The New Health Minister to Rake Coffee

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More than half of maternity units in england don't consistently meet safety standards. The amount of people who need the services that we can offer is growing, and we just do not have the resource to deal with them. There are many who feel after years of just about managing it's finally reached a breaking point. To find out what exactly is going wrong in our health care system, who better to speak to than someone on the ground? So i my name's time cooksly. I'm the guardian science editor, en sample, and this is science weekly.

The UK’s new health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has not taken on an easy job. Almost two-thirds of trainee GPs plan to work part-time just a year after they qualify, reporting that the job has become too intense to safely work more. A record 6.8 million people are waiting for hospital treatment in England, and 132,139 posts lie vacant across the NHS in England. Ian Sample hears from acute medicine consultant Dr Tim Cooksley about what’s happening within the NHS, and speaks to the Guardian’s health policy editor, Denis Campbell, about how the UK’s health and social care systems ended up in crisis and whether they can be fixed. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod