Perhaps you are aware, perhaps not.
Will you support your hospital doctors? Will you support the NHS?
Jeremy Hunt is proposing changes to contracts which will undermine and stretch our services.
We all already know that the NHS is currently struggling financially. With a large deficit, hidden from us by the government actively censoring facts: (www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/03/ministers-hiding-details-nhs-cash-crisis)
An alleged £8bn is due our way at some as yet undisclosed date to some as yet undisclosed areas of the NHS.
Sketchy.
Nevertheless, JH has decided to ensure we work longer hours for less pay by next year. Claims that there are not enough doctors at the weekend covering acute services are unfounded. Less than 1% of consultants opt out of on call work.
A seven-day service is not feasible without funding. Instead, funding is being removed and the NHS is being starved.
Instead of improving patient safety, it is in fact being compromised harshly.
Quotes that 11,000 excess deaths occur because of a lack of services is completely unfounded. This number was pulled from a study based on statistics from 2009-2010 which showed that 30-day mortality is significantly greater when admitted on the weekend. There has been NO INVESTIGATION as to the cause of this and instead the workers of the NHS are the ones being blamed.
Increased deaths could be for many reasons - trauma, accidents, incidents etc are more likely at the weekend. People wait longer to see a doctor if they are working during the week. Did the study include elective (non-emergency) admissions during the week for routine operations? If so this would skew the statistics to show increased mortality from emergency admissions over the weekend.
Essentially, there is no evidence to back JH's claims.
Instead, cover ups and misuse of data are pulling the wool over your eyes.
A junior doctor is any doctor in training not yet a consultant. Junior doctors are the ones who will help deliver your baby, who will do your caesarian section at 3am, who will hold your hand when telling you your loved one is seriously ill. We are not just 'junior'. We are a great part of the NHS and we are being devalued.
Many of us are in our 30's with many years of training yet ahead of us. Many are married, with children, paying for expensive courses and exams and studying for these exam in our spare hours. We sacrifice our social lives, sacrifice seeing our children at school plays, sacrifice weddings, funerals, relationships, personal health, mental health and even....in some cases....taking our lives because of the pressure.
The public do not expect us to pipe up, because we are compassionate. But we will. We want to be there to hold that hand, to deliver the baby, to operate on your father's cataracts, or stent that coronary artery. BUT WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT.
We will strike. We will leave.