Latest news with #NuffieldTrust
The Irish Sun
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
I'm 22 with 4 kids by different dads -I get so much hate but I didn't plan my Mounjaro baby, I just wanted to get skinny
OH BABY I'm 22 with 4 kids by different dads -I get so much hate but I didn't plan my Mounjaro baby, I just wanted to get skinny A WOMAN has hit back at trolls who criticise her for having four kids with two different dads, at age 22. Becky Louise, revealed that she gets so much hate online, so took to TikTok to tell her story. 2 Becky has been pregnant four times, as just 22 Credit: Tiktok/@becky_louise_17x 2 Her children have two different fathers Credit: Tiktok/@becky_louise_17x Filming a video of herself cleaning the house, Becky revealed that she began a relationship with her older kids' father when she was just 16 years old. She explained that the couple were together for four years, and that she fell pregnant with her son Grayson, when she was 17. "It was unexpected, but it happened", she said. Just over a year later, Becky planned to have a second child, and said that she became pregnant very quickly. However, sadly, her second child was still born. Two months after this, when Becky was 19, she fell pregnant again, and gave birth to a little boy named husband. However, she said that things weren't "smooth sailing" between her and her ex-partner, and they ended up breaking up when Hudson was just a few weeks old. A few months after giving birth, Becky revealed that she "unexpectedly" met her current partner. The couple have now been together for two years, and Becky is currently pregnant with another little boy. Becky revealed that he wasn't planned, and she had actually been taking Mounjaro when she became pregnant for the fourth time. I hated being a mind was telling me to kill my baby "I'd just lost three and a half stone, and was enjoying being "skinny for the summer", she said. However, despite her new baby being unexpected, Becky revealed that she "wouldn't change anything for the world." Some women have reported becoming unexpectedly pregnant after taking weight loss drugs, leading to claims of an "Ozempic baby boom". However, women are urged not to take the drug whilst trying for a baby, as it could lead to possible birth defects. UK Teen Mum Statistics Teen pregnancies in the UK have been decreasing considerably since 2007... The under-18 conception rate has decreased considerably since 2007, reports Nuffield Trust. Between 2007 and 2021, the under-18 conception rate in England and Wales decreased by 68%, from 42 per 1,000 women to 13 per 1,000 women. This resulted in 13,131 under-18 conceptions in England and Wales in 2021. Becky's (@becky_louise_17x) video has likely struck a chord with many people, as it has racked up over 495,000 views on the video sharing platform. TikTok users raced to the video's comments section to share their thoughts on her story. One person said: "Im 30 and now pregnant with baby number six. "I have four baby dads. Life happens, and relationships break down, but nobody should judge us as mothers based on how many baby dads we have." A second person said: "As long as the kids are well looked after, which it looks like they are, then who cares?" A third person said: "Nobody has the right to judge you. "Things happen, it's life. Never let anyone look down on you."
Yahoo
28-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Resident doctors strike in the face of a tiring public
Up to 50,000 NHS resident doctors are currently on strike over pay, their twelfth walkout since March 2023. So what? This month Labour announced an ambitious plan meant to revive a health service that is on its knees. Any detail from that has now been overtaken by a downing of tools that will severely disrupt medical treatments; could encourage similar action by nurses; and may lead to patient deaths. Here we go again. Ending resident doctor strikes was one of the health secretary Wes Streeting's first priorities. Last year he struck a deal with the British Medical Association to increase pay by 22 per cent. This was a temporary boost, since it only applied to 2023-25 salaries. For 2025-26, the rise was 5.4 per cent. Not good enough. This is better than the 3.6 per cent pay rise awarded to nurses in June 2025. But the BMA wants full 'pay restoration'. It says the salaries of resident doctors, who are still in training, are 21 per cent lower in real terms than in 2008 because of inflation. Damned statistics. The BMA uses the Retail Price Index (RPI) to reach this number. The government uses another measure, the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This is the official metric used to calculate changes to the cost of living, based on a basket of consumer goods. If CPI is used, pay has only fallen by 4.7 per cent since 2008, according to the Nuffield Trust. Hang on. The BMA's insistence on using RPI is based, in part, on the fact that the government uses it to calculate rail fares and interest payments on student debt. The latter is particularly relevant. Although they earn a relatively high salary after 5 years in training (£61,825 a year, excluding compulsory overtime), doctors emerge from five years of medical school owing as much as £100,000. Ouch. That's nearly double the average debt pile of British graduates. Unlike many other professionals, medical trainees also spend thousands of pounds on exam fees and courses. Another thing. Pay isn't the only grievance, with resident doctors also complaining about a shortage of speciality training posts, which means many get stuck on the middle rungs of the career ladder; an arcane placement system that requires them to move around the country at a few months' notice; and gruelling hours and stressful working conditions. Cash-strapped. This time round, the health secretary is less sympathetic and says there is no more money for pay rises. Last year's increases ate up more than half of the extra £10.4 billion given to the NHS. Streeting would rather be getting on with plans to revamp the health system. These are centred around shifting care from hospitals to the community; making better use of digital tech; and preventing sickness in the first place. Shifting opinions. The public seems to be on his side. In 2024, more than half of Brits supported strike action by trainee doctors. This has fallen to 32 per cent. The head of the Royal College of Nursing has said it is 'grotesque' to hand doctors bigger increases than nurses. Negotiations. In an unsuccessful bid to avert the strikes, Streeting made several last-minute offers, including accelerating doctors' training so they progress through the pay scales faster; giving them part of their pensions upfront; and subsidising exam fees. The toll. Previous rounds of strikes led to the cancellation of 1.5 million planned appointments, as well as five deaths. Labour is eager to avert more cancellations, having made much of bringing down waiting lists. NHS England has not postponed scheduled non-urgent care. What's more… The BMA has criticised this decision, saying it puts lives at risk. Critics have pinned the responsibility on them, saying they chose to strike. Either way, patients will suffer.
