He said: “There are some serious issues about patient safety and recognition of junior doctors’ contributions that need to be sorted here and the very fact that government documents refuse to acknowledge those issues is one of the things that makes the dispute more hard to resolve”. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was keeping off the airwaves this morning.
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The BMA said doctors in Sandwell should continue to strike until further notice.
The first strike by junior doctors on Tuesday saw 4,000 operations postponed, along with more than 20,000 outpatients appointments.
New talks are under way at the conciliation service ACAS, between the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Government, to try to reach agreement over the new junior doctors contact.
Mr Hunt claimed last week that before negotiations broke down 15 of 16 issues outlined as concerns by the BMA had been resolved but that summary has been disputed by union chiefs.
“The biggest threat to patient care is the government’s insistence on removing safeguards which prevent junior doctors from being forced to work dangerously long hours without breaks, with patients facing the prospect of being treated by exhausted doctors”.
“We have been clear throughout this process that we want to negotiate a contract that is safe and fair, and delivers for junior doctors, patients and the NHS as whole”, the chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee, Johann Malawana, said in a statement.
Two further strikes are planned but talks are expected to resume in an effort to break the stalemate.
Junior doctors will provide only emergency care. “We want all NHS patients to have the confidence that they will get the same high-quality care every day of the week”.
The key sticking point is the changes to weekend working, which would see junior doctors lose their extra pay for “unsocial hours” on Saturdays. But reports that patients were more likely to die if admitted to hospitals on weekends left the government scrambling to improve weekend care.
Health officials said the vast majority of these procedures would be at risk of cancellation in the event of a full walkout, as well as operations which were due to take place in surrounding days.
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Junior doctors will strike again, for 48 hours, on the 26th of January and again on the 10th of February, when medics-this time including emergency staff-will walk out between 8am and 5pm.
