Surgeons are so fed up with having to cancel operations that demotivation is affecting patient care, senior doctors warn.

These financial controls will ensure money is pumped back into patient care.

The laudable, though illusory, cloak of improvement in the quality of patient care barely conceals a less acceptable political agenda.

One study highlighted in the review said that consultant physicians were directly involved in patient care overnight in only 6.1 per cent of teams.

The salary was basic and there were no overtime payments, but we gained a lot from continuity of patient care.