Tag: health

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A&E – Scottish Daily Express front page is a disgraceful example of misrepresentation

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stewartb The Scottish Daily Express front page article – by its Scottish Political Reporter – is a disgraceful example of misrepresentation. It seeks to link excess deaths following a visit to A&E with NHS Scotland missing its four hour standard of 95% of patients being discharged, transferred or admitted within four hours. The postulated causal link between an increase in excess deaths and A&E attendance advanced by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) is concerned primarily with time periods of over eight and more significantly, over 12 hours. The Express fails to make this clear despite there being multiple … Continue reading A&E – Scottish Daily Express front page is a disgraceful example of misrepresentation

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THREE times as many wait more than 12 hours in English and Welsh A&E departments

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By Professor John Robertson: Today, the Express is headlining – Scots dying as A&E crisis worsens every day based on the weekly 4 hour waits for week ending 6 October. A simple look at the above graph is clear – post-pandemic with increasing numbers (122 000 in April 2022 to 143 000 in May 2024) attending, a dramatic increase in those waiting beyond target times but since January 2022, a clear stabilisation and even fall from that peak with significantly fewer waiting over 12 hours in December 2024 (42 000) than in December 2022 (49 000) Missing from the Express story … Continue reading THREE times as many wait more than 12 hours in English and Welsh A&E departments

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10% of the population but 65% more doctors in training

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From Undergraduate medicine degree admissions at Scottish universities: FOI release, published yesterday, we see 1 240 entrants to ‘Pre Clinical’ medicine for 2022-23, the latest HESA data available (245 from rUK).1 From NHS England’s NHS England update on medical school training places, 28 February letter to Royal College of Physicians, published in February 2024: We are currently ahead of plan on our initial milestone to increase medical training places from an intake of 7,500 in September 2023 to 8,200 places by September 2025, as set out on p129 of the LTWP. In September 2023, a total of 7,571 medical school … Continue reading 10% of the population but 65% more doctors in training

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Shameful – BBC Scotland’s zombie reporters use a financial fraud investigation to return to unfounded accusations of child death from water supplies

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By Professor John Robertson OBA Reporting on a police and NHS investigation only into financial fraud, BBC Scotland are delighted to add: The QEUH campus, which includes the Royal Hospital for Children, was hailed as a world-leading facility when it opened. However, a series of infection outbreaks and concerns around the water and ventilation systems emerged after it opened and a number of patients died, including 10-year-old cancer patient Milly Main. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gl49vvjgro This is shameful politicising of personal suffering, scaremongering of the million plus served by the hospital, and deliberate harm to the mental well-being of thousands of NHS staff, based on … Continue reading Shameful – BBC Scotland’s zombie reporters use a financial fraud investigation to return to unfounded accusations of child death from water supplies

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The simple facts that reveal the extent to which the SNP Government better protected us against Covid deaths despite the delay in devolving responsibility and Johnson’s callous inertia – saving thousands

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By Professor John Robertson OBA I’m grateful to @amaccj for reminding me of this and for the link to the source. When the final assessment is made, we need to set the scene with these facts: The World Health Organisation had pressed the panic button warning national governments to act on the 30th of January 2020.1 Throughout February and March PM Johnson missed 5 Cobra meetings which discussed the need for a response.2 Pandemic response was still a reserved matter to the UK Government. In the first week of March, FM Sturgeon called for an immediate lockdown but PM Johnson refused … Continue reading The simple facts that reveal the extent to which the SNP Government better protected us against Covid deaths despite the delay in devolving responsibility and Johnson’s callous inertia – saving thousands

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Up to 80% of Scotland’s drug deaths were among those who became addicted before the SNP came to power, 93% of nearly 30 000 referrals per year are treated within 3 weeks and more than half within only 1 week!

