Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Selfie in front of Queen’s Medical Centre main entrance, with the facade lit up by green and purple floodlights and with Christmas illuminations along the front canopy. PTS ambulances are jostling for space along the front of the building behind me.

Heading Londonwards from visiting QMC in Nottingham to talk to obstetric doctors there (and management) about strikes and derogations. Clearly a department facing huge challenges, with doctors run ragged to make up for deep-rooted problems. Thank you for the frank discussions. @mbdoc.bsky.social

Australia just recorded zero cervical cancer cases in women under 25 for the first time since records began in 1982. The amazing result of HPV vaccination.

Government to ban asylum seekers from using taxis The ban is set to come in February and any exemptions will have to be signed off by the Home Office.

Dismal framing. Every aspect of most asylum seekers’ lives is controlled & paid for by the Home Office. They can’t work, are told where to live & have no autonomy or dignity. So they aren’t *choosing* to use taxis & don’t need to be “banned” from doing so. The HO just needs to get its act in order.

Seeing how much of the right-wing on Twitter is just bot farms, kinda lays bare how much hate and hatred is a project that needs to be constantly maintained, a fire that needs to be fed all the time lest it go out for a moment, so much time, effort, and resources to keep people angry and hateful.

A quick selfie with Ben Ben/Elizabeth Tower in the background to make clear that I am, in fact, outside Parliament

Back here for the second time in a week to talk to an MP about the residents’ dispute and doctor substitution by non-doctors on rotas. Bumped into the Consultants Ctte co-chair in Parliament’s reception on her way in to meet another MP - literally a revolving door of @bma.org.uk -MP meetings today!

Dr Tom Dolphin, chair of BMA council and Ruth Cadbury MP pictured today at Parliament

Today @tomdolphin.bsky.social met
@ruthcadbury.bsky.social, Chair of the Transport Select Committee in Parliament.

Discussions included pressing issues facing doctors and the Government’s upcoming road safety strategy, including measures to lower the UK blood alcohol limit for driving.

The Inquiry is a huge undertaking. The sheer size of just this module’s report is testament to the work put in, not just by Baroness Hallett and her team but also by the core participants (including @bma.org.uk’s team) and bereaved families. Module 3 will be next: impact on the NHS.

The recommendations seem good: better communication with the public, better four-nation working, and more effort to understand and protect vulnerable groups being ones that stand out.
The lessons are clear too, including the basics: have a strategy, be prepared to act decisively.

The governments in all four nations had multiple opportunities to learn from the mistakes from before the first lockdown. Unforgivably we still saw further lockdowns, when the Inquiry finds that they, too, could have been avoided if governments had learned and acted sooner.

Reading the report really took me back to those days all doctors and NHS workers will remember; knowing it was coming, knowing it was going to be bad.

The parts about the opportunities squandered - not just early on but repeatedly - to reduce the impact are really hard to read.

Heading back home now from the GP conference in Manchester. Good meeting at the MRI afterwards; local members sold on the BMA strategy - they really get the importance of shifting to an organising model and how it gets wins in the workplace and on professional issues. @bma.org.uk

The Govt has suggested a pay uplift of just 2.5% for doctors next year, well below inflation.

With resident doctors striking next month over pay and jobs, it is “frankly indefensible that yet another Government is once again suggesting real-terms pay cut for doctors," says
@tomdolphin.bsky.social

Only on the model with hydrocoptic marzelvanes.

🔴 A hospital in Kharkiv, Ukraine, was hit by a bomb on Monday — 4 injured, 57 patients evacuated. Our teams are providing psychological support.
Attacks on medical facilities violate International Humanitarian Law.
Health is not a target.
#NotATarget #Ukraine

New online hospital must pay attention to needs of patients, says BMA - BMA media centre - BMA Press release from the BMA

"We want to be assured that no one will be left behind in this new online hospital"

Our Chair of Council @tomdolphin.bsky.social responds to the Government's announcement www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce...

An image shows doctors wearing BMA orange at a rally. The text says "We're 200,000 members strong"

The BMA is now 200,000 members strong - and counting.

Commenting, council chair @tomdolphin.bsky.social said: "Together we are all the BMA, and alongside our brilliant staff, the members are what give the BMA its voice and strength."

Read more: www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opi...

Sasjkia Otto hosting the panel with the four of us sitting in front of various Fabians/RCN/BMA backdrops. A low table in front of us holds water glasses and various pieces of paper and microphones.

