argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford). The House should listen to what she says about the point of targets I thank NHS staff across the UK and, given the subject of this debate, particularly those who work in the 181 emergency departments across England. Those people face immense challenges. Last year, they cared for 14.5 million patients—an increase of 500,000 on the previous year. As the hon. Lady said, this debate is about not just numbers, but complexity. We have to face that. It is a disappointment to those NHS staff when they see the debate descend into political diatribes. They want to hear constructive diagnoses and solutions from this House; they do not want to see this issue being used as a football. Let us move forward in that vein in this debate and look at the challenges This issue is immensely complex. Anyone who says that there is a single answer is not looking at the scale of the problem. In the few minutes I have, it would be impossible to address all the issues, so I will focus on the workforce challenge, which is key. That challenge does not relate just to emergency departments; there is a complex interaction that includes primary care, ambulance services and the voluntary sector. We know that about 15% to 20% of people who are seen in emergency departments would be better seen in another context. How do we get the skill mix right? We need to consider the fact that not every place needs the same solutions. The solutions that are right in a rural constituency are very different from the solutions that are right in an urban area We need to look at the challenges of recruitment, retention and retirement. We have heard that 50% of training places are not being filled, but there is also the leaky bucket of those leaving the profession. We must consider the fact that it costs about £600,000 to train someone to senior registrar level in emergency care. The scale of the brain drain is enormous, particularly to Australia and New Zealand. How do we address that? Of course, there will always be junior doctors who want to spend a year working abroad and then return with the skills that they acquire. We should not discourage that, but we could do more to make it a two-way process. The main problem is the loss of those higher professionals who have not only the skills that are needed to look after the most unwell patients in our emergency departments, but the confidence and decision-making skills that are required to know when it is safe for patients to go home.
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Tania Mathias (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely appreciate what my hon. Friend says about the leaky bucket. Does she agree that every school and every careers adviser should be advising people to go into the NHS, given the 300 careers that it offers?
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed. I was going to comment further on the issue of the skill mix. This is about not only those higher skill professionals, but the mix within the NHS. I do not think that we should talk that down. We simply will not be able to manage unless we broaden the skill mix. Healthcare assistants, for example, make an extraordinary contribution to the NHS and social care. One of the reasons we lose so many of them is the lack of access to higher professional development; it is not just about a low-wage economy. This is about how we can create more pathways to becoming, for example, assistant practitioners and physician assistants, how we can use them and how we can bring in more pharmacists, who train for five years in their specialty, into what we do across the NHS?
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a huge opportunity and we must go further with that, because continuing professional development across the NHS workforce is part of addressing the burnout that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire talked about. We must do more to address the rotas and see what is causing our staff to leave the NHS, because it is not just about pay or the allure of working in a sunnier climate—we cannot do much about that. It is also often about the work-life balance they face and how that compares with abroad. We have got into a vicious circle of increasingly having to rely on locums to fill those gaps, and that money could be far better spent addressing why the NHS is haemorrhaging so many skilled staff abroad and to outside professions. When we talk in this House about the challenges facing primary care and A&E departments, we must be careful not to talk them down. We know that medical students find going into A&E attractive, so let us not cut off the supply any further by talking about it in terms of doom and gloom. There are things we can do to improve the working lives of people in A&E, so we should get on and do the job, and I think that this House should do so in a far more constructive frame of mind. It is time to put aside the difference we have had in the election. We have five years to go until the next election. Let us show an example to those following this debate outside by looking at this in entirely constructive terms I want to return to an issue the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire touched on: seven-day working. Just as we should not be trapped by targets, let us not be trapped by political dogma. Let us look at what the unintended consequences sometimes can be if we are driven by the mantra that it must be 8 till 8 and seven days a week in every situation. I used to practise in a rural community. If we create a system in which we make it deeply unattractive to work in small, rural practices and in which we divert resources from the key priorities of seven-day working—which should be to reduce avoidable mortality and unnecessary hospital admissions—and if we take our eyes off that as the key priority and drive towards having to achieve 8 till 8 in every location, we could find that we have a further recruitment shortfall, as has happened in my constituency. That can translate into real unintended harms, such as the closure of many beds at Brixham hospital because the GPs could no longer safely man the in-patient beds. We could find ourselves in a spiral of unintended consequences. Let us listen to those on the front line and to our patients and keep them first and foremost in our minds when we consider what we are doing in the NHS.
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Gordon Leonard Henderson (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who made some very interesting points. When I read the motion, what struck me most was that if I had read it having just stepped off the Mars to Earth express, I would have believed that Britain’s national health service was a total disaster and that nothing was being done to improve the services that were being delivered. Yes, there are still problems in the NHS, particularly in lots of our larger general hospitals, such as Medway Maritime hospital, which provides services for my constituency, including A&E cover. Medway Maritime has faced big challenges for a number of years, including under the previous Labour Government, and among those challenges was a failing A&E department. There were a number of reasons for the challenges, including the limitations of the site on which it is located and the demography of Medway towns in general Last year, those challenges came to a head and Medway Maritime was put into special measures. Following the appointment of a new chief executive and new trust chairwoman and with the buddying arrangements that have seen Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust provide Medway with advice and expertise, the hospital is beginning to see some improvement. Of course, much more needs to be done before Medway Maritime can provide my constituents with the health service they deserve and to which they are entitled There is general agreement that one way to relieve the pressure on the hospital is to transfer more of the services it provides into the community. In my constituency, I have two excellent community hospitals, Sittingbourne memorial hospital and Sheppey community hospital. They both provide local people with a very good service, albeit for a limited range of healthcare needs. I would like the services they provide to be expanded. Okay, we will never see a fully fledged accident and emergency department in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, but there is no reason why my two community hospitals cannot provide other services. Today’s Opposition motion contains the statement that "the pressures on hospitals are a consequence of declining access to out-of-hospital services" There are a number of things going on in my neck of the woods that belie that statement, with a number of initiatives and pilots taking place that in the long term will benefit not only my constituency but the wider NHS. Let me tell Members about a couple of them Last week, I met managers from the South East Coast Ambulance Service, SECAMB, who told me about the vanguard initiative in which they are involved in Whitstable, just outside my constituency. It is one of several initiatives nationwide that will provide specialist out-of-hospital care in the local community and involves a SECAMB paramedic team, led by a specialist paramedic, working with local GPs to provide people with home treatment rather than their being taken to hospital. SECAMB is keen to replicate the model in other areas, including the Isle of Sheppey in my constituency.
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Gordon Leonard Henderson (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much agree, and I shall come onto that point in a moment. I am interested in getting that model on the Isle of Sheppey and I hope that NHS England will see the merit in the initiative and provide SECAMB with the necessary funding I mentioned earlier the excellent Sittingbourne memorial hospital in my constituency. It, too, is running a pilot that I believe should be extended into other areas. Last December, a wound medicine centre was opened in the memorial. It is a specialist service for patients across Swale who have chronic, complex or surgical wounds and it is operated under the care of the Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust. The centre uses telemedicine, with community nurses visiting patients in their home. By using mobile computer tablets to photograph wounds, nurses can send pictures back to specialists based at Sittingbourne memorial to provide an instant professional opinion. The system can also track the progress of healing wounds and use the data to work out the best treatment options, including the correct type of dressing. That has the potential to save the NHS thousands of pounds in the wasted procurement of unnecessary dressings Last month, I was honoured to open the HEM ultrasound clinic in my constituency. It is a new unit that provides a wide range of ultrasound scans and is the first static clinical ultrasound service in Medway and west Kent. Although it is a private clinic, it is just been contracted to Medway Maritime to help bring down its waiting lists. HEM is undertaking an average of 35 scans on behalf of the hospital every day, seven days a week. The cost to the NHS of the clinic’s service is the same as if the hospital undertook the scans itself. Let me tell those who accuse the Government of wanting to privatise the NHS that using facilities such as HEM is not about privatising the NHS but about the sensible use of private facilities to supplement NHS treatment and reduce waiting times for worried men and women I want to mention one particular concern. My local Swale clinical commissioning group is led by an excellent team whose members are fully committed to providing local people with more local services to reduce pressure on Medway Maritime, but Swale CCG is one of the smallest in the country and its size presented big challenges, as does the historic health deprivation in some of the wards in my constituency. Last year, Swale CCG received an above-average increase in its budget and I want to take this opportunity to urge the Government to ensure that it receives an above-average increase again this year.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-11-29
