Do you support or oppose junior doctors in all-out strike?

One of my many jobs was working P/Time as a receptionist in various clinics.

1. Hunt was chosen because Cameron valued his Business acumen. ......BIG MISTAKE!!!! He had no experience about how the NHS is run.

2. The NHS is a sprawling mass out of control and should be administered by someone at the head who knows how it is run.

3. Don't blame Young Doctors for striking, they work long hours because they care for the Patients so why shouldn't they protest.

4. Doctors in Practice are too generous with the most expensive
prescription items, cheaper items are just as good.

5. Young girls and boys are given free contraceptives , the boys
blow theirs up like balloons and the young girls don't take them because they know if they get pregnant they only need a letter from their Mother saying they can't cope with a baby in the house and the girl would have a 2 bedroom House , rent paid, family allowance, , unemployment benefit etc.

I could go on , but those at the top of the NHS are not fit for purpose , Hunt should be given a golden handshake and someone from the DHSS take over .

Rant over LOL

“And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

– Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), The Prince, Chapter 4

Nothing stays the same, and it's my view that if the junior doctors value the NHS as we all do, and want it to survive in its present unique state, then they should think again about what they are doing. Junior doctors will eventually earn more than any of us could dream of, and more and more G.P's are retiring very early because of a pension ceiling and the tax implications. I have no problem with what they earn, but I do believe that they are losing a lot of respect by resisting important changes in their workplace as the rest of us did years ago,and suggesting that the elected government are implementing these contract changes to the detriment of patients.

Allow me to say first, Jeanmark, and the very many like her, deserve a round of applause and much gratitude from us all. She and her colleagues have devoted a working lifetime to other's healthcare, often to their own cost.

It follows then, Jeanmark provides us all with a large amount of insight into this matter of junior doctors and the state's demands upon them. Insight also into the inner workings of the NHS. Thank you. We should all pay attention to her in these matters, if not always agree.

Yet, I can't help wondering two things.

First, is this dispute a matter we ordinary folk, people dependent on the NHS, should have an opinion about? With the exception of those on the front line of the NHS, few, if any, of us know what we're talking about! It is the state which has made this a political football; the state which is attempting to sway public opinion against the junior doctors (it was the nurses not so long ago). The state demonises everyone who dares to disagree with it! Tell me I'm wrong.

The second point which bothers me is ... the NHS, is it a political matter? Is it something which should be controlled from Whitehall and made an election issue? Should the NHS be a political football? Should the state determine who may live and who may not, in terms of the Liverpool Care Pathway?

The NHS, and it's dedicated staff, all have a very special place in all our hearts. It does the impossible, care from cradle to grave. Can not this, the finest of British institutions, be separated from the state, given a special status and funding.

How many of us here, if, over the years, were asked to pay a little more towards maintaining the NHS, would decline? I would not! If you would, be ashamed!

The NHS is nothing without it's devoted people like Jeanmark. We all believe we deserve our pay cheques and probably less for more working conditions. So do the NHS staff, and we should be pleased to pay.

For a very long time I was in a similar occupation - farming, as a farm worker. We were among the lowest paid people in this nation and yet a greater range of skills was demanded of us than anyone except doctors and nurses, I think. It wasn't a career, it was a vocation, to the land, to livestock and to the rich agricultural heritage passed down to us. The great British public, egged on by governments, demanded cheap food. We subsidised your cheap food with a very low rate of pay and so many working hours unpaid. A little like NHS frontline staff!

Allow me also to state, I do not know Jeanmark; our lives have touched briefly on Silver Surfers. That's all. But, for what she and countless others have spent their lives doing, some of it for my benefit, I salute you.

Take the NHS out of the political arena and give the junior doctors a better deal. That's my stance.

I bow to superior intellects .

We can't manage without junior doctors,and junior doctors can't manage without proper sleep and rest.They can't perform their duties if they are tired and that is when mistakes happen.
I am all for these doctors striking,what would we do without them,the NHS is on its knees at the moment what would happen if they went abroad,it doesn't bear thinking about.