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From Public Health Scotland’s National drug related death database (Scotland)Analysis of Deaths Registered in 2019 and 2020, published today, it’s clear that Scotland’s drug deaths are to a very large extent a legacy of the Labour and Tory governments that ruled the UK and devolved Scotland for decades before the SNP came into power, with limited powers over drug use, in 2007. Treatment for these users has been, for years, top notch, with above the 90% target seen within three weeks or less: Between 1 April and 30 June 2024, 7,361 referrals to community-based services started treatment. Of these referrals, … Continue reading Up to 80% of Scotland’s drug deaths were among those who became addicted before the SNP came to power, 93% of nearly 30 000 referrals per year are treated within 3 weeks and more than half within only 1 week!

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The whole agency locum question is a reflection of a real crisis in the Welsh NHS workforce!

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stewartb ‘BBC Scotland is, undoubtedly, using a Scottish psychiatrist as part of its continuous attritional narrative, ‘that Scots are incapable of running things for themselves’. I’m inclined to check out – for comparison and useful learning – how capable the British Labour Party, long in government in Cardiff, have proven itself to be in running NHS Wales. After all, we in Scotland need to know what might be ahead of us in 2026! For example, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) released its latest NHS Wales Workforce Trends Report (as at 31 March 2023) on July 25, 2024 – see https://heiw.nhs.wales/news/heiw-releases-latest-nhs-wales-workforce-trends-report/ . Here are some … Continue reading The whole agency locum question is a reflection of a real crisis in the Welsh NHS workforce!

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TOTAL spend on psychiatric locums is FALLING as mental health waiting lists are slashed

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Cost of employing locum psychiatrists in the NHS is going up according to figures obtained by the BBC. Data from the country’s 14 health boards show £134 million has been spent on the temporary doctors since 2019. Psychiatrists say it’s reflective of wider recruitment challenges. BBC Reporting Scotland Wrongly is on the above scare this morning. Here are the data apparently: The total cost increased from £20.8m in 2019/20 to £34.8m last year according to figures obtained in a joint investigation by The Guardian and the BBC. This is a very strange graph indeed. The spend on emergency locum deals … Continue reading TOTAL spend on psychiatric locums is FALLING as mental health waiting lists are slashed

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Latest University of California research with 300 000 nuclear workers reinforces fears of positive link with leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and multiple myeloma as in WHO study and research in Germany and Scotland 

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By Professor John Robertson Today, from the University of California in Irvine, USA: A major update was made to the International Nuclear Workers Study (INWORKS), an international epidemiological study of workers in the nuclear sector to assess their risks of cancer and non-cancerous diseases.  The researchers assembled a cohort of more than 300,000 radiation-monitored workers from France, the United Kingdom and the United States, employed at nuclear facilities between 1944 and 2016. The study revealed a positive association between prolonged low-dose exposure to ionizing radiation and mortality from these haematological cancers. https://www.newswise.com/articles/new-uc-irvine-study-provides-crucial-insights-into-radiation-exposure-s-impact-on-cancer-risk The University then tries to play down the risk, … Continue reading Latest University of California research with 300 000 nuclear workers reinforces fears of positive link with leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and multiple myeloma as in WHO study and research in Germany and Scotland 

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Children’s Cancer Wards Inquiry – Relying on a doctor who resigned before the supposed ‘spike’, repeating the lie that there was a ‘spike’ in infections and ignoring fact that QEUH’s child cancer wards had the same infection rate as other hospitals

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By Professor John Robertson OBA Today, BBC Scotland tells us: A senior doctor has told an inquiry she was “appalled” at the state of child cancer wards when a new £870m hospital opened in Glasgow in 2015. In evidence presented to the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, infection control doctor Teresa Inkster said she felt “something had gone horribly wrong”. Dr Inkster was the lead infection control doctor for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde from April 2016 to September 2019. During that time the children’s cancer wards were forced to close because of a spike in unusual infections. Note the use of the word ‘felt’ … Continue reading Children’s Cancer Wards Inquiry – Relying on a doctor who resigned before the supposed ‘spike’, repeating the lie that there was a ‘spike’ in infections and ignoring fact that QEUH’s child cancer wards had the same infection rate as other hospitals