NHS facing unprecedented crisis, warns Yousaf
Scotland’s Health Secretary has said the NHS is facing an “unprecedented crisis” – as one doctor warned patient safety is being put at risk in A&E daily.
Dr Lailah Peel, deputy chairwoman of the British Medical Association in Scotland, said patients are “absolutely” dying as a result of pressure on the NHS.
She said: “There is no shadow of a doubt that is happening.
“Every health care worker in Scotland right now will be able to tell you a story about a patient that has suffered because of the crisis at the moment.”
Dr Peel spoke about the situation in the NHS on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show, with Health Secretary Humza Yousaf telling the programme: “This is an unprecedented crisis.
“I don’t use that word lightly but it is something all governments are facing, not just in these islands but many in Europe and right across the world.
“People are not getting the level of care I would want for them, or indeed that I would want for myself or a family member, in many instances.”
Other recent figures show the largest number of hospital beds being occupied by those well enough to be discharged – an average of 1,898 beds a day in October.
This issue of delayed discharge is “one of the biggest issues if not the biggest issue” the NHS is facing, Mr Yousaf said.
The situation in the health service has seen Scottish Labour call for the Army to be sent in to help boost capacity.
But the Health Secretary argued: “The Army is not the panacea to this.
“The vast majority of Army nurses and doctors are working in wards right now; reservists are working in wards up and down the country already.
“So there is not this magic pool of nurses and doctors we can just count on to bring in and assist.”
The NHS is dealing with high levels of both flu and coronavirus, Mr Yousaf said, along with Strep A cases and other viral infections.
Meanwhile, he said the social care sector has been hit by Brexit, the pandemic and the current “extraordinarily high levels of energy costs and inflation”.
Mr Yousaf thanked NHS workers, saying: “I am grateful to Dr Lailah Peel and other doctors and nurses up and down the health service because they are working under the most unprecedented pressure of their entire careers, I think frankly of the entire NHS’s existence.”
Dr Peel, however, said the situation for doctors in the NHS is “absolutely brutal”.
Asked how she feels about going into work in A&E, she said: “Absolutely dread it, every single time. Doesn’t get any easier. It is just getting harder every single day.”
She added: “I hear from colleagues every day when I get into work. Everyone is talking about how they just can’t take any more of this, talking about whether they should be leaving, whether we should wait it out, whether there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.
“We’re seeing more and more colleagues just not turning up to work because they are just broken.”
Scottish Conservative health spokesman Sandesh Gulhane, however, said Mr Yousaf should be sacked immediately, saying his “dire forward planning has exposed how out his depth he is as Health Secretary”.
Dr Gulhane said: “Humza Yousaf is still in denial about how he completely failed to support Scotland’s NHS ahead of the worst winter in living memory that overwhelmed staff and suffering patients are continuing to endure.
“He was repeatedly warned a year ago that a winter crisis was looming but he totally failed to act.
“His flimsy NHS Recovery plan, which is now well over a year old, is simply not fit for purpose and his winter planning came too little, too late.”
Amid “utterly terrifying” comments from NHS staff, Dr Gulhane, who has been working as a GP during the Holyrood recess, said he had “seen first-hand over the festive period how patients are suffering”.