The Association of Anaesthetists congratulates Wes Streeting on his appointment as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
8 July 2024
We welcome the open and honest acknowledgement that the NHS is not working and is not functioning at the level necessary to sustain, let alone improve the health of the nation. We welcome the admission that repair will not be easy.
Anaesthetists see this every day. Our patients are older, sicker, more obese and have more co-morbidities than ever before. Workload, complexity of work and demand for access to anaesthesia are increasing unabated. The cancelling of operations every day for want of facilities frustrates the soul of our profession.
We welcome the recognition that this difficult repair work is a team effort. Government must now give the staff of the NHS every support and every resource they need to return healthcare in the UK to the high priority and high status that it rightly deserves. The NHS must be a place that its patients can rely on and that its employees feel proud and properly rewarded to work in.
We repeat our plea for anaesthetists to be involved from the outset whenever health policy is being developed and we repeat our offer for the Association to work closely with policymakers and those ultimately responsible for delivering healthcare to the nation.