The BMAs decision to ballot members over potential industrial action is a reflection of the anger felt by thousands of junior doctors towards the Governments plans to impose a new contract.
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Protesters have argued that the extended hours would negatively affect the quality of patient care, as “overworked” junior doctors would be expected to work up to 90 hours each week.
What would you say to other workers, like nurses, who might think that doctors are well-paid, and better off than most so they shouldn’t complain?
Dr Godlee calls on Mr Hunt to clarify his comments.
This protest is the second of it’s kind in the last month; on Tuesday September 29, up to 3,000 junior doctors protested against the new contracts in Parliament Square. Instead of genuine negotiations, the government has insisted that junior doctors accept recommendations without question.
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. We work hard to provide that service.
“Doctors are at breaking point and so overstretched as it is, everyone is just about coping”.
“It’s about making sure the health service works better for doctors but above all for patients”. When you cancel more social gatherings than you attend, or give up Christmas after Christmas with your family because you’re at work, you have to love it not to burn out.
This could see a few take a pay cut of as much as 30%.
Switching our “plain time” contractual hours from 0700-1900 Mon-Fri to 0700-2200 Mon-Sat: How would you feel if your boss suddenly told you you now work 1400-2200 Tuesday to Saturday? “This is of course not because as NHS employers suggested, there is ‘incentive to work slower” or as one particular opinion piece in The Times suggested there is “perverse incentive to work outside contracted hours”. The very next paragraph epitomises what is the matter with this contract: “I recognise that there will be exceptional circumstances in which an individual doctor should be compensated for hours worked outside the work schedule” Again, let me say that any person with significant and current knowledge of working lives of junior doctors would know that “working outside your work schedule” is the opposite of exceptional, it is very firmly the norm.
At the time Mr Hunt, who has warned he is prepared to impose seven-day working on hospital doctors in England, said the research showed the situation may be worse than suspected.
Demonstrators during the protest march by junior doctors in London.
Is the dispute due to the seven-day NHS idea? ‘But I’m anxious that this is the beginning of the end for the NHS’.
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Earlier this week Leeds junior doctor Kate Granger, who has terminal cancer, wrote an open letter to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warning the plans could spark an “exodus” of junior talent. They are not even for making savings in the overall amount that Junior Doctors receive. We interview an anarchist junior doctor about what the changes are, and what workers are doing about it.
