Junior doctors: Health Secretary Victoria Atkins' attempt to depict them as bob-a-job do-gooders has left her looking quite the fool

Who would have thought it, eh? Certainly not the most recent Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins, who all but demoted them to bob-a-job do-gooders when she recently stated she does not see them as junior doctors at all, but merely ‘doctors in training’.

Her words were construed as an attempt to demean junior doctors; to depict them as pen-pushing classroom pupils playing at the profession, as opposed to the critical, life-saving, expert clinicians that they are, deserving of remuneration befitting of their status, vital to the proper functioning of the NHS right now, and in the future.

And if there was any doubt about that, as the junior doctors’ six-day strike – the longest ever in NHS history – entered just its second day, NHS bosses around the country have made attempts to invoke recall clauses on those walking out, citing intolerable winter pressures. Some trusts, including in Nottinghamshire, have declared critical incidents.

All of this has created a crunch point between medics and Ministers, with the British Medical Association accusing NHS executives of bowing to political pressure from a Government desperate to show it is capable of running the NHS properly ahead of a likely General Election next winter, all of which creates an impasse to the detriment of patients.

On junior doctors’ value to the NHS, Ms Atkins ought to have remained silent and be thought of a fool, for now, on this evidence, there is no doubt.