PM asks doctors to call off strike

[GastonJ]

David Cameron has urged junior doctors to call of their planned strike action.
He warned Tuesday's strike will cause "real difficulties for patients and potentially worse".
The strike begins across England at 08:00 GMT, from when junior doctors will only provide emergency care.
Talks between the doctors' union - the BMA - and NHS bosses continue. The BMA has said the strikes "demonstrated the strength of feeling amongst the profession".
Issues being disputed by the BMA and NHS include weekend pay and whether there are appropriate safeguards in place to stop hospitals over-working doctors.
Three strikes are set to take place from:

• 08:00 Tuesday 12 January to 08:00 Wednesday 13 January (emergency care will be staffed)
• 08:00 Tuesday 26 January to 08:00 Thursday 28 January (emergency care will be staffed)
• 08:00 to 17:00 Wednesday 10 February (full walk-out)

The Prime Minister called on medics "at the late stage" to get back around the table before the proposed walkout.
He said: "This strike is not necessary, it will be damaging.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35280399

Well they've been "around the table" for months now. The government has had every opportunity to avert the strike by ensuring the safeguards are in place and that junior doctors aren't called on to work excessive hours. So why haven't the government done that yet? It looks as though it's because the government don't want to put the safeguards in place and do want junior doctors to be overworked - otherwise those aspects would have been settled early on. At that point Dave and co could have just blamed it on junior doctors wanting ore money. Doesn't seem like teh government are committed to the health and wellbeing of the NHS, it's patients or it's staff.

Motto of the conservative party as always - "Work until you die or are so tired you make a mistake and kill someone else. Then we can just blame you."

[bonus2010]

Well, I must say that I feel the government is the most excellent employer, where public sector workers have good rates of pay, terms and conditions.... more so, than what is available for private sector employees in general.

I think it is absolutely shocking that doctors should even consider striking and it just goes to show how uncaring these people are.

[gmb45]

yes they do get better pay etc than private workers, but people must stand up for what they think is right or the govs will walk all over them, wether it be the rich boys, labour, or lib dems thats in power

[super jumbe]

I think they may be looking for same amount of footballer pay; this will definitely make them happy.
What do they do before they even operate on patient, it takes 5 visits and 3 doctors to find out the course of problem, most patient have died before getting treatment, they seat around talking doing nothing Dave tell them to move on….

[gmb45]

av nothing but praise for the nhs from phoning my docs to being sorted out and on a ward after a heart attack all in 2 hours excellent, the after care was excellent as well with regular home visits from the cardiac nurse and 5 months of cardiac rehab, all that must hav cost 1000s, having said all that the nottingham city hozzy cardiac unit is one of the best if not the best in the country.

[GastonJ]

So they're well paid for their 80 hour working week then? Sorry but the WTD limits a 48 hour week so that people aren't tired and don't make mistakes.

Would you get on a coach for a trip down to London with a driver that had worked 12 hour days for the last 7 days, even if it were legal? I doubt it very much.

The government need to look at employing enough staff to cover weekends, not making it so that he hospitals can 'ask' a doctor to work 80 hours, when failing to turn up or refusing means being disciplined. The government have known for over 2 years that there wouldn't be enough doctors to cover weekends as well, why did the government not look at emplying more of them? Oh yeah it's because the conditions in the public sector are so good that after paying for 8 years and doing 8 years of education doctors are effing off to countries where they are valued and can't be forced into overworking.

[maca]

No tory MP gives a flying fck about the NHS especially when they have all got private health care. The way they look at it is why should the normal man on the street have the same health care as me .........TORY SCUM AT IT'S BEST........