It would appear that the people in favour of the strike are complete angels and anybody disagreeing is just misguided and heartless ,this is the same in the" In- Out " forum where the condescension of the Remain camp is nauseating . I don't have time unfortunately to submit a novel (Jeanmark N.B.) , have to work

I don't agree with the dr's strike as my late husband was a doctor for about 50 years he worked all hours as a GP it should be remembered he was once a juniour doctor and worked even harder back then and for less, his patients always came first, and he had me his wife at home to help him as the surgery was at home and he was in singled handed practise.
Junior Doctor's have to rely a lot on the nursing staff for a lot, just being a Dr is more the a job it's a life and we had 6 children so it wasnt easy at times but the children didnt get sent to boarding school and didnt miss out. I miss him so much today would have been his birthday and I would have cooked him his favorite meal keeping it warm if he got called out in the middle of it, nobody was turned away.

The doctors will only get public support for so long, if people die because of the strike people will turn against them.

Strike action doesn't get anyone anywhere in real terms. I do feel the Junior Doctors are now being used as pawns. It is becoming a case of who blinks but the Government would be unwilling to do this as other Unions are watching the situation very carefully.

This is a case of Unions versus a govenment!

they have been given a 13.5% pay rise and will not have to work every weekend but on a rota basis, it cost thousands to train them and tax payers are funding them, recently a class of trainees were asked how many of them would be seeking positions outside of England and nearly 70% said they would ,why should we train them to go elsewhere.

Junior Doctors are now expected to treat patients who just a few years ago would have been treated in intensive care or high dependency. Many of these patients have multiple medical issues all of which have to be treated. The knowledge these young people are expected to have is absolutely phenominal and would normally have been what the consultant had. The hours they work and the shear number of patients they are treating is far to much. This gov't is out to destroy the NHS as we know it. Good luck to the Drs.

When they refused to provide emergency cover they lost my support. You cannot put people's lives at risk. "First do no harm"

How sad that some people on this site have no understanding of the true issue relating to junior doctors. The following, though long, gives some insight into the issue from a 'junior' doctors perspective and who has asked for this to be shared. I sincerely hope those supporting Mr Hunt will take the time to read it to the end.

I have kept quiet until now about the junior doctor's strike but the time has come to stand up and say what needs to be said. Apologies in advance for the long essay, I will try to keep it simple. This is aimed at those of you who are not medical; those who are will know exactly what I am talking about.

If you simply believe what is said in the media, you might think that this is all about Saturday pay or even that junior doctors don't want to work at nights or weekends. It is depressing to overhear people express these views but hardly surprising given the public coverage of the issue.

So what exactly is going on? A junior doctor is any doctor who is not a GP or consultant who is in training to be one of those two. Most doctors spend 8-9 years as a junior but many stay as juniors for longer, especially female doctors who may take time out for families, academics who take time out to do research and doctors in specialities where training in two specialties is needed such as paediatric intensive care. I myself spent 14 years as a junior doctor so was still one aged 37. Junior doctors are the doctors you will see first when you go to A&E or get admitted to a ward and will be responsible for delivering your day to day care when you are in hospital. Junior doctors are covering the hospital 24/7, 365 days a year and always have done. And contrary to what you might believe from the papers, they don't have any choice in the matter, their contracts say they have no choice in working evenings, nights and weekends.

So what is all the fuss about? Well it is about being able to be safe. When I was a JD, I used to work ridiculous hours. In one job in my 1st year, every 3rd weekend I would go to work at 9am on a Saturday and leave at 5pm on a Tuesday. That was 80 hours in a row with sleep grabbed when the chances arose. It was dangerous and dehumanising and the even crazier thing was that I was actually paid at a lower rate for the unsocial hours than basic pay (1/3 of basic in fact).

Fortunately my generation of juniors was amongst the last to have to do that and things slowly changed. Now junior doctors get paid at a higher rate than basic for unsocial hours, that rate determined by the intensity of work in that specialty e.g. emergency room work would be a higher rate than dermatology. Standard hours are defined as 7am-7pm Monday to Friday (which are not exactly standard working hours for most people) and there are rules on the maximum number of hours per week and consecutive hours that can be worked. There are also safeguards in place so that if employers are consistently making juniors work beyond these rules, they can be fined; hence there is a disincentive for employers to overwork junior doctors, therefore they are not tired and dangerous 1990-style.

But work done outside standard hours is NOT overtime. These hours are contracted hours and have to be worked and, quite rightly, are paid at a higher rate than basic pay. In specialties where there is not a lot of emergency work, the majority of work is in routine hours, but areas like A&E, paediatrics, intensive care have a lot of work done in unsocial hours and attract a higher rate of pay for those hours. I stress again that this is not overtime; overtime is work done in addition to contracted hours. All doctors and nurses do overtime - staying late to complete work and ensure patient safety and very rarely if ever does anyone claim for these overtime hours.

