Would you support the doctors' strike.

The problem at weekends is the availability and the cost of a senior consultant. Junior doctors already work 7 days a week.

Alea Angela Rippon did a report for the One Show last night. The sound was turned off on our TV, so I didn't hear it. I did think she looked ridiculous though, but that's a different subject.

Anniebach mentioned that there are no strikes planned in Wales and Scotland. Given that the money available for the NHS in these Countries is exactly the same proportionally as that available in England perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament in terms of good 'Housekeeping'?

A junior doctor vividly described the situation as it is-almost every shift she does is at least one doctor short, so she ends up carrying 2 emergency beepers and is responsible for 400 rather than 200 patients. The proposed changes would make this situation much worse and put patients at risk. Strangely enough I believe her rather than anyone in this government. It seems rather obvious to me- how can you have more cover with the same number of doctors when they can't cover everything now? Hunt is trying to make out that things would be better when it is patently obvious they would be worse.

Of course. But at the moment patients are really suffering substandard care at the weekends. This is not going to be addressed by the current contract. It appears that we shall need extra doctors. The aim is better care for patients at any time of the week.

Anan, if more doctors will be on duty at weekends this will mean less doctors through the week . How can less hours be extended over more days yet no extra doctors

The new contract in practice removes the protection from doctors working too many hours.

Working hour safeguards—the proposed removal of penalties has also proved controversial

The government has said that under the new contract doctors would not be allowed to work more than 72 hours in seven consecutive days, or to work more than four consecutive night shifts. There’d also be a new process for reviewing working hours on the request of either a junior doctor or their supervisor.

The BMA argues that in practice the removal of the banding system for unsocial hours will also remove safeguards that go alongside them, including financial penalties for employers who subject trainees to “fatiguing” working patterns. That could drive up hours and put patients at risk, it says.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) agrees, saying their removal “will damage patient well-being”, while the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has said the proposals mean “there is now a significant chance of returning to the ‘bad old days’ of over-burdened junior doctors in danger of giving sub-standard care.”

NHS Employers disagrees, saying that the penalties haven’t reduced working hours. It says its analysis shows credit for this should go to the European Working Time Directive.

fullfact.org

More doctors will be on duty at weekends - the aim of the new contract is that not all but less of the weekend work will be "overtime". It is an attempt to shift the idea of hospital work to a 24/7 need. Hopefully more doctors will be recruited. At the same time efficiencies need to be made in the NHS. A massive waste of resources is witnessed by most patients. More important is to promote a healthier lifestyle culture to reduce the demand.

If their hours are to be reduced and if there are fewer doctors on duty at weekends how is reduced hours going to give more doctors on duty at weekends?

It appears that the new contract limits the number of hours that Junior Doctors mays work - now about 90 a week - new contract about 70 a week. It also cuts down on the number of continuous nights worked. It seems to me that this strike is about the doctors retaining their autonomy and being free to earn more overtime. I have an aversion to hypocrisy.

If no agreement is reached Hunt will force the new contracts on the doctors

I'm catching up on this thread with my morning cup of tea and want to thank Candelle, hummingbird, Wilma, Anya, Alea, Nelliemoser and Penstemmon (i.e. everyone posting after Candelle) for your posts. Consensus on gransnet about the need to support our public servants - now how do we get the government to listen.

100% behind junior doctors and other public sector workers fighting to maintain/provide a quality service for you, me and other 'ordinary' people. Having a 'vocation'as in medics/teachers/ sw et al is not a reason not to pay a decent wage. Public services have been cut to the bone: in schools, in medical services, local councils and many aspects handed over to private companies. Private companies are only keen if there is a profit to be had. Why is my tax making money for G4S, Veolia, etc? If there is a profit to be made I want it ploughed back into the public purse to extend/ maintain services. I noted too, that the money, legally claimed, by London based peers for travel expenses to House of Lords (in 2 months) was about £730k +, the equivalent to the annual budget for the 180 place Infant School where I am a governor. How can that be right?

I don't know exactly how many working hours are included in the new contract but I wonder how the DRs hours on duty compare with that of lorry drivers and airplane drivers who are legally prevented from working more that certain hours because of safety concerns about over tired staff.

