By Ilaria Bertini. UK media outlets have reported the upcoming implementation of Martha’s Rule within NHS foundation trusts, starting from April 2024. This rule will enable swift second medical opinions for patients, healthcare practitioners, or families who express concerns regarding the patient’s response to care provided. This new pathway takes its name from a 13-year-old […]
Category: NHS
Beyond the call of duty: NHS doctors and industrial action
By Darren Mann and Doug McConnell. The year-long industrial action by National Health Service (NHS) doctors in England has been divisive, with the unedifying spectacle of government using a strategy of undermining public trust in medical professionals as policy to avoid a negotiated settlement with the British Medical Association (BMA). While the headline demand of […]
Terms of cervix: IUD trials as a condition of elective sterilisation
By Teresa Baron. Getting your tubes tied is no easy feat. Plenty has been said in recent years about barriers to elective sterilisation, and persuading a doctor to do the deed is a particularly difficult for young, child-free women. If a woman has a long-term partner, her practitioner will often encourage her to see if […]
Should healthcare workers vote to strike?
By Ben Saunders. As I write, in August 2023, junior doctors in the UK are once again being balloted over strike action. While the ethics of strikes by healthcare workers has been hotly debated, less attention has been given to the balloting procedures. This is unfortunate, since the requirements imposed by the Trade Union Act […]
Does our preoccupation with resilience mean we must tolerate the morally intolerable?
By Rebecca Farrington, Louise Tomkow, Gabrielle Prager, and Kitty Worthing. Healthcare professionals are increasingly expected to be hardy and ‘suck it up’ to survive in complex and demoralising workplaces. As NHS clinicians, we saw staffing shortages and limited resources firsthand during the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences magnified our scepticism about the onus on us, as […]
Is it ethical for nurses and junior doctors to strike?
By Philip Berry. As the impact of strikes begins to be felt, political messaging becomes stronger and, inevitably, more vitriolic. Edwina Currie (a former Conservative Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health) Tweeted that every doctor on the picket line has left a patient in pain on the wards. This comment encapsulates the ethical argument against striking – […]
Collateral damage of the Queen’s funeral: The unethical effects of a snap bank holiday
By David Shaw. The Queen’s funeral took place on 19th September 2022, which was declared a bank holiday. As a result, many NHS services were scaled back: hospital appointments were cancelled, operations were delayed, and GP surgeries closed, with several serious effects on patient care. Many NHS trusts cancelled non-emergency operations on the day of […]
Paying more for highly specialised technologies: equity or profligacy?
By Jonathan Michaels The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently consulted on possible revisions to its processes for health technology evaluation. An important aspect of the proposed changes related to topic selection criteria for the Highly Specialised Technologies (HST) programme. This is of great commercial interest as it allows some technologies to […]