Are the junior doctors strikes justified?

MORE than 40 years ago, when I first qualified, like all junior doctors I worked from Friday evening until Monday morning on a flat rate. After doing outpatients and arranging admissions throughout the following week, you had a weekend off. This allowed for family time. The junior doctors’ five-day strikes from October will see thousands of appointments and routine operations axed and the risk that people will die. To work out extra pay for weekend work by junior doctors, would it not be better if the BMA, as their advisory body, plus the Health Secretary and Patients Association, sit around the table to thrash out the differences. ‘Think of no harm and do no harm’ is the Hippocratic Oath all doctors need to remember. Dr JOGINDER DHILLON, Folkestone, Kent. MY GRANDDAUGHTER studied for eight years to be a doctor and is working 12-hour night shifts this very weekend. Politicians should stop persecuting professionals. A sevenday NHS is not valid. We haven’t got the staff or doctors, but we probably have plenty of managers.

ARTHUR DINSDALE, Middlesbrough. WHERE sections of the workforce — such as doctors and the Forces — are so vital to our lives that they cannot go on strike, we should make sure their pay and working conditions are the best possible.

FRANCIS REILLY, Orpington, Kent. THE junior doctors dispute could have been settled months ago if the Government had not tried to enforce new contracts across the board. When I took a football referees’ course, there were 17 written laws, but it was stressed the most important one was No 18: common sense. Existing doctors’ contracts should be honoured and the new contracts given only to new recruits.

W. F. BENNETT, Worcester Park, Surrey.