The government has withdrawn an offer of creating 1,000 more doctor training posts in England after the British Medical Association (BMA) refused to call off a six-day strike next week. The extra posts were part of a wider package of measures put forward by ministers earlier this year to resolve the long-running dispute with resident doctors.
The emergency department at Michael Garron Hospital was built to care for about 150 patients a day, but now sees more than 300 patients daily, amounting to about 107,000 patients last year in a space designed for 50,000 annually.
What are scientists, clinicians, and public health practitioners supposed to do in this moment? What use is research when our patients might be deported tomorrow? Why try to stem the tide of outbreaks when the world has fallen apart? This is why: because even in these times, enlarging the scope of human knowledge matters. The search for cures still matters. The fate of individual patients still matters.
Mark Samuels, chief executive of Medicines UK, stated, "We're not in a crisis currently, but it's still a serious situation." This highlights the precarious state of drug supplies amid rising geopolitical tensions.
Members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, went out on a strike to protect their health insurance and pension benefits. Dania Muñoz, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, explained that the private hospitals she and others were taking on are 'some of the top paid hospital systems in the country.'
For Massachusetts emergency physicians, that dream captures a simple truth: long ER waits rarely steam from care inside the department. Instead, doctors say they're the result of bottlenecks across a system stretched thin by staffing shortages, aging patients, limited hospital beds, and gaps in primary care.
The government, and health service leaders, must pay attention to the chaos inside Emergency Departments this winter, which are buckling under the pressure because of a failure to prepare for predictable surges in seasonal illnesses. That's the key takeaway from NHS England's latest stats on the pressures the Urgent and Emergency Care system is under in England, published today, according to the Royal College of Medicine (RCEM).
There was a collective fear that we're under attack — there are people on the streets of London trying to kill our fellow Londoners. On the day itself, Hettiaratchy was in charge and had to think practically and methodically: This is patient A, patient B, patient C; what are the injuries, what needs to happen, what needs to go on?
But as the city's Department of Public Health follows Mayor Daniel Lurie's directions to make cuts, they wanted to make one thing clear: safety in the city's medical facilities requires more than just the presence of security personnel. It requires widespread training in de-escalation, working with patients with complex needs, and crisis response, they said. These programs are on the chopping block.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association, a union representing nurses across the state, is planning vigils for Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents. The MNA plans to host vigils for Pretti, who worked at a veteran's hospital, Thursday night at Boston Medical Center, Worcester VA Clinic, and Northampton VA Medical Center, the union said. The MNA aims to honor Pretti's service as a nurse, his advocacy for human rights, and the veterans and communities he served, said a spokesperson for the union.
One might ask why an epidemiologist like me would be interested in Latin American history at this moment. What drew me to that era was the key role that clinicians and public health workers played in the resistance against the dictatorship; their simultaneous push for a national healthcare program; and the ways in which this sector organized, even as more conservative physicians sided with the putschists, happy to see their more progressive colleagues jailed and persecuted.
If you are choking and are alone, try to get yourself into a high-traffic area, such as a hallway in a building or outside your house. If you pass out, you're way more likely to be found as opposed to being in a room in a building or your house. Call 911 even though you can't speak. Someone will be sent to your location by dispatch.