Katrina Spinney is married to Sam, a junior doctor.
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So why are our medics so angry?
As well as the recent march, many have said they will strike to stop the contracts going ahead. On Friday, two patients died on my ward and I had to tell their families. Would they really work 90 hours a week?
According to media reports, the health minister responsible for negotiating with junior doctors, Ben Gummer, is under fire for wrongly telling a fellow Conservative MP that junior doctors can now opt out of working at weekends and in the evenings and overnight. I urge you to support junior doctors and reject these changes for the sake of all your constituents. I look in the mirror at my receding hairline and the bags under my eyes and don’t feel very junior! Am I expected to work in a system where my professional judgment with respect to patient care requires routine “authorisation” from management? Then make the case for a publicly funded NHS being unworkable and then privatise it.
Medical students have stood side by side with junior doctors in the fight, but fear they are being excluded from the negotiations because they are not employed by the NHS.
“I regularly work outside my normal hours, rarely take breaks, work nights and after tax, I’ve calculated that I earn about £9 an hour, ‘ says Jessica”. They are not even for making savings in the overall amount that Junior Doctors receive.
“There’s a possibility these government changes could harm the NHS it says it wants to improve”. Our stance on this is firm; doctors, like many professionals in public service have take a “real terms” pay cut year after year, not one doctor in training should now be subjected this type of pay cut.
Demonstrators during the protest march by junior doctors in London. “When I heard about the new contracts, I was horrified”.
Around 3,500 doctors applied for a certificate to work overseas in just 10 days following the imposition of the new contract.
“The government’s refusal to work with us through genuine negotiations and their threat to impose new contracts that we believe are unsafe for patients and unfair for doctors, leaves us with few options”. How could women afford childcare or be able to spend any time with their babies?’
Mira Runkel, 26, is in her first year of training at a hospital in Croydon and had planned to become a surgeon, but now she’s got doubts. I’d seriously consider leaving the country if these contracts are imposed.
He said: “That’s why we urgently need to modernise the contracts for new consultants to make sure NHS patients do not have to worry about a lack of senior clinical presence if they are admitted to hospital on a Saturday or Sunday”.
“We want to raise awareness that this is not just about junior doctors, it’s about undermining the health service as a whole, ‘ says Georgie”. He alleged that “for me as an 11-year junior doctor I would see a 15% cut in my pay and that’s someone who’s looking after patients who come into casualty every day of my working life”.
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Mr Hunt goes on to mention the seemingly reasonable plan of tying annual increments to “taking on more responsibility”. Mr Hunt apparently has plans for a better supported “seven day NHS”.
