…and a sense of vocation”? Is he kidding? If Jeremy Hunt isn’t trying to rile the medical profession, he’s got a funny way of going about it. With tensions high and strike action on the cards, saying that contract reforms, the very source of the strain, will bring back “professionalism and a sense of vocation” to a career that attracts some of the most talented and dedicated people around is either a whole new level of crass or it’s designed to inflame. And inflame it has: on Saturday the BMA’s Junior Doctor Committee voted to ballot its members over strike action (or some other form of protest), which could happen…
-
-
There is no closure – just grief
New Statesman, August 28th 2015 The headlines about “parity of esteem” between mental and physical health remain just that, warns Benedict Cooper. I don’t need to look very far to find the little black marks on this government’s mental health record. Just down the road, in fact. A short bus journey away from my flat in Nottingham is the Queens Medical Centre, once the largest hospital in Europe, now an embattled giant. Not only has the QMC’s formerly world-renowned dermatology service been reduced to a nub since private provider Circle took over – but that’s for another day – it has lost two whole mental health wards in the past…
