Showing posts with label GPs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GPs. Show all posts

Monday 25 March 2024

We Didn't See You As 'Trusted Messengers' Before Your Virtue Signalling Nonsense...

...so we aren't likely to do it after this:
Dr Sarah Benn has long been concerned about the climate crisis, diligently recycling until she was “blue in the face”. But the rise of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion in 2019 inspired her and her husband to go further. “We thought: well, if we don’t do it then who else is going to?” While working as a GP near Birmingham, Benn became increasingly involved in direct action over the next few years, and once glued her hand to the door of the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in protest at the government’s inaction on the climate.

*sighs* If only they spent as much time seeing patients as they do virtue signalling, we'd respect them more... 

Benn now faces a professional tribunal by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the disciplinary arm of the General Medical Council (GMC), to determine whether she can keep her licence to practise. She is one of three GPs who face being struck off for climate activism this year, and her case in April is the first that will be heard.
After her first four criminal convictions – two for obstructing a highway, one for stopping people engaged in a lawful activity and one for flying a drone in a restricted place – the GMC opened an investigation.

Yes, Reader, you read that right - it takes FOUR convictions to get them to come in off the golf course and take a good hard look... 

It was not until Benn was found guilty of contempt of court for breaching a civil injunction at Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire as part of a Just Stop Oil campaign that she was referred for a full tribunal. Benn spent a total of 31 days in prison for this action.

And she's far from the only one: 

Dr Patrick Hart, a GP from Bristol, also has a string of convictions for climate activism, one of which resulted in a suspended prison sentence. After he rejected a formal warning from the GMC, he was told he would face a tribunal in November.
“The lawyer I spoke to said it was unusually lenient but I didn’t take it. Partly because it would have been dishonest and partly because I’m angry with them for … failing to make any meaningful statement about any of this and enthusiastically investigating people for matters of conscience and patient care,” Hart said.

Where's the 'patient care' in all this grandstanding? 

Benn has now retired and is no longer practising as a GP. But she wants the GMC to recognise the importance of her actions, and said doctors should be seen as “trusted messengers”.

Not happening.  

Monday 10 July 2023

You Know What, I'm Actually OK With This...


...just so long as it works the other way as well. And GPs and hospitals pay YOU every time an appointment is cancelled. It's only fair, right?
She told ITV's Good Morning Britain that the Government had 'no immediate plans' to impose fines but 'it is not ruled out for the future'.
Ms Caulfield, a former nurse, said there was a 'good argument for it and we are not ruling it out for the future but it is not something that we have got on the table right now'.
Asked if the policy could be in the next Tory manifesto, she replied: 'Potentially, yes.'

That's the strong, decisive Tory government we've come to know and love! 

...the idea triggered a backlash from the health sector.

Wait, what? Aren't they always complaining about no-shows? 

The British Medical Association said that fines for missed appointments would 'not only undermine the essential trust between doctor and patient (Ed: stop laughing at the back!), but ultimately threaten the fundamental principle that the NHS delivers free care at the point of need, for all'.

But no-shows don't generate any care, do they? And if they don't turn up, maybe they didn't need it...

The NHS Confederation said the bureaucratic costs of the plan 'could well far outweigh the money brought in by the fines'.

The NHS complaining about 'bureaucratic costs' would be laughable, if only I was capable of laughing anymore... 

Monday 6 February 2023

How Are We Going To Know..?

GPs last night threatened to strike...
Ahahahahaha! Good one!
....over a proposed NHS contract they say fails to pay them enough to see patients.

Well, since they haven't fully got back to seeing patients, why should they expect to be paid? 

The doctors’ union claimed the rates on offer do not take account of inflation – and vowed to take industrial action if the Government and NHS England refuse to renegotiate.

They should refuse. Call their bluff. 

The NHS is braced for strikes on four days out of five next week, with nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists walking out.

This is a concerted effort by unions to bring down the government. It can't really be anything else, can it?