Nothing to see here, just the Head of Workforce for
@NHSEngland using an inaccurate, one-sided & context-free Times piece to double down on the insinuation that the only issue with PAs in the NHS is ‘online toxicity’ from a small number of rogue doctors.
You must know, Navina, how disingenuous & inflammatory the framing in your tweet is. Of course bullying in all its forms is wrong. But thousands of doctors, myself included, have politely & professionally expressed grave concerns about the way PAs are deployed. Multiple large scale surveys of doctors back us up. We spoken out without bullying, toxicity or inappropriateness. We are ignored by you & by
@gmcuk over & over again.
You may believe you can smear, belittle & silence every one of us by these carefully coordinated NHS establishment/media attacks on doctors, but all you are doing is exposing more explicitly your agenda.
Our motivation is patient safety. You cannot safely substitute doctors with non-doctors lacking a national scope of practice in on-call doctors rotas, as GPs, in operating theatres, anywhere. You cannot permit patients to be misled into thinking they’ve seen a doctor when they haven’t. You cannot & will not gaslight our profession by dressing up a wilful refusal to listen to our concerns as a form of “kindness”.
And if the Leng Report is a whitewash? We will persist and persist and persist.
I’m astonished you choose not listen, even now, to doctors speaking out in their thousands on this issue.
There are some worrying and upsetting issues raised in this article about the treatment of NHS staff at work and online.
There is no place for this behaviour - all NHS staff should be able to do their jobs without fear of threats or abuse.
thetimes.com/article/871fa52…