Topic: Health
Susan Lilian Primrose Cunliffe-Lister (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is very difficult to find out why many people are hesitant about having a booster jab having had two vaccinations. Does the Minister think that, if something went wrong and left a person seriously disabled from the vaccine, but if they knew they would have adequate compensation, they might be more willing to have the booster?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-11-29
Topic: Health
Mary Watkins (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I hear from colleagues in South Africa that nasal swabs alone are not as effective at picking up the new variant and that there have been many false negatives reported. I would welcome the Minister’s comment on that, as we are moving to more nasal swabs. I also suggest that it would be more sensible to encourage the use of face coverings in offices and to encourage people to work from home wherever it is feasible in terms of employers, so that the next two weeks can be used by scientists to really identify other problems that might be associated. This would help to safeguard NHS clinical staff as well as hospitals. If people are getting false negatives and then being admitted to hospital, it puts the very staff we need to keep at work at risk.
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-11-29
Topic: Health
Narendra Babubhai Patel (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, on whether LFT swabs should be nasal or nasal plus throat, it is more important that the test is carried out properly; we know that LFTs have low specificity, as opposed to sensitivity, compared to PCRs. Those who test positive with the new variant and their contacts must isolate for 10 days. If a traveller arrives on these shores and tests positive for the new variant, will the whole of the aeroplane have to isolate for 10 days or only close contacts? If only close contacts, who counts as a close contact? What risk assessment have the Government made on the transmissibility of the new variant in superspreader events such as clubs and sporting events?
Covid-19 Update — House of Lords, 2021-11-29
Topic: Health
John Anderson (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I too generally find the GOV.UK website wanting in the detail. Frankly, it is very confusing and is never kept accurate enough in a timely manner; I encourage the Minister to pay regard to that. May I drill into one particular issue on a point which other Peers have touched on? What is the rationale for the emphasis on testing after arrival into the UK, rather than catching those with Covid before departure?
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
James Spencer Cleverly (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not taking interventions The fact that the ability to discharge patients back into the community is dependent on the ability to care for them while they are in the community means that adult social care must be considered an essential and integral part of the A&E mix. If general wards are not able to discharge into the community, they are not able to make bed spaces available and, in turn, A&E departments are not able to transfer to other wards within the hospital I therefore pay tribute to the excellent work done on the Manchester model, putting together NHS provision and adult social care, so that the obvious inter-relationship between the two could be looked at holistically. I am happy that some Opposition Members—perhaps only some of them—welcomed the introduction of the Manchester model. Again, if we could work in a cross-party, collegiate way to learn the lessons from that integrated service model in Manchester and roll it out nationally, I think we would be in a much better place for looking at and subsequently dealing with the problem of A&E waiting times It has been alleged—I am sure Opposition Members will all leap to their feet to deny it—that Labour Members were keen during the last general election to weaponise the NHS. [Interruption.] Those were not my words. This is too important an issue to turn into a party political football. I will make this commitment—[Interruption.]
A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not know whether my hon. Friend had this experience, but during the election campaign a number of constituents told me how excellent the services were in A&E. Of course we have a brand new unit at the Lister hospital, but did he have the same experience?
