1/3 This week, our Chair Rachel Bannister was interviewed by @markaustintv@SkyNews on the increase in CYP diagnosed with mental health issues
When she met @Jeremy_hunt last week, he promised that he was putting 'record funding' into mental health services& had a 'workforce plan'
Essex mental health trust criticised for remote patient monitors - BBC News- “executive nurse EPUT, said changes were being made in the way it sought consent for contactless monitoring across wards, ensuring "we are fully in line with national guidance". https://t.co/O1iS8cBj7D
“ Miss B said staff did not ask for her consent to be remotely monitored, there was no information on the ward about it, and when she asked staff to turn the system off in her room, her request was refused.”
https://t.co/CCk1OqJu3z
“ Mental health patients in the UK are routinely coming to harm because of high caseloads, understaffing and overwhelming administrative work…”
https://t.co/vC8qCnKH45?
💼Work with us! Policy and Campaigns Officer at DR UK
We're looking for someone to join our Disabled-led campaigns team to work for change at a national policy level.
Deadline: May 6th
📢Share in your networks!
More information and apply here 👇
https://t.co/ThntVpaYlQ
When engaging with the media, 87% of people with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress or trauma were not offered any form of payment.
Read the full report and download our guidance on the media's engagement with people with lived experience.
https://t.co/5fwQwCTvHt
Delighted this has now been published in @TheDrMagazine@TheBMA
How much of urself should u bring in2 ur work as a dr?
My personal experiences mean I'm a more compassionate psychiatrist,who is not invincible or perfect,&has vulnerabilities like any1 else.
Thank you @Seren_Boyd
American patient dumping from hospital to pavement still in gown:
https://t.co/C7Pc34AJVd
That's what we have to look forward to when we're fully privatised.
UK disability benefit cuts
New applicants for the health top-up to Universal Credit
to receive half of the current rate whilst cost of living rises.
If you lose your benefit and reapply, you get the lower rate.
Thousands will be pushed into poverty.
https://t.co/bFIoBPduyg
From this week, severely ill and disabled people making new benefit claims will receive lower Universal Credit health element payments than existing claimants if their conditions aren’t deemed "severe and lifelong", with no prospect of improvement.
People with cancer, MS, Parkinson’s, bipolar disorder, ME, long Covid, learning disabilities, and survivors of strokes and heart attacks may not get crucial support solely based on when they applied for help.
I was one of the MPs who warned last year that this would create a completely unjust two-tier disability benefits system. We must keep fighting for this policy to be reversed.
I want to be the GP who is invited to family funerals. I want to be the GP who is contacted when postnatal depression hits. I want to be the GP who is consulted as a reliable person when illness strikes and information is confusing. I want to be the GP who is trusted to advocate for patient need. I want to be the GP who is worth waiting to see.
Stand with us if you want this too.
Resist the Amazon Prime mentality. Support our challenge against the new contract which favours access over quality.
Support us in our actions towards having time to care.
I’ve been doing this GP malarkey for nearly 20y now. It struck me today that the only way I can carry on practising the way I used to is if I do it at my own personal expense. It never used to be like this - there was enough time in the day for bereavement visits, wellbeing checks, proactive care, time with colleagues to discuss patients & build relationships.
General practice today is decision making at the same speed as a shoot-em-up game. Today was just me for 55 same day requests for appointments, clinical supervision of three members of staff, medical student education, paramedic education and all routine needs for a population of 1250 patients.
We’re fortunate to have personal lists - though the new contract doesn’t value the continuity at all - and that matters to me deeply.
Leaving work at 7, I decided to pop in to a patient of mine that I’ve known for 14y. In their 80s, they’ve just had joint replacement surgery and are having a bit of a wobble. We had a chat, they felt better, we have a plan & I’ll check in next week.
This is the kind of GP I want to be.
My day would have been less frantic, I’d have eaten/urinated at a sensible time, and I’d would have been less snappy with the children whom I saw briefly before bed if there hadn’t been so much nonsense crowding my day: 25 mins on hold trying to get through to a specialist (and failing), an insurance company slyly demanding a conversation with me about a non-urgent issue because it saves them money, dealing with consequences of private tests not requested by me but with the inevitable ‘see your GP’ as disposition, missing discharge medication, delayed follow-up, inappropriate ‘GP to’ as the heart failure team have a waiting list - and much more.
Commissioning gaps, poor clinical pathway planning, govt targets on access over quality, media perpetuation of entitlement over responsibility and disproportionate investment & expansion of specialists over general practice have caused this. This is not ‘part time’ GP working - as a partner that’s never a thing. This is expectations from everywhere without resourcing to match.
We want to deliver the things we did 20y ago - that’s why we went into this.
If you want your family doctor back then you need to support us - because we want to be that too. I’m a GP, but also a Mum, wife and daughter of aged parents. I can’t do this at my own expense any more, and nor should I have to. Arguments of laziness and greed always abound, but really what we need is a properly resourced service. Please stand with us - a fight is coming.
Why do people with mental (or physical) health vulnerabilities need call essential firm after firm and govt departments too to declare it, needing repeat the same painful, possibly embarrassing explanations. Today @MMHPI is calling for a 'tell us once' system. Here's my quote on why.....
"The government has a Tell Us Once system for when someone dies, yet we lack the same for those who are alive and struggling. That makes no sense. We need a single simple system that can work across essential services like banks, energy and water firms, and government systems too – whichever people choose.
“Right now, a vulnerable person in the middle of a mental (or physical) health crisis may have to call firm after firm, and government agencies on top, repeating the same painful, possibly embarrassing or triggering explanation again and again. In a digital age where data sharing is simple, that feels almost cruel.
“Of course safeguards and informed consent are essential, people must have control of their data. But it is time we stopped focusing on using data to just drive profit and started using it to drive compassion.”
Read full info and get details about the underlying research here... https://t.co/afZUx4vHHf