Poll shows 60% of European doctors are considering leaving UK

More than half of the doctors from Europe working in the UK are considering leaving the country because of Brexit, a survey by the General Medical Council indicates.

Charlie Massey, the chief executive of the GMC, told the health select committee that while a survey was “not necessarily predictive of future behaviour” the results indicated a potential serious depletion in the workforce.

“It does send a worrying signal in terms of the stock of doctors currently working in the UK,” he said while giving evidence to MPs on Tuesday.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said it was “extremely concerning that over half of doctors from the EEA [European Economic Area] feel so undervalued as to consider leaving the UK following the Brexit vote”.

The GMC said 2,106 doctors from the EEA, about 10% of the total who are working in the UK, had responded to the survey.

Of those who responded, 60% (1,280) said they were considering leaving the UK at some point in the future, and, of those doctors, 91% said the UK’s decision to leave the EU was a factor in their considerations.

Separately, a senior Department of Health official told the committee that British people claiming pensions who had emigrated to Europe were saving the UK about £350m a year in healthcare costs. Medical treatment in the most popular countries for British retirees, France and Spain, was cheaper than it was in the UK, said Paul MacNaught, the director of EU, international and prevention programmes at the DoH.

The 190,000 British retirees living elsewhere in Europe, cost the UK an average of £2,300 a year in payments to local health providers. In Britain, the cost of supporting their European equivalents was an annual average of £4,500.

“This is one of the advantages of the current arrangements,” MacNaught said.

The UK paid about £650m to EU countries to compensate for their health services to Britons. The vast bulk of that, £500m, went on the 190,000 retired Britons in Europe. Of those, 70,000 were living in Spain, 44,000 in Ireland, 43,000 in France, and 12,000 in Cyprus.

More than 1,000 respondents in the GMC survey commented on their feelings about Brexit and its impact on their practices.

Massey said two primary reasons were cited for considering abandoning careers in Britain: “Firstly, a question of whether or not doctors felt valued working in the NHS, and secondly, the uncertainty over the continuing future residency status.”

Ashworth said: “The skills and dedication of staff from around the world are integral to our NHS and the government must immediately reassure EU nationals of their right to live and work in the UK. If they don’t, we risk facing a serious staff shortage which will only further worsen pressures on our NHS.”

In a statement, Massey said: “EEA doctors make a huge and vital contribution to health services across the UK. We want to continue attracting overseas doctors in future, and ensure we do not create any unnecessary barriers that would stop them coming here. It’s deeply worrying that some are considering leaving the UK in the next few years. If they leave, this would have a serious impact on patient care and would place the rest of the UK medical profession under even greater pressure.”

Last week the health select committee heard that about 10% of doctors in the NHS were EU nationals, while 5% of nurses had trained in European countries before moving to Britain.

The BMA’s council chair, Mark Porter, warned last week that an exodus of doctors after Brexit could be a “disaster and threaten the delivery of high-quality patient care”.

The EEA consists of all 28 members of the EU along with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Poll shows 60% of European doctors are considering leaving UK

What I am really considering: the rehab nurse

I truly feel for you. I genuinely do. Some of you have had such tough times, it is no wonder you turned to medication for comfort. Some of the daily life stories I have been advised do not even bear pondering about. I don’t consider I’ll ever realize how people can lead to every other so significantly suffering.

That said, at times I want to smack your collective heads off a wall. I can not modify your methadone dose. I am not bumping you out of medication for the hell of it. I am striving to assist you. I know what withdrawals appear like. We give you methadone to maintain you from going into withdrawal. Despite what some individuals consider, I am not just a legal dealer.

It frustrates me that drug addiction is witnessed as a legal problem, not a overall health one particular, which means people do not get the assist they need. It angers me that folks go into jail and come out with a worse habit than they had ahead of. Men and women will phone you names such as junkie and alkie, however hero-worship men and women this kind of as Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. This double normal infuriates me.

But you frustrate me, as well. If you want to change, you need to function at it. You have to make an energy and go to recovery meetings, do group function and all that stuff. Do not make excuses and do not assume anyone else to carry you.

The principal factor you do not seem to realise is that I care about this, you and my job. I’m doing my best.

