Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

A pleasure to be part of a panel today at the @britishima.bsky.social conference in Glasgow talking about antiracism in the workplace, workforce planning failure, and GMC processes. Really interesting discussion and nice to meet one of our new Council members, Huda, afterwards too!

@labourunionsuk.bsky.social

21 Apr

I’m pushing my luck sending my voting form for the BMA’s Council election back this late. Don’t miss your chance - post yours back ASAP! It must be back with Civica by 27 April ⏳⌛️

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

Labour Unions

14 Apr

🚨 NEW: Joint Statement from National TULO on the right to strike. labourunions.org.uk/right-to-str...

28 Mar

Marching today in solidarity with all those who oppose hate and division in our society at the @togetheralliance.bsky.social March in London

28 Mar

‪Together Alliance reckon half a million showed up. We were near the front of the march with the unions bloc and when we reached Whitehall, the back of the march still hadn’t left Park Lane, it was so big ‬

23 Mar

A pleasure to meet @werahobhouse.org.uk, Simon Opher, @shockatadam.bsky.social and other MPs today about the risks Palantir poses to our NHS - patients trust us with their most personal information and we have to protect their privacy. Thank you @martinwrigley.bsky.social for sponsoring the event!

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The BMA

@bma.org.uk

20 Mar

A reminder to LEDs. Please take a few minutes to answer this quick survey and help us better understand your experiences 👇

The BMA@bma.org.uk

Are you a Locally Employed Doctor? We want to hear from you. Our survey of LEDs in England and Northern Ireland will help us understand your experiences, and support you better. www.surveymonkey.com/r/LED_Survey...

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

The BMA

@bma.org.uk

19 Mar

Today's Covid Inquiry report recounts the devastating impact on doctors, and our patients. Watch BMA council chair Dr Tom Dolphin speak to press this afternoon

Don't forget to return your BMA Council voting pack - I'm standing for Council again, so I can continue to fight for doctors and medical students. We need a strong union, and I'm driving forward our strategy to put power in the hands of the profession again.

We need more trained reps working alongside our expert staff to build workplace density; structures aligned with our workplaces; proactive campaigning on our priority professional and trade union issues nationally and locally; and the financial resources to sustain the BMA into the future.

PS The election pack is still paper (and huge!) but that's because the changes to the law allowing electronic voting for this election haven't come into force yet, sadly - hopefully this is the last time voting will be physically as well as metaphorically weighty...

Thank you for your support last time that allowed me the chance to do the things I talk about in the video and more, and for your support this time to go on changing our BMA to be the union we need in the long term, in line with our strategy that has been yielding wins for us.

18 Feb

Great pleasure to address an all-member open meeting in Belfast tonight. We talked about the shocking health disparity between NI and the rest of the UK, the lack of training posts, the pull of Sláintecare, and how the BMA’s new, strong collective voice can start to address them together ✊

18 Feb

Separately, atomised, we find it hard to make a difference in the face of massive systemic problems. Together, collectively, we can drive change that benefits doctors and patients, and through the BMA our voice is raised. Thanks for having me, Alan and team! @bma.org.uk

9 Feb

Doctors/med students: fill in @bma.org.uk's survey on advanced practice roles and their potential impact on training and for employers to extend their scope into work only doctors should be doing. It closes this Thurs at 4pm so be quick! (It takes ~10 mins) www.surveymonkey.com/r/MVXCB99

7 Feb

After a stormy arrival on Friday, had a full day yesterday meeting members on the Isle of Man; followed by Manx Care’s Chief Exec & MD; then the Chief Minister, Treasury Minister, Health Minister and DHSC’s Chief Officer. Productive conversations, progress on important issues:

7 Feb

Agreement on having tripartite negotiations BMA-ManxCare-DHSC to reduce back-and-forth; agreement that Man can learn from England’s missteps on doctor substitution; agreement that the Man Clinical Senate must be key to ensuring doctors’ voice in service decisions. ⚡️

7 Feb

Thank you to the Isle of Man Medical Society for their warm welcome. The doctors here are united and the solidarity is clear to see. ✊ It literally hasn’t stopped raining the whole time I’ve been here but I’ve found Man to be a friendly, delightful place. Will be back! 🇮🇲

It's twenty years today since I started my anaesthetic training, at Charing Cross Hospital. In that time I've looked after many thousands of patients, placed innumerable cannulas, injected rivers of propofol, and stuck a pine tree's worth of needles into people. 🧵

My current team are the best, and we grew even closer during covid, when we looked out for each other and our patients together under intense circumstances. We came out of it with a bond I'm lucky to experience in the workplace, and working here is still great. Thanks guys! 💙

Thinking back to how totally different the anaesthetics that I gave back in 2006 were to today, I do wonder what we'll be doing in another few decades. If someone could invent a reliable tool to predict the duration of a "quick appendicectomy" that would be a great start, maybe!

I've liked most places I've worked, but am very pleased to be a consultant where I started, at Charing Cross Hospital and at St Mary's. Along the way I've worked in 14 different hospitals in 20+ rotational placements across London and Essex, sometimes for as little as 3 months.

[2008ish, Cardiothoracics] My Educational Supervisor: During your training, you will have some placements you enjoy and some you don't. A key skill is concealing when it's one you don't. Me: 😳 ES: Yes... Anyway, I've signed you off so you never need come back here again. Me: Thank you... 😬

I've experienced a few serious mishaps along the way, fortunately none with lasting impact on the patient. Often the day was saved by quick-thinking colleagues and our irreplaceable skills from lengthy, rigorous training; we give up those standards at our patients' peril.

