Doctors should put patients before pounds

Junior doctors are threatening strike action over proposed new contracts but if I were a doctor I couldn’t strike – on moral grounds. It would be a vocation for me. Even when I worked in department stores, I couldn’t have gone on strike. I wouldn’t have wanted to let the customers down – and that was only dealing with pieces of furniture or carpet, not human lives. From your report last week on the ‘dirty tricks’ some junior doctors are up to, it seems that some are quite cold and ruthless.

A. Still, Ilford, Essex

A few weeks ago I had to visit A&E overnight and I received excellent care. While I was waiting for test results I could hear, through the curtain of my cubicle, some staff talking. One of them was a junior doctor. He was saying that he was about to take on a contract in the north of Scotland for six months and at the end of this he’d have earned so much he’d have three months off, then look for something else. He seemed to take great pleasure in boasting about the amount he was earning.

David Link,

Hesketh Bank, Lancashire

I am a GP partner and I am wholly in support of our junior doctors, who provide outstanding care in the NHS day in, day out. They have been backed into a corner by the Government. You reported on a junior doctor who is also a wedding photographer. Many MPs also supplement their main work. How is this any different?

Dr James Weems,

Leigh, Lancashire

You called comments about strike action on a doctors’ Facebook site ‘secret’, but the forum has more than 50,000 members, so it is hardly a closed group. And the printed quotes are not representative of what the vast majority of doctors post. Most use this forum to express frustration with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Dr Pablo Garcia Reitboeck,

London

The public should be as concerned about Mr Hunt’s proposals as junior doctors. The contract he is threatening to impose removes adequate safeguards to prevent having to work unsafe hours and lacks sufficient detail on how the expansion of ‘normal’ hours will affect pay. Junior doctors are neither militant nor cynical. We are, however, concerned about the nation’s health (including our own).

Dr Thomas Sanctuary, London

The self-righteous comments by militant junior doctors you exposed just show that there is some truth to the stereotype – that they believe they are gods.

J. Benn, London