Thousands To Join First All-Out Doctors' Strike

[naomi24]

// Doctors are concerned they will be under pressure to work longer hours, risking patient safety.//

… but they don’t mind risking patient safety today when they withdraw emergency cover at A&E and intensive care units. Hypocrites!

http://news.sky.com/story/1684491/thousands-to-join-first-all-out-doctors-strike

[jim360]

General reports coming in today have suggested that hospitals across England have coped perfectly well during the strike; there's still another day, and possible lag effects for the next day or so afterwards, but it's looking like emergency care did not after all suffer at all (albeit at the expense of non-emergency procedures).

[jennyjoan]

PP well you're very correct . As my friend's son will be a consultant in a cuppla years time - heart consultant - 32 years old.

Please don't me know and how - but this friend has never boasted about anything of any kids doing. Just know what a fantastic parents he had and hard work he put in to it. - But at the same time he and young wife have a ball with the social life and travelling - maybe some times 2-3 countries a fortnight. So there is something right what he is doing.

then, again, wife is a corporate a banker - no kids at mo - just living to the full - good luck to them. he is I think he 27 maybe 28 on Xmas day. Just a wee aside note.

[retrocop]

jj
What's his name Benjamin Button?

[retrocop]

//General reports coming in today have suggested that hospitals across England have coped perfectly well during the strike; there's still another day, and possible lag effects for the next day or so afterwards, but it's looking like emergency care did not after all suffer at all (albeit at the expense of non-emergency procedures).//

According to the ITV news at Ten patients were seen and treated in record time by consultants. Quicker than when junior doctors staffed casualty.This was at a hospital in Bedfordshire.
I wondered why the junior doctor kept wondering off when I was on a gurney in A&E a couple of months ago with a suspected coronary.Obviously had to consult the Oracle .Bet they didn't appreciate tonight's news report. Even the patients commented the service was fantastic. :-)

[Peter Pedant]

and during doctors' strikes the mortality goes DOWN
I wonder what Jeremy Hunt will make of it

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101

One thing Jeremy Hunt announced in the commons that he is quite sanguine about is that 50% of those qualifying from the british medical schools have declined to do any further training [ = apply for foundation years training ]
... seems astoundingly high ....
but he has done it twice .....

[jim360]

Just in the interests of clarity, yesterday I posted that "On everything [other than the levels of pay on Saturday] an agreement has been reached (I think)." This came from, among other sources, a Telegraph article about the Doctors' strike, claiming that there were 16 key areas of disagreement and that 15 were resolved as of January 2016.

This claim comes from the government; the BMA denies this, apparently. Make of that what you will, although the key point is that we still don't actually know, one way or another, what has been settled and what hasn't in the long, protracted and, by now, probably fruitless negotiations.

See, for example, this: http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/BMA_disagrees_that_15_of_16_junior_contract_issues_are_resolved

Compared with the claim made in the Telegraph, here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/12005176/Striking-junior-doctors-will-put-lives-at-risk-and-heres-why.html

At least some of the BMA's aims for a new contract appear to be contradictory, although perhaps they are meant as "ideally this, but compromise at that, or possibly that if all else fails", eg with respect to the 48/56/70-hour working week maximum. Or it could be spin, depending on how much you trust the doctors. Either way, though, it's hard to see where things go from here.

[Khandro]

jim; //it's hard to see where things go from here.//

Not really, the government (not 'Jeremy Hunt') is carrying out its manifesto commitment to a 7 day NH service. Strike action by junior doctors led by their BMA union for political reasons has achieved nothing, and they shall have to dwell on the fact that their future working conditions, salary, and pensions which are in reality very good and would be desirable to many, are it.

[jim360]

To all intents and purposes that amounts to parroting government propaganda, Khandro. That aside, while I accept that the 7-day NHS was a manifesto commitment, what was not the commitment was how this was carried out. Again and again I've tried to stress that there is no evidence at all to support the idea that rewriting the contracts and working hours of junior doctors should be seen as the best way to implement the 7-day policy. In that sense, doctors can legitimately claim that this is about more than the pay issue (which is less acute than is made out, as if you compared the two pay offers from either side you'd see that the overall award is essentially the same; only the structure differs). Instead, their point is that it is the *government* who are imposing this for political reasons, rather than patient-safety ones.

On that point, as the manifesto commitment was to a policy not a practical implementation, doesn't it follow that if the implementation of the manifesto commitment is bad then relevant bodies have a duty to resist it?

I think junior doctors will have to accept this in the end, but it's depressing to see a world where people believe that the government is motivated by health issues, and doctors by political ones.

[murraymints]

whilst I do not wish to lessen the good work all docs do in hossies..why enter the profession when you are fully aware of the conditions of employment..like firemen complaining of PTS for fighting fires !! or soldiers engaged in battle....comes with the territory..

[naomi24]

It's political.

[fiction-factory]

That's a really good analysis I think, jim. I think the real issue is that the doctors don't like something being imposed, particularly where they feel there is no overall benefit to patients (which is possibly largely correct). I have not seen a convincing case to support their argument that it would make doctors more tired and therefore less safe. The doctors won't talk unless the government removes the imposition of the contract. the government won't talk with such a precondition.

I'm sure there must be a way past the impasse. Perhaps the government should agree to delay the imposition pending a further one month consultation/arbitration window in which the broker tries to establish what the remaining difference is and requires the doctors to come up with a proposal that still allows the manifesto commitment for 7 day working.

[jim360]

Care to exapnd on that, Naomi?

minty: "why enter the profession when you are fully aware of the conditions of employment?"

Umm... the conditions of employment are changing dramatically since the current junior doctors entered the profession, which is the entire point of the argument.

[Old_Geezer]

Surely the issue is about the changing of the conditions of employment ?

But that aside, if existing conditions are unreasonable is the suggestion that everyone who wants to work in the field has to lump it, never any correction until a lack of job applicants and the running out of foreign nationals willing to help management bypass the uk national labour market, forces change or die ? Sounds drastic to me.

[naomi24]

Not really, Jim. I think it's all been said.

[murraymints]

junior docs have ALWAYS been required to work such long hours

[ummmm]

That doesn't make it right though. Do we really want to be cared for by an exhausted doctor?

[murraymints]

has always been the way of it ummmm....

[fiction-factory]

Yes, I think the doctors already work long hours and I am not convinced this change is going to make that any worse overall- in fact there will be a cap so i suppose some will work a bit less less and quite a few will have to work a little bit more. But I can see that at the moment there are some doctors who like to do premium shifts at weekends (maybe for the big pay premium) but the majority just want to be able to plan their life around weekends off after 5 long days in work. I can see teachers for example would be up in arms if the government insisted on 7 day schools and said in some weeks you have to have Tuesday off and work Sunday, for example. I know lots of shop workers, call centre staff, drivers etc have to work weekends though so maybe doctors (and teachers) would just have to adapt

[ummmm]

Well I had an out of hours doctor wrongly prescribe medicine for my baby. Luckily the pharmacist spotted the mistake. Right medicine, wrong dosage.

It might have always been the way but that doesn't mean it shouldn't change.

[jim360]

I suppose two of the other problems worth mentioning are that, by now, the contract is intended to be imposed without the consent of doctors (which is pretty extreme, contracts are, after all, meant to be signed off and accepted by both parties before they come into effect); and there also exists a clause in the new contract that gives the government the right to change the contract however they see fit without consultation.

I think both of these points are reasons to be pretty *** off: Not only do junior doctors not like the new terms, they have every reason to believe that even further new terms could be introduced that are even more unpleasant, not to say punitive.