The Guardian
24-07-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Resident doctors' pay has fallen behind 2010-11 levels, report finds
Pay for resident doctors has fallen by 4% to 10% since 2010-11, independent analysis finds, as staff prepare to strike on Friday. The analysis by the health thinktank Nuffield Trust falls considerably below the estimate from the British Medical Association (BMA), which claims doctors' pay has fallen by 29% since 2008-09, a time frame just two years longer. The BMA is seeking a 29% rise for resident doctors to grant what it considers to be full pay restoration – a demand the health secretary, Wes Streeting, has called 'completely unreasonable' after he gave a 22% rise last year for 2023-24 and 2024-25. The Nuffield Trust noted the earnings estimate can change considerably depending on which baseline year, inflation measure and pay dataset is used. It considers its method to be the most robust, as earnings data collection changed in 2010, and the Office for National Statistics discourages the use of the retail price index (RPI) to represent inflation, in favour of the consumer price index (CPI), which is typically lower. The report's authors said: 'A shortage of independent analysis has meant that much of the debate has been based on flawed figures. All too often, true levels of inflation have been misrepresented, basic pay conflated with total pay, starting pay presented as average pay, whereas affordability arguments often do not recognise that some additional pay is returned to the public purse in taxes.' A BMA spokesperson said the analysis proves that 'whatever measure you use, doctors' pay has fallen over the last 15 years and more'. They said the BMA uses RPI because 'we believe it best reflects the real-life experience of working people in the UK', and is used to set important living costs for doctors, such as student loan repayments, cars taxes and train fare caps. 'What this analysis doesn't acknowledge, is that since 2008-09 doctors' pay has fallen by a much greater amount in real terms than the rest of the population. Indeed, if you do use CPI, the whole population has in fact achieved pay restoration to 2009 levels, while doctors still remain behind,' said the spokesperson. The Nuffield Trust report found that tracking pay over the past four decades revealed a 'striking picture of sustained periods of real-term increases followed by similarly sustained periods of real-terms decreases in pay'. Because people tend to be loss-averse, this means doctors feel 'the downside of real-terms cuts more acutely than the upside of real-terms increases', the authors noted. Since 2023, the pay scales of resident doctors and consultants have started to increase again in real terms after a fall over the decade prior. 'Looking even further back to the late nineties and early noughties, they have fared well compared to inflation,' the authors said. The 5,000 resident – formerly junior – doctors the BMA represents are set to strike for the 12th time since 2023 from 7am on 25 July, after talks collapsed with the government over pay. Streeting had been looking to strike a deal with the BMA by offering doctors a new system of 'forgiveness' of the student loans built up at medical school, which can be as much as £100,000. NHS England has urged hospital chief executives to keep routine operations and appointments and only reschedule if there is a risk to patient safety. Prof Meghana Pandit, the NHS England national medical director, said: 'There is no doubt this industrial action will take a toll on patients and NHS staff, and it is disappointing it is going ahead. While it will mean some appointments won't be able to go ahead as planned, we are doing all we can to limit this, and patients should continue to use NHS services in the usual way.' The BMA council chair, Dr Tom Dolphin, called NHS England's announcement 'worrying' and 'irresponsible' since delivering non-urgent planned care on strike deals 'will leave staffing levels unsafe across the board'. Instead senior doctors should prioritise emergency and urgent care, he said. Barclays estimates the resident doctors strike could lead Britain's economy to flatline in the third quarter. Its economists said 250,000 working days could be lost during the industrial action, which could cut the UK's growth rate by about 0.1 percentage points. The bank had been forecasting 0.1% growth in Q3. It says there is a 'heightened risk' the strike could wipe this out to zero. The Nuffield Trust analysis showed that for the year to March 2026, resident doctors starting their first year postgraduate training on the job will have a full-time basic salary of £38,831, topped up on average to £45,900, when additional and unsocial hours, being on call, and geographical allowances are included. Specialty registrars, who have completed their two-year postgraduate training, receive a basic salary of between £52,656 and £73,992 depending on experience, reaching £80,500 including top-up pay. For NHS consultants, their basic salaries start at £109,725, rising to £145,478 for those with 14 years of experience at that grade, and with top-ups taking them up to £161,600. The report notes that GP earnings are harder to pin down, but estimate these may have been about £163,500 for partners and £108,300 for salaried GPs in 2022-23. For 2024-25, the average NHS earnings of doctors in their first year of work was above the median. Specialty registrars' average NHS earnings were higher than the salaries of nearly nine in 10 of the wider workforce, while GP partner and consultants' NHS earnings were in the top 1-2%.