• Inform us what you’re truly thinking at mind@theguardian.com

What I am really considering: the rehab nurse

Less considering, more drinking: a situation for old-fashioned parenting | Taylor Glenn

I’ve just survived my first yr of motherhood. And I love it, it’s the greatest issue ever, lifestyle has so a lot more that means, and so forth. But let’s get to the tougher stuff: nothing could have ready me for the relentlessness of currently being so essential, for the immeasurable bodyweight of currently being so essential to the extremely survival of a helpless human currently being. Sleepless nights, hectic days, and this weird stickiness that just ends up on everything.

Regardless of being madly in really like with my baby daughter, at times I couldn’t help but truly feel like a hostage. When other mother and father say “I cannot remember daily life with no ‘em!” I believe they must have concussion. Actually? You cannot bear in mind carefree nights out and actually needing an alarm to get up in the morning? Freely using the toilet because you haven’t received a sleeping infant slung across your entire body? Not smelling of vomit? In my darkest moments it felt the only difference among motherhood and Stockholm Syndrome was the dimension of the captor.

Scientists are even now uncertain why some ladies suffer from postnatal depression but other people do not. As a former psychotherapist I’d worked with women with the sickness, but in the throes of new motherhood I identified myself befuddled by the diagnostic criteria. Particularly at 3am, when I’d torture myself by repeatedly reading through the signs and symptoms: crying spells (cue sobbing), insomnia (I’m awake Correct NOW!), depressed mood (nicely yes, now you mention it), fatigue (you effing kidding me?), anxiousness (ibid), and poor concentration (I just re-read through that six instances!?). Are there any new mothers not feeling these factors? I felt the two alone and in the secret company of hundreds of thousands.

A yr beneath my (now greater) belt, and I’m finally obtaining a grip. But a question keeps irking me: how the hell did my mother do this three times? My grandmother, 4? My aunt, six? Have been they masochists? Or just created of tougher stuff than I? When I finally asked her, my mother’s response was: “we just did not consider about stuff as significantly. Also we did whatever the doctor explained.”

It manufactured me realise the supply of my pressure wasn’t the work of parenting, per se. It was the immense worry that I was going to apocalyptically mess it up. Alas, minor comfort in simply identifying the problem, simply because research display that a parent’s capacity to deal with anxiety is the 2nd greatest predictor of a child’s well-being, just behind adore and affection. So hey, really do not tension.

As for healthcare suggestions, officially our GP is a greying man who’s worked at the very same surgical treatment because 1897. But off the record? It’s the mercurial Dr Google. (Much less medical doctor, a lot more engine). A 24-hour support providing immediate, totally free, and wholly conflicting tips, along with disturbing images. It is Dr Google who guided me in these early months, who advised me just how anxious I should be about leaving the little one to cry, about cautiously responding to a fever, and regardless of whether that wine I dared to sip with dinner would would leak into my breastmilk and make my youngster a violent psychopath later in existence. It’s amazing how significantly time you have on your hands to analysis when you have no time left for yourself.

I’m normally the 1st to eschew recommendations of reverting to “the old ways” simply because too numerous individuals who pine for the great ole’ days are a mint julep away from a racist remark and/or a jolly slap on a waitress’s bottom. But learning that so numerous other modern mothers and fathers feel related anxiety, I can’t assist but consider there’s a case for some retro options. Let’s call it the 3 measures to throwback parenting:

1. Much less Thinkin’, More Drinkin’

I’m not truly advocating that what contemporary dad and mom require is a lot more alcohol. Yeah, no, but perhaps some of us do. 1 of my fondest recollections is my grandmother offering me the gin-soaked olives from her martinis. Mmm, the briney taste of childhood! I now realise she was drinking in the middle of the day. Although she was hunting soon after me. The neurotic present day mother or father cries shame on you, Grandma! The throwback mother or father says nicely completed offering yourself (and me) a tiny treat. In contrast to early days the place I haven’t even had a sip of water because THE Baby Needs ME, and effectively, there is something to be explained for balance. I’m not minimising the really genuine results of alcohol abuse in families. But you know what Grandma wasn’t worrying about whilst she mixed a cocktail? Gina Ford v Dr Sears. Cheers.

