


I didn’t realise what had happened until my brother Matt saw it and started screaming. My mother ran out, somehow managed to extract my foot from the nail and called the doctor. No one did A&E in those days. That was where road accident victims and people having heart attacks went. 


If you didn’t need an ambulance, you didn’t go to casualty. Ordinarily my GP father would have treated me but he was away at the time. Instead a locum came straight out to the house. A tetanus shot and several stitches later, I was on the road to recovery.


Can you imagine a GP, or indeed a locum, doing the same today? My foot! The NHS has become the political hot potato of the election campaign with all the main parties pledging to “ring fence” its budget as if that was the miracle cure for all its ills.


But what on earth is the point of throwing more money at the health service if it cannot effectively manage the funds it already has?


If Labour’s disastrous 2004 GP contract, which paid doctors more to do less, was not bad enough, we now have a situation where the NHS is incentivising staff to desert it in droves.


Last week, two startling sets of statistics suggested that the NHS is creating a vicious cycle of staffing problems by spending billions on locum doctors and agency nurses.


A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found that the NHS spent £2.6billion on “casual” consultants last year, a rise of a quarter compared to 2012/13.


Locum hospital doctors are now typically earning £1,760 a shift, equivalent to £240,000 a year, which is more than three times the £75,000 average salary for consultants.


Meanwhile, figures from the Royal College of Nursing suggest the NHS will spend £980million on agency nurses this year, more than double the £485million spent last year and dwarfing the 2012/13 bill of £327million.


You cannot blame hard working doctors and nurses for taking the money and running; we would all do the same in their position. But is it any wonder the NHS is suffering a recruitment crisis when it is more attractive NOT to work for it? Here’s an idea, health chiefs.


Instead of exacerbating the problem by paying stand-ins ever more exorbitant sums, why not spend more of that money on higher wages and better benefi ts for the staff the NHS already has so it can attract even more? It is a similar scenario to people being better off on benefits than working.


Not only does it make bad fiscal sense, it also goes against the founding principles of the welfare state. Back in Dad’s day you drew the short straw if you had to locum.


Today it is akin to winning the lottery. The PAC report highlighted concerns that locum doctors are not of the same high standard as full-time staff, partly because they do not know the ropes. As with agency nurses, there are also fears they are less reliable.


Yet this profligate spending on temps is partly to blame for the rising number of hospitals being in deficit. A quarter are now in the red.


This time last year the fi gure was 10 per cent. If it does not pay to work for the NHS then the NHS is not working.  


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Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis arrives at 10 Downing StREUTERS

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis arrives at 10 Downing St
The NHS has become the political hot potato of the election campaign


AT LEAST one good thing has come out of the Greek crisis: finance minister Yanis Varoufakis (who studied at the University of Essex, of all places).


Arriving at Downing Street last week in jeans, an un-tucked open-neck shirt and black leather jacket, the Athens politician does not only look like a normal person, he also speaks like one.


Describing Syriza’s election victory as a “poisoned chalice”, Tsipras’s chief economic adviser is smooth as well as straighttalking, quoting the likes of Dylan Thomas in one interview with Sarah Montague on Radio 4’s Today programme.


Meanwhile, our own politicians cannot even seem to cope with being asked basic maths questions during press conferences. David Cameron took the “Nicky Morgan defence” by refusing to give the answer to nine times eight during a speech on education.


One can only assume that times tables are all Greek to the Prime Minister.  


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Millie Mackintosh taking a selfieIG

Millie Mackintosh takes a selfie for her fans

THE CRAZE for skinny selfi es is fuelling eating disorders, according to a psychiatrist at The Priory, the rehab clinic of the rich and famous. Dr Alex Yellowlees says an increasing number of women are documenting their weight loss by taking self-portraits, which can exacerbate anorexia.


This competitive dieting trend has been fuelled by narcissistic celebrities such as Chloe Madeley and Millie Mackintosh who are seemingly unable to put on a bra and knickers without filming themselves in the process.


It is all too easy to dismiss such vainglorious behaviour as something that only goes on in showbusiness but it does permeate through the rest of society.


Last week we read about an aspiring model who left her children aged three and six home alone to go on a 3am drink-drive jaunt, with her baby son in the back seat.


Hannah Hawke, 25, got behind the wheel after several glasses of wine and was found to be twice the legal limit.


What struck me most about this case were the accompanying photographs of Hawke in all manner of sultry selfies. Complete with hair extensions, false nails and blingin’ jewellery, here was a mother more concerned with her appearance than the safety of her children.


As someone once said: Vanity can easily overtake wisdom. It usually overtakes common sense.


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PRINCE Charles’s most senior aide took the highly unusual step of writing to a newspaper to express his concerns over “illinformed speculation” in Catherine Mayer’s biography of the heir to the throne.


Insisting his boss understood the “necessary and proper limitations” of the role of constitutional monarch, William Nye said the future king was “inspired” by his mother’s example.


Inspired he may be but Charles certainly doesn’t follow his mother’s example when it comes to press coverage. “Never complain, never explain,” has always been the 88-year-old monarch’s mantra.  


I DO not usually have any sympathy for Ed Balls but my heart went out to him when he forgot the name of a key Labour supporter live on television.


The Shadow Chancellor was left red-faced after the blunder on Newsnight, when he referred to the former chief executive of EDF simply as: “Bill.”


When pressed for Bill’s surname by presenter Emily Maitlis, he said: “It has just gone from my head, which is a bit annoying at this time of night.”


Naturally Maitlis wouldn’t let it lie, saying: “We’ve got Bill Somebody, have we got anyone else?”


Later Balls tweeted an explanation for hismemory lapse: “I know, I know. Bill Thomas, our Small Business Taskforce Chair, will never forgive me. It’s an age thing!”


We’ve all been there, Ted, I mean, Ed. The Queen has got the best cure for face blindness. If HM cannot remember someone’s name, she asks: “What’s been keeping you busy, lately?”, which usually elicits enough information to jog the memory.  


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