Coverage in the RCGP’s magazine GP Frontline:
“Adrian has recently been appointed as the media spokesperson for a fledging but already high-profile political lobbying group, The Doctors’ Association, providing the virtual organisation with a GP voice on issues such as Brexit, and the recent Bawa-Garba case.
“We’re an Independent, non-profit, non-partisan political lobbying group for doctors” . Adrian explains, “it was apparent that there was a desire for doctors to become more involved in political campaigning. The foundation of campaign groups nowadays are almost always on the internet and social media, it’s where we come together and have our dialogue. We don’t have a building or an office, we don’t have a pedigree of forefathers, we’ve started this on our own. We’re a small group based all over the country and conversations and planning are online.”
It was Adrian’s outspoken comments on Twitter in support of doctors and nurses at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital (following a high-profile High Court ruling in April) that brought him to the attention of DAUK founder Dr Sammy Batt-Rawden.
“The Alder Hey staff were coming under huge criticism but I agreed with the messages coming out of the hospital. Unbeknownst to me, DAUK we’re saying similar things.”
The case of trainee paediatrician Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba has given The Doctors’ Association a major platform and Adrian notes ‘our growth has been in parallel with the high profile of the case’.
”We want to move towards a ‘learn not blame’ culture in the NHS, with complete openness and transparency, so that when mistakes happen, tragic as they may be, we acknowledge all the different factors that contibruted to that mistake, and minimise the opportunity for those mistakes to happen again”.
Another big issue for DAUK is Brexit. “The vast majority of NHS workers I’m aware of, in the real world and online, feel that retaining our membership to the EU is the best things for the NHS”.
Read the full article below.