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Why are resident doctors striking and what do they earn?
Resident doctors in England are planning a walkout for five consecutive days from 25 July, over a pay dispute with the say they haven't had a "credible pay deal" for 2025-2026, but Health Secretary Wes Streeting argues the strike is "unreasonable" after substantial pay rises in recent doctors in England to strike for five days in July What are resident doctors' pay demands? The British Medical Association (BMA), a trade union for doctors, says resident doctors' pay will be 20% lower in real terms than it was in 2008, even after an increase in BMA wants pay for the group - who used to be known as junior doctors - to be brought back in line with the level it was at 17 years ago, when they say their pay started to be claim is based on a measure of inflation called the Retail Price Index (RPI). This includes housing costs and shows higher price increases than some other inflation BMA points out that many resident doctors have large student loans and that interest on these is calculated using the government says RPI is outdated. Instead, it uses the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to calculate inflation and pay increases. CPI looks at the cost of goods and services based on a basket of household the CPI measure, the government says resident doctors' current pay is from the Nuffield Trust - a health think tank - suggests pay has fallen 5% since 2008 if CPI is used, compared with nearly 20% for RPI. What pay rises have resident doctors had and what do they earn? Since 2023, resident doctors have taken part in 11 separate strikes, arguing for fairer pay and working 2023-24, over two years, they received a 22% pay increase. From August this year, they will get an additional 5.4% pay Secretary Wes Streeting says resident doctors have received the largest pay rises of any public sector employees over the last three government says it won't be offering any further their first foundation year after finishing their medical degree resident doctors in England earn a basic salary of £38,831, for an average of 48 hours worked per week. In the second year, this rises to £44,439. Medics are often expected to work nightshifts, weekends and longer hours for extra eight years as a resident doctor, salaries can progress to around £70,000. What pay rises have people in other jobs had? In May, the government announced pay rises for a number of public sector workers, including:4% for other doctors, dentists, and teachers in England, as well as prison officers in England and Walesa 3.25% rise for civil servantsa 3.6% rise for some NHS staff in England, including nurses and midwivesa 4.5% rise for members of the UK armed forces, with 3.75% for senior military staffHowever, the BMA argues that resident doctors may have built up more student debt than people working in other jobs. A medical degree can take five or six years to complete - longer than most other degree courses. Resident doctors also say they have little control on where and when they are asked to work. And it can be difficult to put down roots, because of the need to do placements in different parts of the country. How will patients be affected by the resident doctors' strike? The medics will stage a walkout in England from 07:00 on 25 July until 07:00 on 30 leaders have warned that patient care will be disrupted if the strike goes ahead. On strike days, more senior doctors are likely to end up working in emergency and urgent care to replace striking resident doctors. As a result, many planned operations will have to be were 507,000 appointments and operations cancelled and rescheduled because of strikes by doctors (some including consultants) between July 2023 and February 2024, according to government leader Kemi Badenoch accused the prime minister of having "boasted that he solved the doctors' strike" only for them to take further action, adding that he'd been "weak" in dealing with the Wales and Northern Ireland are not affected by these strikes.
