A YOUNG doctor yesterday accused the Government of turning her hospital into a “war zone” as Patricia Hewitt became the first Health Secretary to address the British Medical Association in its 173-year history.
Jennie Blackwell, a senior house officer, told Ms Hewitt that she and her colleagues dreaded going to work because Government targets had left her unit completely overwhelmed by patients.
Describing chaotic pressures that left patients “strewn all round the unit”, Dr Blackwell, who is a member of the Junior Doctors’ Committee, said that people were often forced to wait for hours on trolleys in the corridor before they were treated.
Dr Blackwell, 27, took Ms Hewitt to task over the target that 98 per cent of accident and emergency patients should be seen and treated within four hours. She said that many patients were being moved from A&E into her medical assessment unit before they had been treated properly, simply to meet the target.
She added that life-threatening illnesses were getting overlooked as overstretched doctors struggled to cope, while paramedics were left waiting with patients instead of responding to new emergencies.
Advertisement
“It’s like a war zone,” Dr Blackwell said of her hospital, which she declined to name but said was in the North West. “We have patients strewn all over the unit, sitting in non medical areas with serious medical conditions. It is frankly dangerous that we don’t have the facilities to cope with these things. Please, please, please reduce this target as it’s awful for patients and awful for us.”
Speaking at the BMA’s conference in Manchester — an experience she likened to “Daniel entering the lion’s den” — Ms Hewitt said that targets were needed to help to achieve much-needed NHS improvements.
“I’m not going to resile from the importance of those new, more limited number of targets,” she said. “Although they are crude, they are helping to achieve a much needed improvement in the services.”
Jonathan Fielden, the deputy chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said that the problem had been raised by other doctors across the UK but he did not believe it was common.
“It is a particular issue where NHS trusts focus on a target rather than the whole process of care for a patient,” he said.
Advertisement
Ms Hewitt also faced the wrath of doctors over the Government’s approach to smoking. There were cries of “shame” and “not good enough” as she outlined proposals to ban smoking in “virtually all” enclosed public places, but with exemptions for pubs not serving and preparing food.