two. A Bit of Dirt Do not Hurt

I’ve by no means been afraid of germs, but having a newborn abruptly created every thing truly feel like a giant petri dish. I remember strolling through the park and viewing horrified as a grimy toddler hovered above my valuable infant and coughed. I grumbled “hi there” but in my head gave him a swift sidekick across the park, because he was offering my daughter tuberculosis. My mother was also stunned to find out that we bathe the infant so considerably. “It’s her regimen!” I cried. But it is been established that raising baby in as well clean an surroundings robs her of the chance to develop essential immunity. I currently hate cleansing, so this is welcome guidance. Besides, chasing soon after my tired, waterlogged pre-toddler each and every evening following her bath, wrangling her into a SIDS-decreasing sleeping bag and then steaming the floors is not nearly as entertaining as just letting her chew on the toilet roll. Good unclean exciting.

three. The Internet Does not Exist

It’s not possible not to appear back above my yr and think about carrying out it all again without currently being so challenging on myself. Some of that is just my nature, some of it is possibly grounded in a genuine stress on present day dad and mom, specifically women, to do items completely. But what if I had resisted the urge to trawl the world wide web for studies on all the methods my baby’s skull could fuse incorrectly? (I confess I actually woke my husband up to show him an aerial photograph I’d taken of the baby’s head). I suppose that is one particular cause folks double down and have a second child: the possibility to do it again with out the neurosis.

I also wonder if whomever coined the term “helicopter parent” wasn’t just an observer, but like me, caught themself drowning in every single parenting guidebook printed given that the industrial revolution prior to realising the true pitfall for the properly-that means, caring parent is hovering. My mother assumed everything would operate out Ok, and just acquired on with it, whereas I discover myself constantly striving to keep away from the worst imagined final result.

Would earlier generations have been as trusting if they’d had the net? Who understands. What I do know is that if we are driven by a concern of failure, and by fear, period, we risk denying kids the likelihood to discover how to cope themselves. And here I employed to make fun of parents like me. Ah, karma.

So, as I gear up for the second year, I am determined to unwind much more. To get pleasure from the ride. To trust that the outcome will be fine if I cease striving to anticipate each possible way I could mess it up. I consider I’m receiving there. Also I hear toddlers are super easy.

Taylor Glenn is an American comedian, author and former psychotherapist based mostly in London. She at times tweets things by way of @taylorglennUK

Less considering, more drinking: a situation for old-fashioned parenting | Taylor Glenn

NHS sufferers "face much more remedy rationing considering that coalition restructuring"

GPs have said sufferers are encountering developing problems in acquiring care from community nurses, counselling, cataract surgery and fertility treatment Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Sufferers are dealing with developing rationing of remedies such as counselling, cataract removal and IVF since the coalition restructured the NHS final yr, GPs say.

In a survey of 315 family members medical doctors, GP magazine identified that 71% believed that restrictions on access to therapy in their area had elevated considering that April 2013, when the controversial shake-up of the NHS in England began.

That led to the creation of 211 GP-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which control the spending budget for healthcare in an region and make a decision who can obtain what treatment. GPs mentioned sufferers have been encountering expanding issues in acquiring care from neighborhood nurses, counselling, cataract surgical procedure and fertility remedy. Rationing has improved drastically in the past nine months, medical professionals responding to the survey explained.

One particular loved ones physician, a spouse in a surgery, informed the magazine: “We have enormous expense pressures and this is resulting in increased rationing and fragmentation of solutions to reduce charges.”

Nevertheless, entry to excess weight-loss surgical treatment has enhanced, though sufferers can encounter what Dr David Haslam, a GP and chair of the National Weight problems Forum, called a “torturous” path to obtaining it. And some obese sufferers are expected to attend fat-loss programmes for at least a yr prior to they will be regarded as for surgical treatment.

Some CCGs aim to scrap rationing policies inherited from their predecessor major care trusts as soon as their finances are in the black. For illustration, six which have previously refused to offer you women IVF treatment method as suggested by the National Institute of Well being and Care Excellence hope to commence undertaking so.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Health-related Association’s GPs committee, said that “many GPs are concerned about reduced engagement with community nursing teams and reduced or delayed accessibility to psychological companies, which is obtaining an affect on patient care.”

Andy Burnham, the shadow overall health secretary, said: “Labour has consistently warned that David Cameron’s re-organisation would consequence in a postcode lottery running riot via the NHS and this survey confirms that is exactly what is happening.”

A spokeswoman for NHS England denied patients were dealing with delays. “Well being support budgets have been protected and NHS England, by way of its mandate [from the Department of Well being], is guaranteeing that individuals acquire the companies they require in a timely manner”, she stated.

NHS sufferers "face much more remedy rationing considering that coalition restructuring"