Doctors have been ‘pushed to their limits’ but are a profession ‘united’ and will refuse to accept a ‘pathetic future’.

That was the rallying call from BMA deputy council chair Emma Runswick (pictured above) as she spoke at the BMA annual representative meeting in Brighton today.

Dr Runswick said doctors in every branch of practice are facing unmanageable pressure but that the BMA had become an ‘organising, fighting’ union which had already delivered ‘real gains’ and would fight the Government and health bodies on pay and conditions and doctor replacement.

She said: ‘Together we will not allow the next generation of doctors to be so poorly treated.’

Dr Runswick referenced NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey’s comments about the NHS needing to reduce its reliance on resident doctors and that NHS trusts should consider alternative workforce models delivered by a ‘blended clinical family’.

‘Need I say more?’ Dr Runswick asked. 

Abject remarks

She said: ‘It is the rhetoric of a salesman, not a leader, whose ambiguous terminology is designed to obscure and mislead patients and the public from the truth. We know the truth because we have seen this playbook before.

‘This turn of phrase represents a direct attack on the unique education, skills and knowledge that doctors have, which underpin safe patient care.’

Dr Runswick added: ‘The Financial Times reports that proposed increases to the medical workforce are being revised down.

‘For years the BMA led the fight against the unsafe, unevaluated expansion of physician and anaesthesia assistants. A role so misguided, poorly understood and grossly misused that it led to patient harm and death.

‘We published a dossier of 600 such cases leading to the conclusions of the Leng Review being accepted in full. But it seems like the NHS consider this a minor setback in a greater plan. The loss of a battle while the war wages on.’

Taking a stand

Dr Runswick said the BMA expected the Department of Health and Social Care to open a consultation on when and how physician assistants can see undifferentiated patients and described the process as ‘an absolute travesty’ given the ‘clear and immediate safety issues’.

She said: ‘If they think the medical profession will stand for this, they have once again underestimated the BMA.

‘We expect to see all organisations who value safety over hubris taking a firm stand against unqualified staff acting as doctors.’