Patients at risk due to endless winter

Doctors have warned that the NHS is stuck in an ‘endless winter’, leaving hospitals in a state of chaos and struggling to cope.

The Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association annual conferences have explained how pressures have got so bad that patients are being put at risk. Topics addressed included the growing concern over storage of beds, and the moving of elderly, frail patients at night.

Doctors overwhelmingly passed a motion that the reduction in bed stock had gone too far.

A Department of Health spokeswoman maintained the NHS was ‘performing well despite the additional pressures’ being placed on it, saying investment was making the NHS the safest health system in the world.

Meanwhile, GPC chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul will warn that GPs are operating in an 'unforgiving climate of blame' through having to deal with pressure from litigation and the CQC while tackling 'unsafe' workloads, in his speech at the BMA annual conference.

Among many statistics expected to be used in his argumnet, Nagpaul will show how 70 million more patients are seeing GPs annually compared to seven years ago, and with fewer GPs per head this 'is drowning our capacity to cope'.