Jayne Dowle: Why I'm backing the striking junior doctors over the arrogant Jeremy Hunt

I HAVE every sympathy with the people whose operations had to be cancelled this week.
Junior doctors on the picket line outside the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.Junior doctors on the picket line outside the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.
Junior doctors on the picket line outside the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.

I feel sorry for those who were told by text or answerphone message that their knee surgery or hysterectomy wasn’t going to happen when they expected. It’s never good to be let down. However, I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy for those who have chosen to moan publicly about their “distress” and “inconvenience”.

I can’t speak for all of them, obviously, but I bet you that many of these individuals have hitherto not spent much time staying in an actual hospital. If they had, they might have a little bit more understanding of the acute pressure junior doctors are under. And they might comprehend a little more the reasons why this beleaguered section of the medical profession has been pushed into taking such extreme industrial action for the first time in 40 years.

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This strike has not been about the selfish actions of a bunch of privileged medics. It has been a matter of life and death.

Anyone who has spent time on a ward, and taken the trouble to observe and talk with the doctors there, will recognise the immense pressure that these professionals are under. No one is at their best towards the end of a 12-hour shift, no matter what their job is. When that job is not just any old routine job, but a matter of saving lives, the people doing it deserve the respect and gratitude of all.

I’ve seen it at first hand. Most recently, my father spent almost a month in Barnsley District General Hospital where he was eventually diagnosed with a serious rheumatoid condition. We met and spoke with a lot of registrars during this time. I cannot fault any of them for their diligence, patience and determination to find out what was wrong with Dad. That’s just one of the reasons why I have supported the strike this week. And I will continue to back industrial action, as more strikes are planned.

Let’s get one thing straight first though, shall we? In some quarters, “junior doctors” have been portrayed as a particularly belligerent minority. Yet some of these people are anything but “junior” – a doctor can be in their thirties before they are considered to be fully qualified. All those years spent training and dealing with patients, often at the sharp end of emergency care. And still the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, feels he can patronise and pigeonhole.

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If Mr Hunt and his colleagues have this attitude towards highly-educated and intelligent individuals, what must they really think about the rest of us? His approach is high-handed in the extreme.

There are more than 55,000 junior doctors in England, a third of the medical workforce, However just over 37,000 are BMA members. When the British Medical Association balloted its members last autumn, a huge majority – 98 per cent – backed strike action.

These are serious-minded individuals who go into medicine to make people better and save lives. For the Government to ride rough-shod over their concerns betrays a serious lack of respect. For the talks regarding contracts, pay and conditions to have broken down so dramatically, shows an ineptitude on the part of Mr Hunt and his team.

Shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander has described the Government’s handling of the strike as “utterly shambolic”. She is right. It should never have come to this. Mr Hunt assumed his position and quite simply, refused to take on board what the doctors were saying to him. This is arrogant in the extreme.

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We all want a National Health Service which delivers better seven-day-a-week, round-the-clock care. Scaring junior doctors out of the profession before they have even qualified is hardly the way to go about it. The NHS is haemorrhaging staff, which puts even more pressure on the rota. No wonder so many doctors are working so many hours.

The Health Secretary keeps on saying that he is concerned with “patient safety” above all else. Yet how can he maintain this position when doctors themselves say that the proposed new working arrangements would remove protections on safe working patterns, devalue evening and weekend work and undermine current safeguards which prevent over-exhausted junior doctors from working dangerously long hours?

In retaliation, Mr Hunt argues that he is offering what amounts to a pay-rise of 11 per cent. However, what he has repeatedly failed to grasp is that doctors don’t (generally) become doctors because of the money. Some do it because of that quaint old-fashioned notion of vocation.

Others choose this career path because they want to enter into research which could find a cure for terrible diseases and save lives. Some want to help those less fortunate than themselves and end up helping those who in live in countries where women still die routinely in childbirth and children die from measles.

Then there are those who really, truly believe that they can make the world a better place.

It is a pity that more politicians don’t share that kind of motivation.