But Jeremy Hunt wants to change the contract for junior doctors, his logic being that doing this will help to deliver the “7-day NHS”. Nobody is really sure what exactly this means. It may mean that he wants routine services such as outpatient clinics and planned surgery or scans for non-urgent problems to take place on Saturdays and Sundays, not just Monday to Friday. If this is the case then changing the juniors’ contract is not going to make this happen as without doing the same for (deep breath) consultants, nurses, porters, receptionists, pharmacists, operating department assistants, radiographers, physiotherapists and many other staff these things won’t be able to happen at weekends.

The 7-day NHS may refer to emergency work. If this is the case then it already exists. Junior doctors are already there at night and at weekends. The proposed contract changes are not going to change the numbers who are there as there is no plan to increase the total number of junior doctors. What is proposed is that the definition of normal time changes from 7am-7pm to 7am-10pm Monday to Friday and from 7am to somewhere between 5pm and 10pm on Saturday. This means that employers could make junior doctors work more unsocial hours as they have redefined as standard hours. It is true that the basic rate of pay for standard hours will be increased by 13%, which sounds great doesn’t it? Except that for the emergency specialties as above that routinely have a lot of evening, night and weekend work, what is currently paid at an enhanced rate will be paid at standard rate; even at 13% higher for standard rate, total pay for junior doctors in these specialties will drop considerably, maybe by as much 30% for some. Doesn’t sound so good now really.

And, of course, there will be the same number of doctors but spread over 7 days rather than 5 so there will be weekdays where there will be fewer juniors than there are now. A great analogy I heard was to imagine that you have a 10-inch pizza cut into 5 slices. You decide that 5 slices isn’t going to fill you up so your mum cuts the same pizza into 7 slices and tells you that you’ll be full with that. But she won’t get you a bigger pizza.

So same number of junior doctors spread more thinly is going to reduce cover on weekdays as compared to now. And weekdays are when not only emergency work but also routine planned work that also needs input from junior doctors takes place so this will have a detrimental effect on waiting lists for clinics and operations as well.

Junior doctors with children will be hit particularly hard, especially those who have junior doctors spouses, as more unsocial hours will be worked. Childcare is generally difficult to get hold of outside of 8-5 on weekdays; the department of health have actually said (with no hint of irony) that in this situation, family members who are non-medical and don’t work evenings or weekends should be asked to provide child care to get over this problem! It is very likely that couples could go several days without actually seeing each other or their families if rotas do not coincide.

But what about the increased deaths at weekends we have been hearing about? Actually, the statistics have been completely misrepresented and even the authors of the research paper that gets quoted regularly have pointed this out. The statistic was that if you are admitted to hospital on a weekend, your risk of dying within 30 days of that admission was higher than if admitted midweek. Your risk of dying is very low anyway and that very low risk is marginally higher (but still very low) if admitted on weekends. This is probably because admissions to hospital in the week consist of not only sick people but also well people coming in for routine things, whereas at weekends you would tend to avoid hospital unless you were desperately unwell and most likely would leave things as long as possible and so be sicker when you got there. Interestingly they also showed that if you were already in hospital on a weekend, having been admitted in the week, your risk of death within 30 days was lower than it would have been. Either way, there is no evidence of cause and effect in terms of numbers of junior doctors around at weekends. The so-called weekend effect has also been seen in the USA and Australia too so it isn’t peculiar to state-funded health as opposed to private insurance-based systems.

Interestingly the misrepresentation of this study has led to ill people actually avoiding hospitals on weekends and delaying presenting till Monday with potentially devastating consequences. Have a look online for the ‪#‎hunteffect‬. Scary.

Another worrying thing about the proposed new contract is that it takes away the safeguards against juniors being made to work ridiculously long hours. Whereas currently there is a mechanism that makes it in the interests of an employer to ensure the hours are not exceeded, the new contract removes these safeguards. It does suggest that each hospital trust has a “guardian” to whom junior doctors can flag up concerns about their hours but this “guardian” will also be a senior member of the trust who has no obligation to actually do anything about these concerns. I think back to my days as an exhausted junior doctor and it scares me to think that such unsafe and dangerous hours could make a return.

