Majority of doctors have ‘little to no confidence’ that NHS will cope in coming weeks, BMA survey finds

Standard of care worsening for non-Covid patients, more than half of doctors surveyed warn

Clinical staff wear personal protective equipment (PPE) as they care for a patient at the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, 5 May 2020. (PA)

A majority of doctors have little to no confidence that services will be able to cope with an influx of patients once normal NHS services are resumed, a British Medical Association (BMA) poll has suggested.

Thousands of medics surveyed by the BMA union said they feared they would not be able to provide safe patient care as routine operations and treatments return in the coming weeks.

Hospitals across the UK have begun restoring non-urgent treatments for conditions such as cancer and heart disease after operations were paused to help the healthcare system weather the peak of the coronavirus outbreak.

NHS England this week published a “road map” to support the resumption of routine treatments over the next six weeks.​

But the BMA’s poll of 10,328 doctors, surveyed between 13 and 15 May, found 52 per cent of those in England were either not at all or not very confident that their department could manage patient demand if services went back to normal.

Confidence was at its lowest in community settings, such as care homes, where 69 per cent of doctors said they were not very or not at all confident they could cope with patient demand.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA council chair said: “When thousands of doctors are telling us they continue to have little or no confidence in being able to manage the levels of demand for care from patients without Covid-19, it begs the question, ‘What evidence is the Westminster government using to believe that normal NHS services can resume?’”

“Last month the government insisted that before lockdown was eased, the NHS must be able to cope. These results clearly show that doctors on the frontline feel this is not the case. The BMA is regularly surveying doctors across the UK and this is the second time they are telling us about very low confidence levels.”

“The lowest level of confidence is for managing demand in the community – care homes for example – with 69 per cent saying they are not very or not at all confident. And in terms of patients being able to have tests, scans and other diagnostic type treatment, around 60 per cent of doctors said they had little or no confidence that demand could be properly managed.”

There have been dramatic declines in hospital attendances during the UK’s coronavirus outbreak, with A&E visits down by 56.6 per cent in April according to the latest NHS data, amid concern people may be avoiding appointments to keep hospitals from being overburdened.

More than than half of doctors polled by the BMA said prioritising patients with Covid-19 in their place of work was leading to a worse standard of care for those not believed to have contracted the virus.

Dr Nagpaul said: “Doctors are also telling us that caring for patients with Covid-19, not surprisingly means the care and treatment of those non-Covid patients, is already suffering. Fifty-five per cent of doctors told us that the situation in their hospital trust, GP practice or local NHS was getting worse.

“This is heart-breaking to doctors, indeed all healthcare workers, who want nothing more than to provide the best care for their patients and to avoid delays in essential scans for disease such as cancer.”

The Department for Health and Social Care has been approached for comment.