NHS staff "quitting to work in supermarkets because of poor pay"

NHS staff are quitting to stack shelves in supermarkets instead of caring for patients because they are so demoralised by years of getting pay rises of only 1% or nothing, hospital bosses have warned.

The health service is now so understaffed that patient safety is being put at risk and people with mental health problems are experiencing delays and setbacks as a result, NHS leaders say.

The intervention in the general election campaign comes from NHS Providers, which represents almost all of England’s 240 NHS hospital, mental health and ambulance trusts. They told ministers bluntly on Monday that the government’s longstanding policy of holding down NHS staff pay is wrong and is damaging the service by deepening its already severe staff shortages.

“Years of pay restraint and stressful working conditions are taking their toll,” said Chris Hopson, NHS Providers’ chief executive. “Pay is becoming uncompetitive. Significant numbers of trusts say lower paid staff are leaving to stack shelves in supermarkets rather than carry on with the NHS.”

He urged Theresa May to abandon her plan to limit NHS staff’s pay increases to 1% a year until 2020 and not pursue it during the next parliament as a way of making the NHS’s books balance.

He added: “Trust leaders tell us that seven years of NHS pay restraint is now preventing them from recruiting and retaining the staff they need to provide safe, high-quality patient care. The NHS can’t carry on failing to reflect the contribution of our staff through fair and competitive pay for five more years.

“Pay restraint must end and politicians must therefore be clear about when during the lifetime of the next parliament it will happen and how.” He repeated the organisation’s demand for £25bn in extra funding to help the NHS in England get through until 2020 and warned that staff are also leaving because they are exhausted from having to work so constantly to keep up with the unprecedented demand for care.

Hopson added: “We are getting consistent reports of retention problems because of working pressures in the health service causing stress and burnout.”

Medical royal colleges, health trade unions and health charities such as Cancer Research UK have been highlighting in recent months the damaging effects on patient care of widespread shortages of doctors, nurses, GPs, paramedics and many other NHS staff groups.

Norman Lamb, a former coalition government health minister, said NHS pay restraint – which had operated since 2010 – was “stupid” and had gone on so long that it was proving counterproductive.

“The Conservatives expect NHS staff to take year-on-year real-terms pay cuts in order to try to stave off financial disaster in the NHS,” said the Liberal Democrat health spokesman. “You can’t possibly justify this over such a long period. It is also stupid because great staff will vote with their feet and leave.” s

He contrasted his party’s plan for a 1p increase in income tax to generate extra funds for health and social care with May’s refusal to commit to any tax increases for that purpose. With the Tory majority set to increase, “this guarantees a bleak future for the NHS and for its staff under the Conservatives”, claimed Lamb.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, repeated his pledge of more money for the NHS if the Tories are re-elected and said that nurses’ pay should go up. Responding to a question from the BBC interviewer Andrew Marr about some nurses going to food banks, Hunt replied that average nurse’s pay is £31,000.

“Is that enough considering the brilliant work that they do? I think many people would say they want to pay them more. I think they do an incredible job. If you want more money to go into the NHS – and this government recognises we will need to put more money into the NHS and the social care system because of the pressures we face – then the question is how you get there,” said Hunt.

He also insisted that key NHS waiting time standards, such as the four-hour target in A&E and 18-week wait for planned hospital care, were not particularly useful measures of true NHS performance. Lives saved from cancer and heart disease as a result of better care showed the service was doing well, he added.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s health spokesman, said Hunt’s agreement that it was unacceptable that the A&E target had not been met in England for more than two years was “an admission of failure straight from the horse’s mouth: the Tory-made A&E crisis is simply ‘not acceptable’”.

Responding to Hopson’s comments on NHS pay, Ashworth added: “This is a stark warning from NHS Providers about the Conservatives’ catastrophic management of the NHS workforce. It is incredible and disgraceful that NHS staff are leaving to work in supermarkets instead because NHS pay has been squeezed so far. The country’s shortage of paramedics, nurses and consultants now threatens a raft of NHS strategies to provide better services for patients.”

