Doctors ‘feel under threat’

Doctors in the National Health Service (NHS) are feeling threatened by a changing health service, with staff morale being at “rock-bottom”, according to recent claims.

Writing in The Lancet, Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, noted fears of a loss of control and responsibility as the leading causes for these sentiments.

He commented that the medical profession had lost the ability to control how doctors are trained, the Press Association reports.

“At hospital level, this notion is often is often a loss of control of individual consultant’s practice through increasing control of consultants’ work plans and the requirement for hospital management to hit performance targets,” he wrote in the medical journal.

Professor Gilmore joined the National Physical Laboratory in 1991 and is a research scientist in the Surface and Nano-Analysis Research team.

Last month, the Department of Health announced a scheme whereby pharmacists would be able to offer home-visits to patients to offer advice and care on conditions such as diabetes, sexually transmitted infections and some long-term illnesses.

Under the scheme, pharmacists would have to undergo extra training to gain accreditation to become an official Pharmacist with a Special Interest.