YP Letters: Contract row stems from doctors' role as NHS contractors

WITH the impending threat of strikes by junior doctors, I feel we need to stand back and look at the working relationship doctors have with the NHS.

There is a general belief that GPs and NHS doctors are employed by the NHS. This is not true. GPs are contractors to the NHS and, as such, each GP practice is a LLP where the practice can spend the money it receives from the NHS in any way it believes is in the best way for the practice to function, hence when a doctor becomes a partner in the practice they have to buy this partnership.

This is also true for junior doctors. They are not direct employees of the NHS, unlike the nurses, radiographers, physios etc. They, like GPs, are contractors to the NHS, hence the current problems being experienced by the NHS regarding a new contract for junior doctors to provide a seven- day service for patients.

Perhaps the way in which the NHS was formed in the 1940s was not actually nationalising the system but only giving us, as the general public, free medical care at the point of demand.

Perhaps the answer to the current problem is to take GPs and junior doctors in to the NHS as employees and give them the normal contract of employment enjoyed by all the other medical and administrative staff in the NHS. I also believe that the NHS has become top heavy with managers and senior administrative staff on inflated salaries, and which seems to make them bullet proof.

From: Dr Glyn Powell, Bakersfield Drive, Kellington.

IT is very pleasing that the junior doctors have plans to step up their campaign against the Government’s imposition of ludicrous contracts, even though next week’s action has been suspended.

Untrustworthy Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, should withdraw the imposition threat and admit that a seven day NHS service cannot be implemented without the recruitment of thousands more doctors.

The junior doctors deserve the public’s continued support. Other NHS workers and unions should withdraw their labour in support, as a seven day NHS will affect the employees on reception desks, analysing blood and all the other services.

From: David Treacher, Hull.

IT’S not good that junior doctors are going on strike. Patients will be disrupted. The Government can try and stop this action, but will they? I guess many Ministers will have private insurance.