Daily Mirror
12-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
'My dad went in for a simple op - and was still in hospital 46 days later'
Stanford 'Sonny' Francis was admitted for an emergency pacemaker - and was still in hospital 6 weeks later. This Windrush hero is one of 30,000 patients who stay 21 days over their discharge-ready-date every year - half a million beds the government plans to get back On May 12 this year, Stanford Francis' daughter Coleen saw her dad wasn't well. She contacted his GP who called in for a home visit and rang 999. It took seven and a half hours before an ambulance arrived for Stanford – known as Sonny – and then he was stuck in the ambulance for two hours outside A&E at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham. After the paramedic intervened, the 89-year-old was taken straight to resus, and was then admitted to Nottingham City Hospital's cardiac unit to have a lifesaving pacemaker fitted. "Dad was meant to be discharged the day after the procedure," Coleen says. "But he was in hospital for over five weeks because a care package couldn't be agreed. If I hadn't fought for him, he would still be in there now." Sonny, who has dementia and is partially sighted, only finally came home from hospital on June 26 – 46 days after being admitted, and 44 days after he was medically fit enough to leave hospital. Despite not having cancer, he spent almost four weeks of his stay in a cancer ward. A proud member of the Windrush generation who helped build this country, Coleen says his prolonged stay led to his condition deteriorating. "His dementia has got worse since being at hospital," she says. "He now often thinks he is living back in Jamaica." In the hospital, Sonny thought he was at home and became frightened there were strangers in his house, waving his stick at the nurses. His family say on one occasion a security guard was used to get him back to bed. "He then got moved onto a cancer ward because they needed the bed on the ward," Coleen says. "One night he got so fed up, he took himself to an empty room and slept in there for four nights." Sonny is one of 30,000 patients which the NHS says stay 21 days over their discharge-ready-date every year. It's a crisis that not only harms patients but has serious knock-on effects across the NHS. In some trusts, a staggering 1 in 4 bed days are lost due to delayed discharges – adding up to around half a million bed days annually. Think-Tank the Nuffield Trust says this is "one of the biggest challenges the NHS is facing". Solving this situation is at the heart of the Labour government's new Urgent & Emergency Care Plan 2025/26, which aims to target delay discharges bringing the half a million bed days back into use for patients waiting for hospital treatment. The government says it is investing £450 million in getting patients discharged on time. We first met Sonny when he took part in the 'Colour of Love' project in Nottingham in 2019, capturing the experiences of people who were in mixed race relationships in Nottinghamshire during the 1940's-1970's. "As soon as I stepped off the boat I started working," Sonny told us then. "I was offered three jobs." In Jamaica, Sonny had been a tailor, but in Nottingham he took a job laying kerbs on the Clifton Housing Estate. He married his English wife Christine on Christmas Eve 1957, despite the disapproval of some of her family. A year later he did National Service with the British Army, delivered the mail at Chilwell Army Base and then went on to work at the B&B Foundry run by J. Barber & E. Brockway for over two decades making bollards and litter bins. Sonny and Christine went on to have six children, 22 grandchildren and 29 great grandchildren. Christine died 31 years ago, and Sonny was diagnosed with dementia in early 2024. He lives alone and has four carers a day. "Dad didn't understand that he was in hospital," Coleen says. "He often referred to staff as Duppy – the Jamaican term for ghost. There were safety concerns as he would wander off in the ward. Some days I cooked dinner and took it to the hospital for him because the staff would take his dinner away before he had eaten. He was often left to go to the toilet himself. The nurses never understood his accent. The system is not set up to look after black people with dementia. "The whole system is so bad. While he was in hospital, dad deteriorated, he became confused, his legs were swollen, he had ulcers on them, which I had to tell the nurses to dress." Coleen says the five-week discharge delay was due to a lack of internal communication at the hospital and NHS Continuing Healthcare – and failures by social services to provide the right care package for her dad. They just kept saying he needed to go into a care home, but dad was adamant he didn't want to," she says. "He just needed night support as he already has day carers, and we live five minutes away." Age UK's Caroline Abrahams says unnecessary hospital stays cause their own problems. "The longer older people are in hospital, the higher the risk of losing muscle strength, delirium, pressure sores and infection, undermining their chances of a good recovery. For many older people, this will often mean that even when they are eventually discharged, within days or weeks they can find themselves back in hospital." She adds that delayed discharges "play a significant part in the ongoing scandal of corridor care, leaving older people stuck on trolleys for 12 hours, and often much longer". A spokesperson from Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System said: "Health and care colleagues work together to support people to be discharged from hospital as quickly as possible as soon as they are medically fit. Sometimes it can take time to get the right care in place to help someone return home. On these occasions, an interim care placement will be offered, such as a temporary care home placement. If the patient or family do not wish to take this option, this can lead to an extended stay in hospital. We will always work with patients and their families to meet their needs in the best way possible." A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "We recognise how distressing this experience must have been for Mr Francis and his family. No-one should have to stay in hospital longer than necessary, and we are working hard to better link up the NHS and social care to get people out and closer to home more quickly. Shifting care out of hospitals and into the community is a core part of our 10 Year Health Plan as we rebuild our health and care system." The experience has left Sonny's family feeling confused and angry. "Dad never went to the doctors, never needed hospital care, worked hard his whole life to now be treated like this," Coleen says. Sonny is now safely home, but without his daughter to advocate for him she believes he might still be there. "Had I not fought, I believe dad would still be in the hospital now," she says. "And that would be costing far more in hospital than his home care package."
