Junior doctors earn less than staff in Pret! Medic’s fury at 7-day NHS plan
A JUNIOR doctor has written an impassioned open letter to the Prime Minister attacking NHS pay and conditions.
Janis Burns, 34, from Tealing, near Dundee, called for salaries that reflect the importance of hospital work, claiming some of her colleagues earn less than managers at Pret a Manger.
She accused Jeremy Hunt of misleading the public over his plans to impose sevenday working on consultants.
In a speech last week, the Health Secretary said 6,000 patients died every year as a result of a ‘Monday to Friday culture’.
Consultants can opt out of working weekends, despite being on average salaries of more than £100,000 a year.
As a junior doctor, Dr Burns cannot opt out and said in her 1,500-word letter that she, and many colleagues at London’s Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals,
‘How much student debt do they have’
already work on Saturdays and Sundays. She wrote it after completing her weekend shift and posted it on Facebook. Last night, it had been shared more than 157,000 times.
She said: ‘ For your information I was working from 2000 to 0900 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday… part of the team that provided a 24-hour, seven days a week, 365 days a year service.
‘Your irresponsible colleague Jeremy Hunt seems hell-bent on suggesting to the public that there is no seven-day-aweek service and that consultants do not work weekends.’
Dr Burns, who went to school in Forfar, Angus, before studying physics at Dundee University and medicine at Cambridge University, said she earned less than £50,000 and struggled to make ends meet because of student debts and high London rents.
She says she does locum work at another hospital to avoid borrowing money from her elderly parents, James and Isabella, both 73, who live at the family home at Tealing.
‘Let’s put things into context,’ she wrote. ‘An assistant manager in Pret a Manger has a salary of £29,500 and a manager £40,800.
‘A doctor has to work for a minimum of nine years after graduating from their five-year degree course before they have a basic salary higher than a manager who works in Pret.
‘How much student debt did people working in these roles accrue? It’s all very good claim- ing you want a world- class health service but if you continue to act irresponsibly and vilify doctors by suggesting we don’t provide a seven- day-aweek service, you’ll destroy the NHS.’
Under Mr Hunt’s plans, all consultants will be given six weeks to agree to a new contract requiring them to work weekend shifts.
If they refuse, he will use powers to impose a new contract on the 2,000 consultants added to the NHS every year.
Andrew Collier, of the British Medical Association’s junior doctor committee, said: ‘The Secretary of State needs to understand junior doctors make huge sacrifices to study medicine and the frustrations expressed by Dr Burns are shared by many.’
The Department of Health declined to comment but pointed to a tweet Mr Hunt sent on Saturday, thanking doctors who were at work.
Last night, Dr Burns’s mother said her daughter was ‘hard-working’ and had always dreamed of being a doctor.