A&Es are closing and doctors are leaving. It should be Jeremy Hunt who goes | The Secret Doctor

Getting ready for work this week, as I grabbed my stethoscope and NHS badge, I caught a radio discussion on the latest crisis in accident and emergency wards and all I could do was shrug in resignation. A&E departments are having to close their doors because of the lack of correctly trained staff required to safely run their departments, with Chorley A&E doing so in April and Grantham looking set to shut at night due to staff shortages.

Related: Hospital A&E wards ‘in crisis over shortage of emergency doctors’

Six years ago, when I started my career as an A&E doctor, departments had plans in place to cope with extreme pressures. If a department became so busy that it was deemed “unsafe” by senior A&E staff, they would request a “divert”, where ambulances would be redirected to other nearby A&E departments until the workload had been eased. Now there is nowhere to divert to since everywhere is in exactly the same position. So when they get too unsafe they have no choice but to turn people away.

This is not because too many people are becoming acutely unwell and arriving en masse to well stocked and staffed A&E departments. Departments are being forced to close their doors because they lack the manpower to cope. This is the result of long-term tactics at government level, aimed at changing the NHS as we know it by causing the erosion of both services and the morale of those who are on the frontline trying desperately to make it work.

After years of working through various A&E crises, with the backdrop of doom-monger headlines about the care we are providing, I am currently an emergency medicine doctor on respite. I have worked in some of the busiest A&Es in the country and now, for the sake of sanity and well-being, I am having a change. I just needed a breather, time to take stock, to have a life and to re-evaluate. So I am working on a rehabilitation ward, and while my patients recover, so do I. I am not here permanently – it’s a locum position in a rural area that is finding it a challenge to recruit staff. A situation replicated all over the country.

Jeremy Hunt has bulldozed NHS morale into the ground and yet his stampede continues

I have an A&E job lined up for later in the year, but I have been tactical about where. I am going to Wales. I can’t work in a place where Jeremy Hunt has jurisdiction to implicate his unethical plans. It will mean an upheaval of my personal life, maybe having to pay for two sets of accommodation to make it work and living in a different place to my husband. But these are decisions we are having to make to find ways to keep being A&E doctors. My morale is at an all-time low and I need to get it back to continue to do the job I love.

You have to psyche yourself up for every A&E shift, mentally and physically. Get your game face on, focus, blast through and take it as it hits you full force. Times that by 10 for a night shift or a weekend when chances are you won’t know your colleagues as they will be locums brought in to make up the shortfall.

Related: Jeremy Hunt has saved his own skin but let the NHS sink | Polly Toynbee

We are fed up of hearing about how overcrowded and understaffed hospitals are. The workforce pulls together and makes it work. Even the most senior emergency medicine doctor in the country, Clifford Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine: after completing his duties in London, he gets on a train, back to his own A&E department in Somerset for a shift finishing late into the night. It’s gruelling work and only for the committed.

My A&E colleagues are finding alternatives all around me. Some have left for academia, some have left medicine and some have left the country. Working in A&E, with a severely unwell patient arriving in extremis does not just need someone with a medical degree certificate. It needs expertise, skill and experience. And a significant number of those who fit this brief are leaving. We should be worried.

Jeremy Hunt has bulldozed NHS morale into the ground and yet his stampede continues. For the sake of patients and staff, someone who really should be getting a new job is him. As Hunt stays in his role, implementing bullishly his unsafe plans, A&E doctors are leaving theirs in droves.

A&Es are closing and doctors are leaving. It should be Jeremy Hunt who goes | The Secret Doctor

Closing the gap that scars Australia: end our mob from dying prematurely | Mick Gooda and Kirstie Parker

Our nation is at its best when it comes together in shared spirit of achievement and a shared need to achieve a common goal.

In 2008 we witnessed this kind of a minute. Our political leaders came to the fore in a demonstration of leadership, placing aside partisan politics. The Australian public joined them. And as a nation we united to consider a stand.

Collectively we agreed that this would be the generation to close the unacceptable health and existence expectancy gap among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women and other Australians.

We committed to near the wellness and life expectancy gap inside a generation: by 2030. As a consequence we now have a nationwide energy to shut the gap, a priority for government action right up until the goal is met.

Health inequality is a stark reminder of a fantastic divide in the nation across training, income, housing, psychological well being, chronic condition, little one and maternal wellness, entry to wellness providers, and far more. It is a scar of an unhealed past and a stain on the status of the nation. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it is an immense and pointless burden of suffering and grief.

But we are optimistic that we can make true inroads into our shared goal if we continue to location a high priority on it. At a government degree this signifies renewing the nationwide partnership agreement on closing the gap in Indigenous well being outcomes and forging an implementation prepare for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander well being program in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals.

We should keep in mind that despite occasions of fiscal austerity Australia is enormously wealthy nation with extremely large standards of well being and daily life expectancy. Nevertheless, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders do not share the very same standards of wellness.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals are all too mindful of this. Frequently our kids have attended dozens of funerals by their early teens. Our elders are denied longer, healthier lives, and our communities are all the poorer for it.

The Near the Gap campaign was touched right by this harsh actuality early on in the campaign. In 2009, just two many years following the campaign was launched, Clarence Paul from Mornington Island whose photo with his grandson grew to become an iconic campaign photo passed away at age 48. This is 31 many years fewer than the common life expectancy for non-Indigenous Australians.

The campaign contacted Mr Paul’s household to ask if they would like us to stop using the photo that had become the defining image of what the campaign was all about.

