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99% of Doctors feel NHS is not ready to deal with coronavirus, new survey finds

pharmafile | March 3, 2020 | News story | Manufacturing and Production Boris, Chinese Coronavirus, UK Coronavirus, Wuhan Coronavirus, coronavirus 

Most NHS doctors, that partcipated in a survey, feel the organization is not well prepared to deal with a major outbreak of coronavirus, a new study has found.

Just eight out of 1,618 NHS medics that were interviewed did not feel the system could cope if the number of people infected with COVID-19 surges. However, the survey was self-selecting rather than a representative sample of the NHS workforce.

The main concerns raised by the doctors in the survey were that: Hospitals have too few intensive care units which are understaffed, GP practices do not have enough appointments to see patients quickly, the lack of basic equipment like face masks and the NHS struggling to care for people already which would be further undermined by an outbreak of the coronavirus.

Dr Rinesh Parmar, the Chair of the Doctors’ Association UK, commenting on the survey said: “Yesterday Mr Johnson said he was ‘very, very confident’ the NHS would be able to deal with an outbreak of Covid-19. Our survey shows that frontline doctors don’t agree. The truth is the NHS has already been brought to its knees and many doctors fear that our health system simply won’t cope in the event of influx of coronavirus patients.

“With nearly 10,000 doctor vacancies and 43,000 nurse vacancies [in the NHS in England] the NHS is already understaffed to deal with demand. A&E waiting times are the worst on record. Intensive care units are at capacity and are even struggling to admit patients who are critically unwell or awaiting cancer surgery.”

Conor Kavanagh

 

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