'Passion and commitment' needed to solve NHS crisis

Doctors must ignore the point-scoring approach of politicians and use their passion and commitment to tackle the crisis facing the NHS. BMA representative body deputy chair Anthea Mowat (pictured) made the rallying call during her closing remarks to last week’s BMA SRM (special representative meeting). Praising colleagues for their inspiration and ideas on the challenges facing the health service, she told the SRM that far from being ‘road blocks’ to progress and reform, doctors were ‘passionately committed to building a better health service’. She said: ‘Many of the solutions I’ve heard are the antithesis of the short-term political point-scoring that we tend to see. We need a long-term strategy for improving health that is about ensuring what we used to take for granted — that the next generation will be more healthy, not less healthy, than the current one. ‘We must have an NHS in which commissioners and providers are not set against each other, but where they can work together. Collaboration, not competition, has to be the watchword. ‘Fundamentally, we need to clearly reassert the role of doctors in leading the NHS and protecting and improving the health of the population.’   Obstacles Dr Mowat noted some of the key obstacles currently facing the profession, including the overwhelming burdens posed by regulation and its emphasis on box-ticking rather than freeing up doctors to improve the quality of pa...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news