Junior doctors say contract changes will risk lives

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DoctorImage source, Thinkstock

Their hours are notoriously long, the work-load tough, and many junior doctors say they've had enough.

They're angry about government plans to change their working contracts, claiming it will make their jobs even harder.

Trainees say it will mean they'll be forced to work longer hours, for less pay, under extra pressure.

The Department of Health has confirmed it's re-writing contracts for all new starters in England from August 2016.

The main changes affect junior doctors' pay structure - changes they say will make them worse off.

Newsbeat's been following #juniorcontract to track down the trainee doctors behind the tweets:

Demelza Beishon-MurleyImage source, Demelza Beishon-Murley
Image caption,

22-year-old Demelza is a final year medical student in London and she's hoping to go into general practice

Demelza's just finished her surgical placement and is about to start a new one in respiratory medicine.

She says: "Patient safety is at the forefront of everyone's minds when we say that the changes are detrimental and also quite dangerous.

"The doctors that I've been working with are contracted between 8am and 5pm, but they arrive at around seven every morning and if they leave before half six, seven that's an absolute miracle," she goes on.

"I think the benefits of being a doctor, the fact that you get to change lives, save lives daily, is amazing," she says.

"But you anticipate when you go into something like this that you have the support of your seniors - which we do have - and the government and quite frankly we don't have that.

"The main concern is patient safety. You know we're doctors, we can't go on for ever, we're all at risk of burn out.

"I think to have healthy patients you need healthy doctors and I'm not sure these working conditions will make for a healthy doctor."

Doctor writing notesImage source, Thinkstock

Sarah's 28 and in her fourth year since qualifying as a doctor. She's now training in A&E medicine.

She works one in two weekends, does nights every few weeks and normally works 10 or 12 hour shifts.

"It's incredibly unfair," she says. "The government are trying to spin it as being better for doctors, but it's not."

"They're basically increasing our basic rate of pay, which means we pay more in tax, more in national insurance and pension contributions.

"But they're getting rid of our banding - which is basically compensation for all the anti-social hours you work."

She says she understands that it's not just about pay and that other people in other professions have seen their wages stall, but not drop.

"If you used the government's new proposals every doctor is getting at least a ten to 15% pay decrease," she explains.

"Some people are losing 20-30% of their pay - and yet working the same hours or more hours."

Sarah also believes that there's a misconception about how much doctors earn and particularly about their starting salaries.

"The starting salary is about £22,000. When you've done six years at medical school, so twice as long as most other people doing a BSC or a BA, you've got twice as much student debt," she says.

"It's about feeling valued. Our morale is already at an all time low and we're just being pushed further and further to our limits and it may be that strike action is what we have to do," she ends.

This tweet from @bendean1979 says: "Shameful @DHgovuk @Jeremy_Hunt are unilaterally forcing huge pay cut on junior doctors- one of most undervalued and overworked groups of NHS", external

Ben has two big problems with the plans.

Ben DeanImage source, Ben Dean
Image caption,

Ben is an orthopaedic registrar and is half-way through his specialist training. He wants to practice orthopaedic surgery

"Generally it will result in a huge pay cut for junior doctors of around 10-20%," Ben explains.

"Although there will be the illusion of increased basic pay they're doing away with banding - which means we'll get much less financial reward for weekends and out-of-hours work."

He believes this will have long term implications for recruiting and retaining doctors with many heading abroad.

"We're in the midst of a huge recruitment crisis across the board in medicine, so we're struggling to fill rotas, we're struggling to recruit general practice, hospital medicine, and psychiatry," he says.

"The big problem is that when people finish their training, a lot now are leaving - emigrating - and not coming back.

"A lot are leaving medicine and going into other professions because they're better paid, more valued and the jobs are often more secure."

Ben believes an NHS staffed by overstretched and underpaid junior doctors will inevitably have a negative impact on patients.

"The patient safety implications are already there so reducing terms and conditions in this context is potentially disastrous," he says.

"The main risk is that patient care will suffer because you'll have more and more problems with recruitment, which we're already seeing.

"But also people become tired, demoralised, and that will have an inevitable impact on the care they provide," he concludes.

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