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps and Other Provisions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021 — House of Lords, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Paul Scriven (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, here we are again, discussing emergency regulations because of incompetence and lack of speed by government. It is appalling that the Government did not take the correct decision to put India on the red travel list in early April, at the same time as Bangladesh. Yesterday, the Minister said that I should stand in his shoes about that decision. I note that, time after time, both the noble Lord and the Secretary of State gave the reason for Bangladesh but not India going on the red list as the positivity rate The data that I am about to read were on the Minister’s desk when the decision was made. In the two weeks leading up to Bangladesh going on the list, its positivity rate—based on the Government’s own test and trace data—was 3.7%. India’s positivity rate was 5.1%. You do not have to be a genius to work out that India’s positivity rate was higher than Bangladesh’s. Can the Minister explain why, when India had a higher positivity rate than Bangladesh, based on the Government’s own test and trace data, Bangladesh was put on the red list and India was not That catastrophic mistake by government meant that, rather than just under 40 seeded cases of the delta variant being in the UK on 2 April, it went up to nearly 1,000 seeded cases by the time that India was put on the red list. Public health research shows that, if India had been put on the red list at the same time as Bangladesh, it would have given four to seven weeks’ grace before we started hitting the surge levels of the delta variant that we are seeing now. That would have meant that everybody over 40 could have received a second dose—in four weeks—or everyone over 30—in seven weeks—and all adults would have had a single dose of the vaccine. The Government were driven by a date: a date for the Prime Minister to visit India to look for a trade deal. A consequence of Ministers not following the data is that trade in this country is now suppressed for four weeks. This is a disgraceful abdication of following the data and keeping our country safe. The country deserves far better than this. It is clear that the Minister and the Government made the wrong call We will have to live with the virus as it becomes endemic, and take measures to support this. One area where change is required is self-isolation. Evidence is overwhelming that the biggest impediment to people self-isolating, or even taking a test, is practical support and financial security for the whole period of isolation. We do not need pilots to re-prove this; action from the Government is required now. A self-isolation system that gives individuals both the practical and financial support to isolate for the full period will be essential to minimise future local lockdowns. Despite repeated requests from these Benches to pay people their full wages, the Government will still not do so. They need to address this now and not continue to ignore the data.
Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps and Other Provisions) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021 — House of Lords, 2021-06-16
Topic: Health
Joan Walmsley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support the postponement of the easing of restrictions and reject the fatal amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, as daily cases have now jumped to 9,000. We need more time to continue the vaccination programme before it will be somewhat safer to ease restrictions However, people are still suffering economically, so can the Minister say whether the furlough scheme will be extended, as well as the ban on domestic evictions, now that the Government have extended the ban on commercial evictions? Can he also tell us about the border restriction system? New variants will arise wherever large amounts of virus circulate and some may be resistant to the current vaccines. Have the Government learned from their disastrous mistake in not red-listing India three weeks earlier, when the information indicated they should? Have the criteria been adapted to prevent such a mistake happening again Clearly, Covid will continue to circulate in the UK for a long time after we ease restrictions, so an effective test, trace and isolate system is as important as ever. The weak link is the isolation system. An internal Whitehall assessment, seen yesterday by the media, of the financial support for those who need to isolate gave the system a low to medium effectiveness rating. Barriers and disincentives exist, particularly for those on low incomes or in precarious work, so more needs to be done. Every time my noble friends and I have raised this over the past 15 months, the Minister has referred to the £500 grant, ignoring the fact that it is not available for most people who apply for it because they believe they really need it. I heard yesterday about a pilot scheme for increasing this support. We do not need more pilot schemes; we need immediate action. We will be living with this virus for a long time and, if nothing is done to improve isolation rates, the restrictions that the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, so abhors will have to be reintroduced in the winter One thing that should be done straightaway is to increase sick pay. The current sick pay rates are not enough for a mouse to live on. No wonder people go into work coughing, spluttering and spreading germs of all sorts—they cannot afford to stay at home. In the end, encouraging people to stay at home could increase the country’s productivity by reducing the number of fellow workers catching transmissible infections. We need a culture change on that However, coughs and colds are by the by. We have not yet conquered Covid-19. The Government must use these extra few weeks well, not just to vaccinate more people but to transform the isolation rate for the better. Can the Minister therefore tell us how the Government plan to achieve this?