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Junior Doctors- are they the new scrounges?
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Anyone reckon he'll win and still be in his job come the summer?
I think that you are probably right in implying the govt will think it's not worth the battle - they can always screw more money out of some of the rest of us who aren't in such a strong bargaining position as the doctors.
Not sure, it wasn't fully supported ( I imagine by the junior doctors on 79k + ?) and a lack of support from senior staff, I assume giving it loads of "you should have been a junior in my day"
I think Hunt's personal position will depend less on how he handles the junior doctors' dispute and more on how he softens up some choice bits of the NHS for private-sector benefit. There's time to do this; the election was only last year and Labour are AWOL so the Tories have got a clear road ahead. I suspect that the real impact of this dispute will be felt a bit later, as more medics quit to go abroad.
Just as more (British) doctors will quit to go abroad, many foreign doctors will come in as wages here are much higher than in many parts of the world.
Is working Saturday really 'unsociable' hours? No, me neither. A great deal of industries now have Saturday & Sunday working as normal (banking, shops) and the majority don't have Saturday listed as worthy of extra pay, the shift patterns just changed to meet the market.
If it truly is a 24/7 NHS then there really is no such think as unsocial hours.
This is not a dispute about pay & conditions. It's not a dispute about weekend working. It is a dispute that has been rumbling on for two decades about the systematic dismantling of the NHS by successive Gubmints via he erroneous idea that it can be along a business model. The new contract for Junior Doctors is simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
Half of all junior doctors now choose not to complete their training because they get first hand experience very early on about what the career they chose has become. They see how the culture that the NHS has been forced down impacts on patients, carers, staff & their families, and they struggle under the financial pressure of having o pay for their mandatory training. You can bet that these people will still be the first to come to assistance in the street if a stranger has an accident, though.
As a Doc, you are never off duty. You will always be called upon to use your skills by friends, family, neighbours and strangers.
My family were all NHS medics. Parents, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins. My siblings and I were actively encouraged not to choose the same path because it is no longer about helping those who need treatment. It's about meeting artificially constructed targets, it's about working relentlessly under conditions that put your own health at risk, and forfeiting major elements of your own precious life that you'll never get back. It's also about defending yourself from smear campaigns driven by the press controlled by an unpopular Gubmint that are only in Westminster through the skin of their teeth, and whose finite time of power is only brief, but whose decisions will have an impact on generations of us and over successive parliaments.
The NHS already works 24/7. Junior doctors already work weekends - as do Consultants. Many peripheral services, however, do not.
Looking at some of the views expressed in this thread, it appears that the Conservatives ad hominem attack to discredit the Junior Doc's position and divert attention from their own self-serving actions, via the press, has worked - to a certain extent at least.
Gawd bless the NHS.
but the NHS has always been 24/7... Just try not to get taken into hospital on a Sunday afternoon
I'd rather be treated by a doctor who has trained in this country and has English as first language. And although foreign-born and trained doctors are very good, I'd rather they stayed at home and benefitted their own countries, which have footed the bill to train them and could use their skills.
As for shift hours, I agree that Saturday is no longer unsocial but if you're going to abolish the extra allowance for weekend and evening work you need to a) make sure nobody is paid less and b) make sure the work-life balance and family life are respected. I'm not convinced the govt has got this part of the deal right.
If there has indeed been a "systemtatic dismantling" of the NHS over the past few decades, what have the fat cats at the top of the medical profession been doing about their disaffected employees all this time? Surely the push for change (within certain - financial - parameters) come from within?
Hasn't change been coming from above, in the form of the Lansley reforms?
(I seem to recall that the coalition govt, or maybe just the Tories, promised not to carry out major top-downward changes in the NHS and then did exactly that.)
I don't often bother the NHS but in a couple of recent instances I really noticed a deterioration. Just anecdotal and me, of course, but still ... Couple of minor ailments and it took a lot longer to get them sorted. I hope the service is not going to be run down in the same way it was by the end of the last Conservative administration.
Do you think the fat cats at the top have any care about disaffected employees? It's a revolving door, much like the CEO-ships of private firms. In fact, it is fast becoming a private firm.
The NHS relies on people who have a weird altruistic urge to help others. A strike by Junior Doctors should be scaring the shit out of people who rely on their care, rather than making them question whether their motives are about lining their own pockets.
The fattest cat is just getting fatter - Jeremy Hunt stated in his co-authored book 'Direct Democracy' that "We should fund patients, either through the tax system or by way of universal insurance, to purchase health care from the provider of their choice." “Our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of health care in Britain”. David Cameron’s health advisor Nick Seddon (formerly of private healthcare company Circle), suggests that CCGs (Clinical commissioning groups) should be merged with private insurance companies and those who can afford to should contribute towards their health care.
CCGs are NHS organisations set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to organise the delivery of NHS services in England. Just after the Act came into force, Mr Hunt’s constituency of South West Surrey became the location of one of the biggest deals between the NHS and a private healthcare contractor - Assura Medical, (majority owned by Branson’s Virgin) signed a £650m deal to run a wide variety of Surrey’s healthcare services. Delays held up the signing of the deal between Surrey’s NHS trust and Branson’s company (which has since become Virgin Care), so Jeremy Hunt stepped in, writing to the head of Surrey’s Primary Care Trust to try to hurry the deal along.
Virgin Care's Commercial Director, Dr Vivienne McVey, is a member of an expert panel within the Department of Health advising the government on ‘Strengthening the NHS Constitution’, whilst also stating in the Financial Times that they intend to make 8% profit from NHS contracts.
What a tangled web indeed.
The sooner the NHS stops being free at the point of delivery the better, Might stop all the missed appointments and in need pills cos I've a cough types
Well you won't be waiting very long for this to happen, Mr Hunt.
It's also a problem of our own making - we want something for nothing.
At the inception of the NHS, life expectancy wasn't that great and the demand for it's resources was that much less.
Now we are all living longer, retiring earlier and still expect the same level of service.
On a wider view it is about money. We all want 24/7 treatment we all want it for longer, yet we balk at having to pay any extra for it.
No government will introduce fees, no government will put up tax to increase health funding (and also maintain guaranteed public sector pensions). Ultimately something will break, it's an economic certainty.
It's mad that doctors/nurses work anything over 50 hour weeks, Successive governments (of all flavours) even those that scraped in convincingly have consistently failed to address a demographic timebomb.
Err.. Im not Mr Hunt