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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

@tomdolphin.bsky.social
924 followers 290 following 185 posts

Chair of UK Council @bma.org.uk Anaesthetic consultant Fresh here from the bird app where I am thomasdolphin

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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
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!
Dr Shehla Imtiaz-Umer, Dr Sahira Dar and me standing in front of a BIMA displayThe panel members: Asif Qasim, Farhat Mushtaq, Shehla Imtiaz-Umer (chairing the discussion), Azza Elghonaimy and me
(standing in a row at the side of the stage)
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
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 ⏳⌛️
Selfie of me posting my BMA Council election vote back to Civica
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Labour Unions @labourunionsuk.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
🚨 NEW: Joint Statement from National TULO on the right to strike. labourunions.org.uk/right-to-str...
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
‪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 ‬
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Marching today in solidarity with all those who oppose hate and division in our society at the @togetheralliance.bsky.social March in London
Doctors and medical students holding BMA placards and a banner that say “ Doctors against division“ and “Doctors for unity“
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
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!
Wera Hobhouse MP and me in front of a big banner sign saying “No Palantir in our NHS”; I’m holding a little sign saying the same thing
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
The BMA @bma.org.uk · 20/03/2026
A reminder to LEDs. Please take a few minutes to answer this quick survey and help us better understand your experiences 👇
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
The BMA @bma.org.uk · 19/03/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
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...
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
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 ✊
Me holding forth while standing behind a table laid with a BMA cloth, gesturing at the audience while making a point. Alan Stout, Chair of NI Council, is sitting watching from his place as convenor of the meeting. There were loads of people there but they’re all just out of frame, collectivising tooMe and Alan Stout, Chair of NI Council, in front of an old staircase at Riddel Hall in Belfast where the meeting was (but not in the meeting room itself as that was just a standard seminar room and not very interesting as a background for a photo)
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
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! 🇮🇲
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
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. ⚡️
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
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:
Prakash Thiagarajan (Isle of Man Medical Society), Tim O’Neill (Chief Officer of DHSC), Claire Christian MHK (Health Minister) and me in the Isle of Man government office underneath the island government’s crestHelen Robinson-Gordon (BMA head of media) and me crossing the road outside the Tynwald (IoM Parliament)Prakash and me in Noble’s Hospital near Prakash’s department - behind us is the entrance to the children’s ward with an undersea-themed mural
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
If the microscope comes in for an appendicectomy I’m calling the Consutlant
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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!
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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! 💙
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
[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... 😬
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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 🪰
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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... 😬
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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)
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
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. 🧵
A photo of me from (I think) the Daily Telegraph used to illustrate a story where I gave a quote on behalf of the Junior Doctors Committee, roughly around the time of starting my anaesthetic training (that's definitely Charing Cross Hospital theatres...!). I'm in scrubs, with the surgical lights arrayed dramatically behind me and a stethoscope around my neckMe photographed in late 2025 in scrubs (still with a stethoscope around my neck) in front of shelves arrayed with anaesthetic drugs and labels; a pair of shears hangs invitingly on a hook
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
TACC @tacc.org.uk · 17/01/2026
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"
Email invitation to Dr. Emma Hilton from Sex Matters about meeting the new chair, Dr. Mary-Ann Stephenson.
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 17/01/2026
“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
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Fascinated by the fruit options at lunchtime 🍎🍐🍌🍇🍋
A fruit bowl on offer at lunchtime at a recent all-day meeting I attended, which includes bananas, plums (for which there is no emoji, weirdly), pears, grapes, oranges, apples, little tomatoes and a single whole lemon
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Rob Fleming @robjimfleming.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
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
Dr Tom Dolphin at the Winter Scientific Meeting lectern.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
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.com
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
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. 🕊️
youtu.be
Tom Dolphin's New Years Message | British Medical Association
YouTube video by BMAtv
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
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.
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
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!
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Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @tomdolphin.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
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
Selfie in front of Queen’s Medical Centre main entrance, with the facade lit up by green and purple floodlights and with Christmas illuminations along the front canopy. PTS ambulances are jostling for space along the front of the building behind me.
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
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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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Alasdair Mackenzie @alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
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.uk
Government to ban asylum seekers from using taxis
The ban is set to come in February and any exemptions will have to be signed off by the Home Office.
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Reposted by Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️
Casey S. Pumpkins 🎃 @caseyexplosion.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
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.
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