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BBC News
06-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
More than 1,000 GPs to get share of £102m to expand surgeries
Around £102m in new funding will be committed to expanding and modernising GP surgeries, the government than 1,000 surgeries will benefit from the cash boost to upgrade and create additional space for doctors to see more patients. It is the biggest public investment in facilities for five years, according to the Department for Health and Social Secretary Wes Streeting said: "These are simple fixes for our GP surgeries, but for too long they were left to ruin, allowing waiting lists to build and stopping doctors treating more patients."The projects are part of the government's broader plans to overhaul the health service - and are set to begin this summer. "It is only because of the necessary decisions we took in the Budget that we are able to invest in GP surgeries, start tackling the 08:00 scramble and deliver better services for patients," Streeting waiting times for GP appointments mean many people now try to book a same-day appointment. The "08:00 scramble" refers to the time many GP surgeries open their phone lines for on-the-day under 45% of all GP appointments in March this year took place on the same day they were booked, according to NHS British Social Attitudes survey, published last month, found that just 31% of people in the UK were satisfied with NHS GP services - compared to 68% in 2019Research by the Institute for Government, an independent think-tank, found that patient satisfaction with GPs had fallen significantly since the pandemic, driven by fewer in-person 80% of patients saw a GP in person in 2019. By last year, that had fallen to 66%, according to NHS Endland. Ruth Rankine, the primary care director at the NHS Confederation, said doctors would welcome the £102m boost to "deliver high quality care, closer to home, and fit for the 21st century"."If we are serious about shifting care from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital, then sustained investment in primary and community estates, equipment and technology is vital," she is unclear which of the 6,252 GP surgeries in NHS England will benefit from the new month the government announced it would expand a scheme to help GPs provide care to patients without admitting them to hospital - backed by £80m in funding.
BBC News
06-03-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Overseas NHS recruitment in Midlands 'not sustainable', MP warns
It is "not sustainable" to continue looking abroad for NHS staff, an MP and former nurse has one in five NHS workers in the Midlands have been recruited from abroad, according to workforce data from NHS rate has almost doubled nationally since 2009, the BBC found, with approximately 42% of doctors being non-British, as are 25% of nurses and healthcare visitors, 3% of managers and 2% of senior MP for Erdington Paulette Hamilton said: "We can't take nurses from abroad in the same number anymore because a lot of countries can't spare them." The growth of recruitment programmes over the past decade has come amid a series of vacancies at NHS trusts, particularly in nursing, which continues to be on the list of occupations facing ongoing shortages. Jerico Mentil, 35, arrived in the UK in late 2016, after being recruited as a nurse from the began working at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton, where he continues to work in the emergency department and on a project to digitise patient records."It is a big pedestal to be able to say you worked abroad – but to be able to work in the NHS in the UK was an even higher pedestal. It was prestigious."It was simpler nine years ago when we came, nowadays when you move to the UK you are faced with a lot more challenges for example the economic crisis, changes in house prices, it's harder to adapt." Between 2021 and 2023, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust led the biggest overseas recruitment programme seen in the Midlands in recent years, recruiting about 1,500 nurses to work in the Black Country and west Birmingham. The nurses arrived from countries including the Philippines, South Africa, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal and India."There was a national shortage of nurses so our international recruitment was pivotal in helping us fill vacancies and it's also provided us with an opportunity to diversify the workforce," Leanne Walford, a senior matron at the trust, said."A lot of our intake have a wealth of knowledge and experience"."It's about making sure that everything is planned so it's not just about the recruitment of the individual it's about respecting the transition and the challenges of packing up your whole life and moving to a different country." Recruitment 'hammer blow' The trust has also maintained links with universities in the West Midlands to recruit graduate nurses, but figures from UCAS suggest the number of students applying to study nursing is at a record Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said a collapse in numbers of 35% in England and 34% across the UK was a "hammer blow for the government's planned NHS reforms".Last September, England's former chief nurse Dame Ruth May criticised a "catastrophic decision", in 2015, to replace the grant or bursary paid to student midwives and nurses with loans. It led to reduction of about 5,700 trainees in England by 2020, Dame Ruth said, which "would have made a difference" in the RCN has called on the government to provide better financial backing for student nurses. Hamilton, who worked as a district nurse in Birmingham and in Parliament is a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, said: "The way things have been done over the past few years, we've had this austerity crisis where people have not been growing their own – training our own nurses."We've been to other parts of the world looking for people to do the job for us," she said, "but that is not sustainable.""I went into my nursing life without being in debt, we have to offer that to the new generation of nurses."She said the government had been looking at the situation with Health Secretary Wes Streeting stating he wanted to train 5,000 more health visitors and 8,500 mental health nurses."He wants to get general nurses into training," Hamilton added."It's not that we haven't got a willingness, but for that to become a reality we have to look at the way that training is offered in this country." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
