By the way... Doctors should stop ALL strike action
THE Government continues to play political football with the NHS, with its pursuit of a phoney electoral pledge, the promise of a seven-day service.
It is phoney because for seriously-ill patients there has always been superb care every day. The service that exists cannot be upgraded to carry out routine work at weekends because there are simply not enough doctors or nurses to do this without diluting the teams available for weekday work.
Besides, it’s of no value to have more doctors in the hospitals at weekends without fully functioning laboratories, X-ray departments, and all other support services.
The crisis we are now facing is that 58 per cent of the junior hospital doctors who voted on the issue through the British Medical Association have declined the new contract that was initially agreed, but is now being imposed with no further discussion. The doctors, many of whom aren’t actually that junior, are enraged at the stubbornness of a Government intent upon an illusion that all services should be available on a seven-day basis at no extra cost, and despite no assessment of the staffing implications. Hence the proposed strikes.
And while next week’s action has just been called off, the strikes scheduled for the rest of the year could still go ahead.
By giving the junior doctors a small hike in their basic salaries (but simultaneously re-defining what constitutes overtime or outof-hours duties), the Government has managed to make them look unreasonable.
But while their concerns are reasonable, I do not believe that striking is the solution.
When I entered medicine as a graduate over 40 years ago, the job was an honour. I knew I would sacrifice a lot, but that I would never be unemployed and would ultimately receive good financial compensation, though the main rewards would be in the human elements and joy of working in a vocational environment. Nothing has changed. Very few doctors actually want to strike. So why lose the moral high ground? After all, the first duty of any doctor remains the care of the patients.
I believe that the best course for the medics is to keep working and get the support of the public. By all means demonstrate anger and frustration. But rather than go on strike, my proposal is that doctors formally decline all orders from administrators and managers — a form of civil disobedience, as it were.
For instance, if an administrator unilaterally cancels an urgent operation and replaces it with two non-urgent procedures (which is what happened recently to a colleague and his team), the medical staff should take the urgent case to theatre, even if they have to wheel the trolley themselves. Strike action is not what we are about — and is not the answer.