And there have been the patients who didn't make it, whose injuries or disease were unsurvivable, but for whom we tried our best; the anaesthetist is there with the rest of the team, doing the needful until the end. These patients aren't many, but one remembers them.

Or the time I got lost in the hospital's basement corridors, unable to find my way back and with all the swipe card door panels refusing to recognise my card until I finally found one that let me back upstairs, to find myself about half a mile away from theatres by the post room.

I should add that the first anaesthetic I ever gave was actually aged 17, to Drosophila fruit flies for A Level Biology, so I could sort them for breeding. They all survived, but by month 2 I think I'd bred them for resistance as some were literally coated in ether, wide awake 🪰

Less fine was the furore the next morning when I arrived at 8am to find Recovery in chaos with dozens of relatives round his bed. Moreover the hospital had to be locked down because his large family had kicked off when his attackers turned up and machetes had been produced... 😬

Or the prone neurosurgical pt being extubated while I was giving a colleague a coffee break by someone standing on the tubing, and me reintubating him prone and then nonchalantly telling my colleague "It's been fine, no problems" when she got back, while the poor ODP sputtered protest behind me

Or watching a famous surgeon eviscerate an interviewee visiting in theatre to discuss a fellowship role, while he operated endoscopically per rectum (like an anal laparoscopy) in front of an entourage of >10 residents who winced along with me as the poor guy went bright red

Or the pt who *insisted* on dictating a lengthy farewell note to his mum before he'd allow hand-saving surgery - I had to stop him when he then started a note to his sister as well, lest he bleed to death while contemplating his own mortality (he was fine, as I knew he would be)

Anaesthesia is an enabling specialty. We facilitate other specialties to do their work by getting the patient through the unpleasantness, pain, fear or physiological disruption that otherwise would make that work unbearable for the patient or impossible for our colleagues to do @rcoanews.bsky.social

Some of my weirdest moments have been funny in retrospect: the surgeon who refused to stop operating despite flooding literally carrying equipment down the corridor outside theatre; or transferring a patient and the ambulance being repeatedly diverted to accidents on our way back to our hospital

I've been lucky to have worked with some truly amazing doctors and nurses and ODPs over that time, some doing extraordinary stuff, and others doing basics brilliantly. My colleagues have been there for me whenever I or my patient have needed them, never more so than during Covid.

Anaesthesia is the most populous hospital specialty; I've always said we're like rats, in that you're never more than six feet from an anaesthetist in a hospital. And yet we've been understaffed in pretty much every department I've ever worked in, becoming ever more so over time.

Thousands of people have trusted me enough to let me render them unconscious and look after them while they are totally vulnerable. It's an immense privilege, which I feel whenever I'm looking after someone, not least as visceral unease if I move more than about 5m from them.

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Will Stancil

@whstancil.bsky.social

24 Jan

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

TACC

@tacc.org.uk

17 Jan

FOI reveals that within the first week in office, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson requested a meeting with Sex Matters to discuss "mutual priorities and ways to work together going forward"

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QueerAF

@wearequeeraf.com

17 Jan

“This conclusively demonstrates that this widely publicised concern as part of the culture war against trans people is not supported by documented evidence from service providers," @translucent.org.uk

@robjimfleming.bsky.social

17 Jan

Fascinated by the fruit options at lunchtime 🍎🍐🍌🍇🍋

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

Rob Fleming

15 Jan

Consultant Anaesthetist and BMA Council Chair @tomdolphin.bsky.social talks about the importance of collective action and local organising. If we want medicine to continue to be the viable career, the profession needs to behave as a group. Solidarity matters. #WSM2026

31 Dec 2025

A message for doctors and medical students for the New Year (and check your inboxes 📩): youtu.be/G8uZqQW51wY?... Thank you for all you did in 2025 for @bma.org.uk, our profession and our patients, and wishing everyone a peaceful and happy 2026. 🕊️

youtube.comyoutube.com

youtu.beTom Dolphin's New Years Message | British Medical AssociationYouTube video by BMAtv

31 Dec 2025

A message for doctors and medical students for the New Year (and check your inboxes 📩): youtu.be/G8uZqQW51wY?... Thank you for all you did in 2025 for @TheBMA, our profession and our patients, and wishing everyone a peaceful and happy 2026. 🕊️

thetimes.comDeath rates rise when NHS cuts back on nursingUsing lower-paid workers to plug the gaps left by a failure to hire registered nurses damages safety, new research has shown

21 Dec 2025

Substitution of expertise with enthusiasm doesn’t work when so much of what our NHS clinical staff do is based on years of training, exams and experience. @bma.org.uk agrees with @rcn.org.uk that we shouldn’t be replacing expert clinicians the way the NHS is currently rushing to do.

Shaun Lintern@shaunlintern.bsky.social

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: English hospitals that cut registered nurses saw more deaths while those hiring nurses saw more patients survive. Even when hospitals tried to fill gaps with non-nurses, deaths still went up. Major new study exposes dangerous NHS variation: www.thetimes.com/article/7eed...

18 Dec 2025

Well done @bmacymru.bsky.social on the new resident doctors' contract! Meanwhile in England residents fight on in their campaign and at the same time @bma.org.uk continues work on all the other issues our members care about. This is what an active, member-led union with amazing staff looks like!

@alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social

5 Dec 2025

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

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

Mark Chadbourn

@chadbourn.bsky.social

28 Nov 2025

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.

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Alasdair Mackenzie

29 Nov 2025

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.

bbc.co.ukGovernment to ban asylum seekers from using taxisThe ban is set to come in February and any exemptions will have to be signed off by the Home Office.

Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ reposted

Casey S. Pumpkins 🎃

@caseyexplosion.bsky.social

24 Nov 2025

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.