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You and Yours: GP crisis, Dr Michael Mosley, Iphone anniversary

Family Doctors, Cost of Living, Elderly Carers

09/01/2017

GP crisis, Dr Michael Mosley, Iphone anniversary

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, GP crisis, Dr Michael Mosley, Iphone anniversary

Doctors in Northern Ireland are threatening to quit the NHS.

Doctors in Northern Ireland are threatening to quit the NHS, saying the service is at breaking point. It could lead to patients being charged for an appointment to see their GP.

Doctors in Northern Ireland say the service is at breaking point and are threatening to end their contracts with the NHS. They're blaming it on a shortage of GPs, particularly in rural areas, and claim the Government has failed to train and recruit new staff quickly enough. Members of the doctors' union the BMA say if the move goes ahead patients would be charged around £45 for each appointment and could then invoice the Department of Health to be reimbursed. It's a crisis which is reflected in other rural parts of the UK where GPs are in short supply. Although the Government has pledged to boost the numbers of GPs in training by 5,000 in 2020, it takes 10 years to train them. So how close are GP services to collapse?

Four years ago we invited Dr Michael Mosley to make a series of special reports on the science behind health guidelines: who decided we should be eating five fruit and veg a day? How were the recommendations around alcohol limits arrived at? We thought we'd ask him back on to 'You & Yours' to tell us how that advice has changed and what we should be doing in 2017 to stay healthy.

And 10 years ago Steve Jobs stepped onto a stage to announce the iPhone and changed how we interacted with smartphones forever. No longer just a communications device but something on which we consumed content, Apple dominated the market for the next five years. But have we reached 'peak smartphone'? With improvements coming more incrementally, analysts argue the technology is stagnating and suffering from the 'law of diminishing returns'. Are the days of the great smartphone innovations over?

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