Hospital managers came under fire this week after the Sunday Telegraph revealed some trusts had spent thousands of pounds on trips to recruit foreign doctors and nurses while allegedly laying off their own staff.
The paper said its own investigation found at least 11 trusts and one health authority sent teams abroad to recruit doctors and nurses “despite such posts being earmarked for cuts”.
Royal College of Nursing general secretary Peter Carter described the practice as “absolutely crazy” but trusts defended the move by saying they had tried and failed to recruit at home.
Meanwhile the Telegraph revealed on Saturday that former Department of Health workforce director Clare Chapman was awarded a “record bonus” of up to £40,000.
The sum, the paper claimed, “would have paid two nurses”.
The amount given to Ms Chapman, who had previously worked for Tesco and has now secured a job at BT, came on top of her £230,000 salary and meant that in total she “earned more than any other civil servant in the ministry”.
Elsewhere the Telegraph somewhat gleefully reported that Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, north London, was set to lose its emergency and maternity units despite the fact prime minister David Cameron himself once promised to save them.
As a result, it said, the PM “will face fresh accusations that the NHS is not safe in his hands”.
Finally, the Daily Mail lifted the lid on the fate of “badly behaving” medics.
“Doctors guilty of kerb crawling are being allowed to carry on treating patients as long as they promise it was a ‘one-off’,” revealed the paper.
The General Medical Council has allowed medics and surgeons convicted of offences including taking illegal drugs and indecent assault to “escape with warnings”.
A GMC spokesman offered this reassurance: “Certain convictions are completely incompatible with being a doctor – such as murder or rape.”
No comments yet