NHS and health

A workplace bulletin for Lewisham Hospital workers, by Lewisham Hospital workers. Click here to download the PDF.

Accident and Emergency departments are at crisis point. One in 10 patients admitted to A&E now have to wait more than four hours to be treated or discharged — double the figure this time last year. Royal College of Nursing spokesperson Patricia Webb described the situation in the East of England: “Patients are woken up at three in the morning and moved around the hospital — cupboards and catheter laboratories are being used to house patients.” In Oxford University Hospital there is now a “queue nurse” who looks after patients in the queue waiting to be triaged. In Wales patients have been...

A workplace bulletin for Lewisham Hospital workers, by Lewisham Hospital workers.. Click here to download the PDF.

In a row with Jeremy Hunt, the Royal College of Nursing has rejected calls for it to split into two organisations — a professional body and a trade union. Hunt, parroting the conclusions of the Francis Report into the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal, argues that the RCN was complicit there because they “allowed their trade union responsibilities to trump their responsibilities as a Royal College to raise professional standards.” But this conclusion was nothing but Francis’ own bourgeois prejudice. In fact, the problem was that the RCN did not behave like a trade union. As the report...

In a late-night session on 24 April, Lords voted through secondary legislation that will drive forward NHS privatisation. The “section 75 regulations” provide the detail on how the new Clinical Commissioning Groups will sell the NHS to the private sector. Health academic Lucy Reynolds explains: “The Health and Social Care Bill was passed in a form as if it were an aeroplane without any jet engines. The structure was there but [...] they couldn’t find the thing in it to accomplish the privatisation. The regulations provide the jet engines and will make that privatisation go ahead.” Prior to...

Over a thousand people marched from Southall, past Ealing Hospital, to Ealing Common on Saturday 27 April to demand that the Accident and Emergency departments be kept open at Ealing Hospital and three others threatened in west London. Ealing Southall Labour MP Virendra Sharma was at the head of the Southall demonstration; John McDonnell, Labour MP for the neighbouring constituency of Hayes and Harlington also spoke; and Labour Party placards and banners dotted the march, though they were not as numerous as GMB union flags and t-shirts. A Unite banner and the Ealing Trades Council banner were...

A workplace bulletin for Lewisham Hospital workers, by Lewisham Hospital workers. Click here to download the PDF.

An AWL conference bulletin from Unison Health Conference, April 2013. Click here to download the PDF.

Fifty thousand people marched on Saturday 20 April to defend Stafford Hospital against threatened cuts in services and jobs and against private healthcare companies taking over their hospital. Fifty thousand people took to the streets in a magnificent display of support to defend their local hospital despite it having recently suffered some of the worst publicity of any hospital in the history of the NHS. Fifty thousand people (in a borough with a population of 126,000) crowded into the town square, with a shared understanding that cuts and underfunding inevitably lead to excess patient deaths...

A workplace bulletin for workers at Lewisham Hospital, by workers at Lewisham Hospital. Click here to download the PDF.