NHS Providers are also warning that understaffing is so serious in mental health services that patients are now suffering delays in receiving treatment, taking longer to recover and having a bad experience of NHS care. “We are particularly worried about the pressures in the mental health workforce,” said Hopson. “These are resulting in delays in treatment, people are taking longer to recover, and as a result their care is more expensive and their experience is worse.”

A Conservative spokesman declined to respond directly to Hopson’s warning. He said only that: “As NHS England say, outcomes for every major disease in this country are now better than they’ve ever been. But the truth is that in order to continue to invest in the NHS, grow staff numbers and pay, and improve patient care, we need to secure the economic progress we’ve made and get a good Brexit deal. That is only on offer at this election with the strong and stable leadership of Theresa May.”

NHS staff "quitting to work in supermarkets because of poor pay"

Quitting EU regulator "would leave UK waiting longer" for new drugs

Ministers are coming under growing pressure to scrap plans to quit Europe’s medicines regulator as part of Brexit, with drug firms saying doing so could force Britons to wait a year longer than patients in the EU to access new drugs.

Labour and leaders of the UK’s pharmaceutical industry fear that patients and the NHS will lose out if Britain gives up its membership of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told MPs last week that he did not expect the UK to continue as a member once it left the EU.

Several EU states, including the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland, have already expressed interest in hosting the EMA’s headquarters if and when it relocates from London with its 890 medical, scientific and managerial staff. Hunt said it was likely the EMA would move as a result of Brexit.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, has written to Hunt branding departure from the EMA “reckless and unbelievable” and highlighting the “damaging loss of jobs and wealth from our shores” it would involve.

He said that British people would face “longer waiting periods to access life-saving treatments”. He added: “If we leave the EMA we could, like Canada and Australia, have to wait for many months before being able to buy drugs already available in bigger markets like the EU and the United States.”

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which represents drug firms employing about 220,000 people in the UK, voiced similar concerns. Dr Virginia Acha, its executive director for research, medical and innovation, said that Britain being outside the EMA could lead to patients waiting six to 12 months longer than the rest of Europe to receive newly developed medicines because the UK would be a small market rather than part of a large EU-wide one.

“While there is opportunity in creating a bespoke regulatory framework for the UK, if this operates outside of the EMA, the added time, cost and burden of having to seek additional regulatory approval in a separate system is likely to mean British patients’ access to medicines will face even greater delay,” Acha said.

The EMA currently licenses all medicines that manufacturers want to sell in the 28 EU states and some other countries in the European Economic Area. Its resident population of 500 million people represents 25% of the world’s total drug market. If Britain left the EMA and made its own arrangements to regulate drugs, it would be of much less priority to pharmaceutical firms because it would be as little as 3% of the global market, Acha added.

The prime minister, Theresa May, was non-committal on how drugs regulation would work after Brexit when Philippa Whitford, the Scottish Nationalist MP and an NHS doctor, raised it at last week’s prime minister’s questions.

“Leaving the EMA would be bad for patients and bad for the NHS. We should be doing our damnedest to stay inside the EMA, maybe through some form of associate membership,” Whitford said.

The ABPI is lobbying several Whitehall ministries, including Hunt’s Department of Health and David Davis’s Department of Exiting the European Union, to try to ensure the UK retains some form of membership of the EMA. Britain already has its own drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulator Agency (MHRA), which is part of an EMA-led pan-European network of 36,000 national regulators and scientists.

The MHRA already plays a disproportionately large role in the EMA’s work, assessing about 20% of all the drugs the EMA evaluates every year. But it would have to increase hugely in size if it became responsible for approving all new drugs aimed at the British market.

Ashworth has asked Hunt to spell out how much it would cost Britain to have a dedicated national drugs regulator and also said that “regulatory divergence between a post-Brexit Britain and the EU” could lead to job losses in the life sciences industry, a sector May has highlighted as central to the UK’s economic prospects after departure form the EU.

Quitting EU regulator "would leave UK waiting longer" for new drugs

Ex-Southern Health boss gets £190,000 payoff for quitting advisory role

The former chief executive of a troubled mental health trust has been given a £190,000 payoff after she left her latest role.

Katrina Percy faced repeated calls to resign over Southern Health NHS foundation trust’s failure to investigate more than 1,000 unexpected deaths of patients with mental health problems and learning disabilities.