Sasjkia Otto hosting the panel with the four of us sitting in front of various Fabians/RCN/BMA backdrops. A low table in front of us holds water glasses and various pieces of paper and microphones.

Pleasure to do this great panel hosted by @thefabians.bsky.social along w Nicola Rayner (@rcn.org.uk) and @kevinmckenna.co.uk
We covered workforce planning (lacking), AI in healthcare (unready) and how to get from here to the 10 Year Health Plan’s end points (unclear but may be for us to determine)

A pleasure to chair @bma.org.uk Resident Doctors Committee meeting today for the elections section. Congratulations to the new officer team, and thank you and well done to the outgoing team, who worked incredibly hard this last year for members. The fight to restore our pay continues!

Reform immigration announcement will cause anxiety and distress to much-needed international health workforce, says BMA - BMA media centre - BMA Press release from the BMA

“This announcement will cause a great deal of anxiety and distress to our much-needed and valued international workforce, including international doctors, who are the backbone of the health services in the UK" @tomdolphin.bsky.social

Read our response in full www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce...

"A speaker in a white shirt stands at a podium with two microphones, delivering a speech at the BMA SRM 2025 event. The blue backdrop features the BMA logo and 'SRM 2025'. The image includes a quote from Dr Tom Dolphin, BMA Chair of Council: 'A spiralling crisis and a disjointed health service which demands a solution. So a long-term plan for the NHS is not just appealing but is essential.

"A spiralling crisis and a disjointed health service which demands a solution. So a long-term plan for the NHS is not just appealing but is essential.”

@tomdolphin.bsky.social delivers keynote speech at #SRM25, where our members will debate if this plan is the solution to the NHS in crisis.

"When you make a big change, it requires investment... We need more detail about how we're going to get from here to there" @tomdolphin.bsky.social spoke to BBC Breakfast this morning ahead of #SRM25, where our members will debate the NHS England 10-Year Health Plan
www.bma.org.uk/what-we-do/s...

Tomorrow’s special representative meeting / conference hopes to tease out a bit of the detail but a lot is not yet known

It’s moved things further than you might think. The aim is for a radical GMS contract renegotiation to deal with the issues that have built up, but will need investment in GP (which the 10YHP includes, although unclear if shifting money from hospitals and if so, how not to destabilise them)

GPs in England did so last year; it has been considered elsewhere – different governments are in different places and the BMA tailors its approach to the situation in each nation

Boris Johnson says these are just common sense and reasonable statements

News Letter 6 September 2025 Trans lobby 'co-design' role in clinic criticsed.

By David Thompson newsdesk@newsletter.co.uk @News_Letter The influence given to LGBTQ+ lobby groups by the health minister Mike Nesbitt in the design of a controversial gender identity service has been branded “reckless, dangerous” and contradictory to the expert warnings of the Cass Review. The Christian Institute says that Northern Ireland is “running towards the same disaster” that happened in England around gender services for children by allowing groups such as the Rainbow Project a role in the design of a gender identity clinic. The Department of Health (DoH) says “service users” were just one element of the “co-design” of the new service – but the review was “steered by expert clinicians”. #TransAgendaClips

The 'trans lobby' here is trans people and their families who were - shock horror - consulted about trans health care.

David Thompson writes that consulting trans groups is "contradictory to the expert warnings of the Cass Review".

Quick update on a few other things to end the day:
Our NHS colleagues are angry;
Residents in England are making some progress in talks;
GPs in NI are acting collectively;
@bma-ni.bsky.social are in dispute over unpaid uplifts; and
@BMAstudents have a win on student funding.

Have a good weekend!

Doctors know we need nationally-set scope for PAs and AAs. Local scope will mean local scope creep, without a doubt - we're already seeing it happening. It's not fair on them and it's not fair on patients or the supervising doctors.

So why is no-one taking this responsibility?

UK news Father Ted creator Graham Linehan arrested over posts on transgender issues Comedy writer intercepted by five armed officers at Heathrow after flying in from Arizona Caroline Davies and Dan Milmo Tue 2 Sep 2025 14.29 BST & Share The writer of TV's Father Ted has been arrested at Heathrow over three social media posts on transgender issues.

To reiterate;

This is how the Guardian describes a tweet that advocates assaulting trans women;

“Posts on transgender issues”

Oh god yes, not defending ChatGPT; you’d be lucky if it even managed to summarise without inserting a hallucinated extra character in there …