More than 30 people at an open meeting in Petersfield heard the regional director for the British Medical Association talk through issues affecting the NHS – and his thoughts on its future.

The speaker at the event in One Tree Books in Lavant Street was James Sheen, regional coordinator for the British Medical Association (BMA), the trade union for doctors at all levels.

The BMA represents its members to whoever is in government at the time, and Mr Sheen started by describing two key issue affecting the NHS; staffing and skills shortages.

He pointed out that problem had been caused by several factors – a shortage of funded training places for new doctors, the lack of overseas staff the NHS relied on heavily in the past, the removal of the nursing bursary, qualified and newly-trained staff moving abroad, and early retirements.

Mr Sheen said contributing factors to staff shortages were relatively low pay compared with many other countries, a stressful workload and, to a lesser extent for European staff, Brexit.

In answer to questions about GPs earning a lot, Mr Sheen said a newly-qualified junior doctor started work with an education debt of about £90,000, but earned less than £30,000 a year.

However, he added a GP’s full-time basic pay was about £80,000. This can be increased by doctors doing extra specific tasks or working part-time for private healthcare providers.

This is possible as GPs aren’t directly employed by the NHS and are in effect ‘self-employed’.

Another cause of the backlog, said Mr Sheen, was that many people stopped going to see their doctor during the pandemic. This led to complications in their conditions, resulting in longer treatment time now.

Meeting organiser Phil Selby then offered statistics comparing different countries’ health data. Sweden has a proactive health programme that leads to a healthier population, and other countries are known to pay more tax and spend more on their health services.

But in the USA, where much more is spent on health, the end is result isn’t so good, according to the statistics.

Concern was expressed about the risk of the USA model being adopted here.

Next on the agenda was the crucial issue of bed blocking, whereby patients with no-one to care for them at home, or with no home-care package, ended up staying in hospital.

Mr Sheen said NHS hospitals aim to treat patients, then discharge them. He went on to say hospitals are not responsible for, or geared up for, people needing recuperative care, or other types of ongoing care.

But he added as hospitals aren’t allowed to discharge a patient without a care plan or other support, many beds are taken by those waiting to leave.

The issue was made worse by a lack of capacity of social services combined with the exceptionally high cost of privately-run care homes.

The audience then learned of a positive initiative this year – the creation of integrated care systems, linking and coordinating health and care authorities across an area. This should result in positive outcomes across Hampshire and Isle of Wight, said Mr Sheen.

As a follow-up, there is an open-to-all meeting today (Wednesday) from 1.30pm to 2.45pm in One Tree Books at which executive board member for Hampshire Care Association Andrea Pattinson will speak about social care.

Although organised by Petersfield Liberal Democrats, the meetings are non-political.