The response was instant and clear – the nation must stop the passing of our mob prematurely. We should as a nation achieve wellness equality for our men and women. We have been informed that the campaign must continue to use Mr Paul’s picture to support with the national energy to shut the gap.

The photo stands as a memorial to a considerably loved uncle, father, grandfather, brother, son and respected neighborhood member. It stands as a reminder of the task at hand. We thank his household for the inspiration they presented the campaign in these early days.

Five many years later, we continue to work with all sides of politics and engage the public in our efforts. Last 12 months, 6 years into the campaign, 972 neighborhood events involving 140,000 Australians were held on nationwide close the gap day in 2013. Nowadays, practically 200,000 individuals have joined us in this effort.

We are starting up to see some progress – there are reductions in smoking costs and improvements in maternal and child health. We need to create on these. Turning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellness equality needs a concerted nationwide effort above years. It calls for continuity and diligence. And it needs investment.

Attaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellness and existence expectancy equality by 2030 is an agreed nationwide priority. The Australian public demand that government, in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their representatives, create on the shut the gap platform to meet this challenge.

They believe that we can and should be the generation to last but not least near the gap. We ought to all dwell up to the challenge that Clarence Paul’s family members set us – end our mob from dying prematurely.

Closing the gap that scars Australia: end our mob from dying prematurely | Mick Gooda and Kirstie Parker

Near the Gap and Closing the Gap – what’s the difference?

Shut the Gap

Shut the Gap is a public awareness campaign focused on closing the health gap. It’s run by quite a few NGOs, Indigenous well being bodies and human rights organisations, which includes the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). The campaign was formally launched in 2007, soon after the release of the social justice report by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Dr Tom Calma.

Shut the Gap gained assistance from state and federal governments when the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) set two overall health aims amid their 6 targets in 2008: attaining overall health equality inside of a generation and halving the gap in mortality charges for children underneath five within a decade.

In 2008 then prime minister Kevin Rudd and then opposition leader Brendan Nelson also signed the Shut the Gap statement of intent.

Closing the Gap

Closing the Gap is the name provided to Coag’s 2008 nationwide technique to tackle Indigenous inequality, which includes the Indigenous Reform Agreement, a commitment to closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians inside of a certain timeframe, with six crucial targets.

• To shut the daily life-expectancy gap inside a generation


• To halve the gap in mortality prices for Indigenous children below 5 inside a decade


• To make sure accessibility to early childhood training for all Indigenous 4-year-olds in remote communities within 5 years


• To halve the gap in reading, creating and numeracy achievements for youngsters inside a decade


• To halve the gap in Indigenous 12 months 12 achievement by 2020


• To halve the gap in employment outcomes amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians inside a decade.

Yearly reports on the progress of Closing the Gap are released in early February by the prime minister.

Near the Gap and Closing the Gap – what’s the difference?

Closing the gap: details and figures on Indigenous advancement

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, has made his very first deal with on the “closing the gap” initiative to parliament. The most positive final result from his report was that the child mortality target is on track to be met.

Coag set specific targets for Closing the Gap in 2008, which included halving the gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youngsters under the age of 5 inside of a decade.

Guardian Australia has covered a number of aspects of the closing the gap initiative, as properly as other disparities in between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians not covered by the initiative, such as incarceration rates. Here’s a round-up of all the coverage and comment:

Indigenous access to early childhood education and Year twelve completion is on the up, but Indigenous students are struggling in the years in amongst.

The Northern Territory is the only Australian state or territory on track to close the lifestyle expectancy gap in between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians inside of a generation – but it will still have the highest child mortality rate in the country.

Indigenous Australians are nevertheless more likely to die sooner than non-Indigenous Australians, in spite of government initiatives to shut the gap. The latest mortality price figures show the charge of deaths per a hundred,000 Indigenous Australians is far more than twice that of non-Indigenous folks.

A misplaced generation of disadvantaged younger men and women not engaged in function or examine have been warned they could face a “life sentence of poverty and exclusion” in light of a government report that finds vast discrepancies in educational achievement based on wealth.

Indigenous Australians are suffering disproportionately from lengthy hospital waiting occasions as the quantity of cataract surgeries and knee replacements surge. The yearly hospital statistics report demonstrates small improvement in overall waiting times for elective surgery at the national degree.

Setting aside element of a welfare advantage for staples such as food has existed in the NT given that 2007 and the plan has affected some positively, some negatively.

The high court identified that social disadvantage should be taken into account in sentencing but sadly presented no solutions regarding the disproportionate imprisonment of Aboriginal individuals.

Practically 90% of Aboriginal young children underneath two years old endure anaemia at least once due to the fact they are not receiving ample nutrition in remote communities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, a examine by the Fred Hollows Basis has found.

Tony Abbott has attempted to justify his employment participation policy that pays long-term unemployed on Newstart and Youth Allowance bonuses of up to $ 15,500.

Health expenditure on potentially preventable hospital treatment method of Indigenous Australians is far more than double the expenditure on non-Indigenous Australians, a new report demonstrates – but the trigger is unclear.

The gap in between Indigenous and non-Indigenous incomes has widened but rising entry to schooling could help decrease it, according to a new report.

Western Australia has refused to give in-principle support to re-signing the closing the gap Indigenous health agreement, instead announcing it will fund initiatives itself in excess of the next yr.

Aboriginal prisoners make up a quarter of the prison population yet account for only three% of the basic population.

Closing the gap: details and figures on Indigenous advancement