The Dr's and nurses also face losing unsocial hours payments for night and weekends etc. As I said further down this thread there are a lot of health issues involved in shift work as well as the detrimental effects effects on family life.

The Government is using the great commitment of most Drs to their profession to emotionally black mail them to accept these new arrangements.

Candelle and Anya thank you for "telling it like it is". I have no doubt there are others, so please nobody who is close to working doctors today take offence because I have not mentioned you, but I think there is a risk of the real issues being obscured by anecdotal and possibly irrelevant contributions.
A little knowledge can be a dangerous misleading thing.
Times change,memories and experiences and circumstances too, so harking back to even the recent past may sound misleadingly authoritative.("Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more squire")

She has great legs, but what Angela Rippon is meant to know about it all is a puzzlement to me anyway what relevance does she have?

I also wish my offspring had chosen a different profession. There are professions which this government seems determined to undermine.

I've listened to all the arguement and read these posts. The ones that really strike home are those from mothers of doctors. As a mother of a HoD teacher who is on her knees with all the added paperwork, hours, meetings, responsibilities, marking, lost weekends, etc..(the etc being the actual teaching) I hear the truth behind these posts. We are the people who see the real effect it is having on individuals as they try to juggle work and families. As they put in long hours, for no extra pay, and worse - little appreciation from this government. There was a young woman on the picket line yesterday who was desperately unhappy to be in that position, but explained eloquently why she's been driven to strike.

So I'm coming out in full support of these strikes.

I normally support this Government and unfortunately feel that some of their reforms (some overdue) have been badly mishandled but how anyone can not support this strike is beyond me.

So Candelle did you or did you not vote Tory at the last election?

You have my sympathies, but my family first felt the effects of government cuts in 2008 and it changed our lives. At least we can say we've never voted for the party that turned our lives upside down.

I support the junior doctors 100%.

You must be like me, Candelle, in wishing that your offspring had chosen a different profession!

Apologies if this is a little rambling but around 9.00pm tonight we arrived home after doing the school run, after school activities, supper, bed and bath for two of our DGC. We handed over to our DSL when he arrived home from work and then drove 35 minutes to our home. Their mother was not available to do any of the above as she was working.

Why is any of the above unusual - aren't many many families are in a similar scenario all over the country? Well, simply because My DD, a Partner in a GP practice rose at 6.00am and left her children to go to work. At 6.30pm, she drove to chair a NHS committee meeting. This meeting will end about 10.00pm. She will then have a half hour drive home, peep at her small sleeping children and try and grab a few hours sleep before a similar day tomorrow. And the day after that. It is relentless. Her normal working day is 12-13 hours. My DD will have been fortunate to have found time to have a wee or a cup of tea during the day. She will be fortunate to be grab a sandwich at the evening meeting.

GP practices are now undertaking much of the work of small hospitals of yore but without a plethora of extra staff. Social work, administration, management and accounting... all part of normal working day. Oh, patients? Well, they are in there somewhere. To be cared for and worried about. Out of hours telephone consultations, perhaps with other branches of the NHS (i.e.at home during supper/evenings/weekends etc.) are the norm.

Why is the above regarding GP's relevant to this discussion? Mr Hunt wants to cut the salary of trainee GP's by 31%. Is that really going to help recruitment and retention? Thus some trainee GP's were also striking today. Would you want your pay reduced thus?

In answer to some other points raised through these pages: yes, of course other jobs and professions work long hours too. Yes, medicine is still a vocation. Yes, other professions also require long training and graduates leave with huge debts.

However, the responsibility, ensuring every decision is a good one, after working long long hours is not comparable with any other job. Medicine could not be commenced without a vocation - it would be impossible to be consumed by such a job without deep love for the profession. The debts accrued by medics graduating today take decades to eradicate.

The stress on marriages and health of doctors has hardly been mentioned but as a female doctor, my DD could not function without a supportive husband and parents. Her job affects my whole family, even to the degree of the illnesses she imports home and are just 'part of the job'. Not something I signed up for!

I normally support this Government and unfortunately feel that some of their reforms (some overdue) have been badly mishandled but how anyone can not support this strike is beyond me.

