reduced the NHS to a near-permanent crisis at times of peak demand - such as the winter months.
Despite glib assurances from Health Secretary Frank Dobson that enough extra "winter pressures" money has been pumped in to enable the hospitals to cope with anything but "exceptional circumstances", it appears that a relatively small drop in temperature and a 'flu epidemic are sufficient to trigger chaos in the remaining A&E Units Not only have emergency patients again been stacked up on trolleys - and even treated in the backs of ambulances in hospital car parks - for lack of sufficient medical beds, but there has been an even sharper crisis in the supply of Intensive Care beds. On December 30, there were only four ICU beds free in the whole country, while the beginning of January has seen patients from London being ferried as far afield as Portsmouth for treatment, with the nearest other bed being Derby!
The pressure of increased demand on the dwindling numbers of front-line hospital beds has been coupled with a growing shortage of qualified nursing staff to keep the available beds running.
In many areas a combination of demoralisation with skid-row levels of NHS pay and the impact of the flu epidemic and winter ailments on nursing staff mean that even hospitals with money to Dodging reality: Dobson spend cannot find enough of the right staff to sustain services, and beds have closed.
There are real fears that the rot may have gone so deep that it is almost impossible to retrieve the situation. The worst crisis in nurse staffing levels for 25 years comes alongside huge problems in recruiting new student nurses to = fill the gaps in the profession opened up by increasing numbers of older nurses retiring.
Gordon Brown openly assumed a standstill in NHS pay levels as part of his tight-fisted 3-year settlement of NHS finances, making it hard to see any scope to reverse the downward slide in morale, despite Dobson's promise of a "recruitment campaign" and endless forays by NHS bosses to sign up nurses on short-term contracts from Finland, the Philippines and other countries around the world. Just like their inglorious Tory predecessors, Dobson and his department appear to be devoting far more time and energy to denying the facts and attempting to gag or mislead journalists and conceal the scale of the crisis than they are to finding ways to put things right. Journalists seeking ministerial comment are now switched through to a computerised "Rebuttal Unit" which at the flick of a switch churns out a stream of pointless facts and figures designed to distract from the story in hand. A starting point would be to guarantee nurses and other NHS staff a substantial above-inflation pay increase this year and every year for the lifetime of this government, alongside an immediate moratorium on any further bed closurec Health unions, which have played the pay issue with predictable timidity, must wage a new year offensive on this issue, which is crucial to the future of our NHS. Ted Johns Heath Can FAIR PAY RCN
NOCIALIST OUTLOOK MARSAL MON
YoU THINK THIS IS CRAMPED - WAIT UNTIL OLD HARRY GETS BACK FROM X-RAY!