The following has been supplied by the TUC:
The coalition government's pledge to protect the NHS has been questioned after four out of five doctors said they had seen patient care suffer as a result of health service cuts during 2011 - and occupational health is one of the key casualties. The Guardian's poll of GPs and hospital doctors, challenges David Cameron's promise to 'cut the deficit, not the NHS'. As well as cuts to occupational health support, doctors cite hospital bed closures, pressure to give patients cheaper, slower-acting drugs and reductions in community health services as examples of recent cost-cutting measures. Doctors.net.uk, which conducted the survey for the newspaper, asked medics: 'Have cuts to staff and/or services affected patient care in your department, area or surgery during the last 12 months?' Of the 664 doctors who responded, 527 (79 per cent) said yes and 137 (21 per cent) said no. Dr Mark Porter, chair of the British Medical Association's hospital consultants and specialists committee, said the poll findings confirmed that the NHS was now 'retracting' and doing less for patients, contradicting repeated ministerial pledges that frontline NHS services would escape the government's deficit reduction programme. He told the Guardian: 'The reality is that whether you look at it from the point of view of a doctor, another clinician or a patient, there are NHS cuts ongoing and it adds up to a picture where the NHS is now retracting. So it's hard to marry that back to the original statement 'I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS'.'