Mr Hunt's much spouted want of healthcare 24/7, 365 days a year seems laudable. Who could object? Oh, just a second, he wants all the ancillary services in place for these times too (I presume all the receptionists/physios and radiographers have agreed, without being offered enhanced pay - as per the medical staff - to work these hours?) This is because 'statistics' say that death rates are higher in hospitals at weekends. Untrue. Wednesday is actually the day with the highest mortality rate.

Just as it is impossible to stretch thin pastry beyond a certain point - it goes into holes, or cracks and breaks - it is thus with doctors and the NHS which is at breaking point.

Please don't believe the rubbish spouted on salaries: Trainee doctors currently have a starting salary of £22,636 - at Foundation Year 1 (F1) - rising with experience to reach £30,000 within four years. Doctors in specialist training (ST) receive a salary of between £30,002 and £47,175, while those who make the grade can earn up to £69,325. Only a single-practice doctor working on a remote island could possibly hit £100,000 per annum, a sum generally held to be the average for a GP. Rot! Doctors are not now highly paid. A new London underground driver (an important job with responsibility but not decision-making at ten-minute interval job) is paid approximately £45,000 per annum and reaches almost £50,000..... for a 36 hour working week.

Incidentally, many doctors striking today will be consultants by the time these reforms - if they did go through and are implemented - so they are not striking for themselves but purely for altruistic reasons for future doctors.

I think that the Government is trying to put a split between 'us' and 'them', i.e., making a divisive line twixt patients and doctors. When ill-feeling has been worked up enough, they can then really go to town will try to break the doctors further.

Mr Hunt declared back in 2006 that he wished to decentralise the NHS and seems to be making a start. Divide and rule?

Doctors need support. If you wish to have a fully-functioning NHS with fully functioning doctors, compos mentis to work, support your doctors now.

Agreed!

Another con, hummingbird, like Osborne's tax credit climbdown when he knows that in four years everyone should be on a lower universal credit.
They think we are idiots. The idiots are those who voted for this shambles.

Thank you for your clear and concise summary, Jen. I read Fullfact - everyone should. It clears up the confusion about what the 11% 'pay rise' actually means. It is notes that Hunt intends to protect pay for a time in acknowledgment of the losses anticipated.

I fully support them.

fullfact.org/health/

Fullfact try and get objective information about anything and everything political.
Even the government trusts them.
Lots of information on their website for those who want impartiality.

There is no 11% payrise. It's a payrise on basic pay, which is now going to be from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week. Extra pay only on Sundays.

For those who do work a lot of weekends, it means a pay cut. A doctor was interviewed who said that he would be expected to work 26 weekends a year under the new contract. His wife is a doctor as well. They would lose money and have no family life. Shouldn't the government want to encourage people like these to stay in the NHS if it wanted to keep the NHS?

If the government thinks the NHS is important, why is it always attacking doctors and nurses? I never really thought of the BMA as a union. Doubtless the government didn't either. It probably thought the BMA would go along with them. In fact, at the beginning of the government's dismantling of the NHS, it did, which is why the government has gone so far.

There is no extra money going into the NHS for these pay rises that Hunt talks about. Where is it going to come from?

Hunt has said a few times today that he has a manifesto mandate for doing this, but I cannot find it anywhere. Someone should - and probably has - challenge/d him on that.

The NHA is obviously biased, but they are doctors working in hospitals.

nhap.org/six-reasons-why-the-junior-doctor-fight-is-central-to-the-fight-for-the-nhs/

Gilla what junior doctors do is not 'merely working'! My son (A hospital consultant) regularly meets up with his old school friends. All bright, hardworking boys in a range of professions - law, banking, sales, one is a pilot, and so on. My son is the lowest paid in this group, and works longer, and generally more unsocial hours than any of them. The pilot has very reasonable time off following his long shifts, and the sales rep enjoys amazing perks from his company. (Incidentally, no one seems to mind the pay afforded to other professionals!) With his academic ability, my son could have entered almost any profession he chose - but he has, like most of his hardworking and dedicated colleagues - a vocation!

Angela Rippon said she was against the strike, as we need more doctors, so they have to agree to new contract. How does that compute - doh?!?

If doctors leave and go into private practice/hospitals (and I know for a fact they are waiting with open arms and purses opened- can't say more)- or go abroad- what then Angela!