In August Percy resigned as chief executive but was moved to a role created for her by the trust with the same £240,000 salary and benefits package. She has now left that role after criticism from the public, patients and the families of those who died. It was confirmed on Friday she will receive a £190,000 settlement, the equivalent of one year’s salary.

Percy was under pressure to resign as chief executive following a series of damning reports on the trust’s failure to investigate deaths because of shortcomings on the board and by senior executives. But she was moved to a new role specially created for her.

Dr Sara Ryan, mother of 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in a bath after an epileptic seizure at Slade House in Oxfordshire in July 2013, was one of those who criticised the creation of a role for Percy.

On Friday the trust said: “Following the recent announcement that Katrina Percy will take on a regional strategic advisory role, we have received correspondence from the public, patients and families expressing their concerns. We have listened to all of this feedback and reflected.

“Both the trust and NHS Improvement believe it is no longer possible for Katrina to continue in her new advisory role. Katrina shares this view and we have worked with NHS Improvement to come to a settlement where she will leave Southern Health with immediate effect, to pursue other opportunities.

“We thank Katrina for her significant contribution to the NHS and we wish her well for the future.”

Last month the interim chair of the trust, Tim Smart, quit the organisation. He had been criticised over how the trust had continued to employ Percy.

A spokesman for NHS Improvement said there had been no legal grounds on which to dismiss Percy as chief executive and defended the payout.

“Tim Smart, as the then interim chair of the trust, received advice that there were no legal grounds upon which to dismiss her, and that doing so would open the trust and the wider NHS up to potential litigation and the very real possibility of significant costs to the taxpayer,” the spokesman said.

“He worked with Ms Percy to explore a way of her leaving her role as chief executive, but continuing to contribute to the future of patient services in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in a very meaningful, but non-patient facing, way.

“As an adviser, Ms Percy’s strategic skills would be put to good use for a period of 12 months… we supported this. It has been clear in the weeks following the announcement – that this agreement cannot now be delivered.

“We have, therefore, worked with the trust to renegotiate for her to leave its employment immediately. Her contract with Southern Health entitles her to six months’ pay in lieu of notice. She will also be entitled to a further six months’ pay as part of the settlement. She will need to repay both of these payments if she gets a role in the NHS within the next 12 months.”

The spokesman added: “We know that this won’t please some who think she ought to have received no payment at all, and in situations like this, a perfect deal is not possible.”

Deborah Coles, director of Inquest, which has supported Sparrowhawk’s family, said: “The resignation of Katrina Percy should mark the end of Southern Health’s denial of responsibility for systemic failings and the start of vital work to protect the lives of the people in its care.”

Ex-Southern Health boss gets £190,000 payoff for quitting advisory role

If You Snus, You Shed: Examine Exhibits Positive aspects of Quitting Smokeless Tobacco

The adverse results of smoking are properly acknowledged and documented. The impact of smokeless tobacco is significantly less clear. Now a research from Sweden, published in Circulation, gives proof that quitting smokeless tobacco following a heart assault is about as helpful as quitting smoking. The benefits do not support the common see that smokeless tobacco is a risk-free different to smoking.

In their principal evaluation, the investigators analyzed the threat for death in Swedish heart attack (myocardial infarction) patients, 675 of whom had quit employing snus (the Swedish form of oral snuff) following MI and 1799 of whom continued to use snus. After 2.1 many years of stick to-up, the mortality charge was reduced in half amid those who quit relative to people who continued making use of snus, from 18.seven to 9.7 per 1000 particular person-years. Soon after adjustment for other chance elements, the hazard ratio for quitters was .57, similar to the .54 HR observed in a separate evaluation between those who quit smoking right after MI compared with these who continued to smoke.

“We didn’t anticipate to see this kind of a strong association between individuals men and women who stopped employing (smokeless tobacco),” explained lead writer Gabriel Arefalk, in an AHA press release. “After a heart attack, no doubt smoking cessation reduces the risk of death about a single third and is actually a cornerstone of cardiac rehabilitation around the world. For smokeless tobacco, we did not know.”

English: Skruf løs snus (Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

If You Snus, You Shed: Examine Exhibits Positive aspects of Quitting Smokeless Tobacco