[rds60h]

The great pay that keeps getting quoted is taking into account the huge amount of overtime they must do, a junior doctor's starting pay is ?22K which is less than a teacher's starting pay so for their training and the responsibility that they have to take on board the salary is pathetic !!
The Tories are taking the old Maggie Thatcher stance of "You're going to do what we tell you to do" while they try and convince the public that the junior doctors are lazy, greedy sods who have no consideration for the waiting patients.
After all the Tories have already managed to do the same to the sick and unemployed.
It will also manage to make the Tory calls for privatisation of the NHS appear more palatable to those they manage to make believe how evil the junior doctors are.

[bonus2010]

av nothing but praise for the nhs from phoning my docs to being sorted out and on a ward after a heart attack all in 2 hours excellent, the after care was excellent as well with regular home visits from the cardiac nurse and 5 months of cardiac rehab, all that must hav cost 1000s, having said all that the nottingham city hozzy cardiac unit is one of the best if not the best in the country.

Hey, really pleased to hear you had good care from the NHS and that is something that should be the norm.

My experience has been a lot different though... I spent 9 days in hospital last year, which I now call the ward from hell! When I went in, by ambulance, I couldn?t walk or breathe, and when I was sent home, I was still in a wheelchair and couldn?t breathe or get a night?s sleep. It took a further 3 weeks after being sent home, of GP home visits before I got referred to a Cardiac Consultant. The Consultant wanted to re-admit me to hospital on that day, there and then because I was in such a state and risk...unfortunately, there wasn?t a bed available. Thankfully the Consultant has helped me a lot, but getting there, for his help was sheer hell.

But hey, I could write a book if I wanted to, to detail my family member?s rotten experiences of the NHS...

[GastonJ]

Sorry you had a bad experience, but sadly teh doctor wouldn't have been able to find your OBD2 port to plug his diagnostics computer into, and may not have had a serial # for his copy of DAS or Xentry. Sadly, and I know quite a few doctors, illnesses unlike car faults aren't that cut and dried, unless you've done something like slice your arm off and carry it in with you. So doctors make best estimates with the information they are provided with. However I would like to say that their "best estimate" is usually pretty close and I'd trust it more than a self diagnosis on the Internet with Google.

All joking aside the body is a very complex organism, with very complex processes and yes no doctor gets it right first time every time, after all they are human and making them work 80 hours so they are very tired will not help anyone. The government has had a number of years to work on employing more doctors and has failed to in a spectacular way, blaming doctors for their employers failures isn't the way to impress everyone. Only the usual will believe that it's all about the money. When large supermarkets like Asdas went to 27/7 working they didn't force the staff to work longer hours, because it's illegal to do so (breach of WTD), they employed more staff to cover the longer opening hours. So why is the NHS not doing the same - just because they think they can bully the staff and get away with it.

[gc1966]

sorry to take this off on a tangent but we should all applaud the junior doctors stance on draconian wholesale changes to their contractual terms and conditions.every working person in this country either public or privately sector employed has the legal right to withdraw their labour if changes to the employment contract is unfairly levied and every working person in the country should voice their support.


this is the tory party of today trying to break unions,this is their new attack on the working man's basic human rights.

I just pray that fate smiles on the NHS with their fight.

[rds60h]

Bonus2010, as GastonJ says sorry to hear about your bad experience with the NHS but just maybe that could have been down to a very tired junior doctor making the wrong call and if he or she were expected to do even more hours those wrong calls would become more frequent and possibly with more dire consequences.
Perhaps with the exception of the Armed Forces in certain circumstances no where else is allowed to make workers work long hours like that and Lorry Drivers can be fined and lose their license if they are found to be working over permitted hours because it is deemed dangerous.....................yet junior doctors who have to make life saving or life changing decisions are being forced by the Government to work dangerously long hours and those doctors will be blamed if they make a wrong call despite the fact they may have been working such long hours that it is known will impair anyone's decision making.
Barmy Boris has been approaching the London Underground 24 hour running in the same way and then tried to blame any Union action on the workers being unreasonable and trying to stir up customer/passenger reaction to deflect from his unreasonable stance. Typical Tory actions now.