The pay scales are also changing. There has been automatic pay progression as you gain experience and seniority until now. The new system means that there are fewer points where pay is raised. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it can be argued that you shouldn’t get a pay rise unless you deserve it. But remember that over 10 years can be spent as a junior doctor in which time you are likely to acquire husbands, wives, children and mortgages; many existing junior doctors have made their financial plans for the next few years based on the expectation that there will be pay progression. One part-time junior doctor who has worked with me told me that if the new contract came in she would no longer be able to pay her mortgage and would have to sell her home. Bear in mind that these are young people who have spent at least 5 years at university accruing debts from both student loans for living expenses and now also £45000 in tuition fees before even starting work. The new pay scales do not reflect the levels of responsibility taken by junior doctors at different stages of their training at all which makes no sense whatsoever. For female doctors who are likely to take time out to have children and then return to work part-time, the consequences on their income will be huge. The department of health actually acknowledged that women would be hit unfairly but suggested that this had to be accepted as an unfortunate consequence.

The BMA junior doctors committee walked out of talks with the department of health because the DH’s definition of negotiation was that they would reserve the right to do what they wanted if they didn’t agree with what the committee was suggested. In other words, they did not want to negotiate so there was not point in the BMA trying. This is why industrial action was proposed because there was no other way to try to get Jeremy Hunt to talk. Sadly, even when negotiations restarted, he could not see that without a bigger pizza nothing was going to improve patient care and in fact things would be worse and so talks stopped. He has now said he is imposing the contract and that is that, he won’t talk anymore. When a strike ballot (of, let’s face it, intelligent reasonable and educated people) has a 75% turnout and 98% vote in favour, it is clear that there is a serious problem with the DH’s thought processes and they need to listen. It is highly improbable that a small bunch of radical lefties have brainwashed 50000 intelligent doctors who have been trained to analyse information and draw conclusions, much as the press like that idea.

If you have read this far, please take it on board and share with your friends. I’ve tried to keep it simple (even though it may not seem that way!) The public is not getting the full story from the TV and newspapers and if this contract is imposed then we will all be on the receiving end of the consequences eventually.

I totally support the Junior Doctors .... Jeremy Hunt needs a serious rethink about his tactics! Time for him to step down I think!

Totally agree with Annie2406. The deal offered is totally acceptable.Weekend working is a fact of modern life ,get used to it .This is about sections of the BMA trying to give the government a kicking.The problem that needs to be overcome is the inherent waste and top heavy management in the NHS .

I was a ward clerk for a while, and saw the treatment junior doctors had to put up with, unfortunately, by going on strike, they are playing into the governments hand, this government want to get rid of our NHS, which we who have worked all our lives have paid into, it is only free on point of actually seeing a doctor and being treated, why should we have now to take out private medical care. Government are too powerful and only want to line their own pockets, bet you they will all become shareholders of a private medical company. Doctors be aware the only people loosing out are yourselves, loosing money whilst striking, don't let the government win, work to rule, do your daily hours, coat off and out the door, this will hurt them even more than striking.

Has anyone actually read the offer that they've rejected? This is all about politics. The NHS would have more than enough funding to ensure they recruited enough staff to cover 24/7/365 if we hadn't employed layer upon layer of management and actually charged anyone who had no right to free treatment. When did we become the International Health Service? As a political comment, what is managements use of agency staff if it's not using the private sector?? They employ enough useless pen pushers to run their own recruitment agency. These agency nurses and doctors cost the NHS ten times as much as ordinary members of staff do. Shame on them. Having said that, I totally disagree with the strike, but like everything else, it's just a job nowadays, not a vocation.

The Government are just trying to bully the junior doctors, and what do you do with bullies, you stand up to them!
This Governmet is determined to get rid of our very precious NHS, we must not let this happen. We all must support the NHS and all of the staff who work there.

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I oppose the strikes, they are paid to work and should do so.

I fully support the Junior Doctors they already work long hours with very few breaks. Jeremy Hunt is just a naieve,stubborn fool who has no idea on how the NHS works.If he insists the BMA implements this new contract they would have to sack every Junior Doctor in the country and then reinstate them under the new contract, if they dont then they are in breach of Employment laws.

I support it as I think the junior doctors have been bullied into this. Jeremy Hunt has said he will not negotiate any more? If he will not what are the doctors supposed to do? Its all very un-British on behalf of the UK Government and smacks of a dictatorship. The Brits do not like that. For goodness sake Mr Hunt get round the table and sort it out the patients are suffering!