Strike Action

[Stu Monty]

It's funny how the very people who demand that we leave things to the market suddenly start to talk about pretty much conscripting medical professionals when it turns out that the demand for their skills is far bigger than the available supply and therefore might be quite costly if left that way. Turns out a belief in markets allocating resources and a belief in concentrated capital by whatever means are two very different things.

 

They could all demand £100k a year and we'd have to find it. What with them all being probably within the top 1% of vital citizens in the country and being in possession of skills that require, in some cases, a decade of fucking training.

 

That they are even putting up with the shit that is being pulled with them is very much to their credit.

[Stu Monty]

 

Very good. 

[Tyler Durden]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnH-Pc6MicM

 

Very good.

Boss that

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Tiresome bourgeois defenders.

[General Dryness]

NEWS

UK NEWS

JUNIOR DOCTORS STRIKE

Angry woman booed by Question Time audience after bizarre rant against junior doctors

 

01:08, 22 APR 2016 UPDATED 01:08, 22 APR 2016 BY MIKEY SMITH

 

The angry lady went on a good long rant about how junior doctors are all in it for the money, and put patients at risk by doing loads of overtime to grab cash. The audience disagreed.

 

An angry woman's furious and bizarre rant against 'greedy' junior doctors earned her some angry boos from the audience on Question Time .

 

The audience member into the debate on the junior doctors strike , interrupting a junior doctor, who was explaining that the public are on the side of the striking doctors.

 

She began began ranting: "Nobody makes you work extra hours. You opt in for it. I'm sorry, it's absolute rubbish."

 

She claimed she used to work in A&E, before declaring that "in any job" you opt in or out of overtime.

 

She went on to make the astonishing claim that overworked junior doctors are just in it for the money - which did not go down well with the rest of the audience.

 

She said: "They do 79 hours because they push at the weekend because they want more money. It's true."

 

"You can't force anybody to do over the 50 hours a week. They choose to physically do it. They put the patients at risk themselves."

 

"I'm sorry, it's all about money and it's wrong."

 

She then drifted into a bizarre argument comparing junior doctors legally withdrawing their labour to soldiers going AWOL.

 

"Anybody who goes AWOL should be sacked," she fumed. "If you was in the military you'd be arrested for going AWOL."

 

As the atmosphere in the room turned decidedly frosty, and people started to boo, she remonstrated: "...no....no..."

 

She went on: "The NHS don't want them going off work. They are technically going AWOL. They are not turning up for their shifts, making people anxious by cancelling appointments. It's their choice."

 

"I'm sorry, anybody else in any other job would be sacked for that."

 

For the record...

 

It is illegal to sack any worker who takes part in legally organised and balloted industrial action.

 

The junior doctors dispute has nothing to do with overtime. Doctors are striking because the Department of Health want to pay them less for hours they're mandated to do.

 

Saturday day times and the hours between 7pm and 10pm on weekdays are to be reclassified as "core hours" under the new contract, which means they'll be paid at a lower rate.

 

Doctors also argue the removal of financial penalties for employers who subject trainees to "fatiguing" working patterns could lead to hours being driven up, which would put patients at risk.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55KagNp8-7k

[Em City]

 

Very good. 

 

That is eerily similar, like Brass Eye levels of precognition.

 

Proper Stuart Pearson moment from that woman at 4:10.

[Sugar Ape]

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has made a last-minute bid to junior doctors to call off tomorrow’s strike. He said that withdrawing labour from emergency cover would amount to “crossing the Rubicon” and he hinted that the government could outlaw strike action of this kind in the future. In a statement to MPs Hunt also said that the new contract for junior doctors offered them more premium pay for working on Saturday than almost anyone else in the private or public sector gets. He said:

 

I wish to appeal directly to all junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover which creates particular risks for A&Es, maternity units and intensive care units. I understand the frustration many junior doctors feel that because of pressures on the NHS frontline they are not always able to give patients the highest quality of care that they would like to. I understand that some doctors may disagree with the government over our seven-day NHS plans and particularly the introduction of a new contract. I also understand that doctors work incredibly hard, including at weekends, and that strong feelings exist on the single remaining disagreement of substance, Saturday premium pay. But the new contract offers junior doctors who work frequently at weekends more Saturday premium pay than nurses, paramedics and the assistants who work in their own operating theatres, more than police officers, more than firefighters, and nearly every other worker in the public and private sectors.

 

The Tory MP Julian Lewis said that junior doctors had not specifically been balloted about withdrawing emergency care. He asked Hunt if he agreed that if patients died as a result, public demand for a law stopping a strike like this happening again could be “irresistible”. Hunt hinted he was open to the idea. In reply to Lewis he said:

 

[Lewis] is right. The public will be extremely disappointed that professionals are putting patients at risk in this way. I think it is extremely tragic that they are doing that. So I’m afraid I do think this is a crossing of the Rubicon, a crossing of the line, in a way that has not happened before. I think it is totally tragic and I would support his concern on that point.

[Jairzinho]

Get the guillotine out.

[torahboy]

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has made a last-minute bid to junior doctors to call off tomorrow’s strike. He said that withdrawing labour from emergency cover would amount to “crossing the Rubicon” and he hinted that the government could outlaw strike action of this kind in the future. In a statement to MPs Hunt also said that the new contract for junior doctors offered them more premium pay for working on Saturday than almost anyone else in the private or public sector gets. He said:

 

I wish to appeal directly to all junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover which creates particular risks for A&Es, maternity units and intensive care units. I understand the frustration many junior doctors feel that because of pressures on the NHS frontline they are not always able to give patients the highest quality of care that they would like to. I understand that some doctors may disagree with the government over our seven-day NHS plans and particularly the introduction of a new contract. I also understand that doctors work incredibly hard, including at weekends, and that strong feelings exist on the single remaining disagreement of substance, Saturday premium pay. But the new contract offers junior doctors who work frequently at weekends more Saturday premium pay than nurses, paramedics and the assistants who work in their own operating theatres, more than police officers, more than firefighters, and nearly every other worker in the public and private sectors.

 

The Tory MP Julian Lewis said that junior doctors had not specifically been balloted about withdrawing emergency care. He asked Hunt if he agreed that if patients died as a result, public demand for a law stopping a strike like this happening again could be “irresistible”. Hunt hinted he was open to the idea. In reply to Lewis he said:

 

[Lewis] is right. The public will be extremely disappointed that professionals are putting patients at risk in this way. I think it is extremely tragic that they are doing that. So I’m afraid I do think this is a crossing of the Rubicon, a crossing of the line, in a way that has not happened before. I think it is totally tragic and I would support his concern on that point.

 

 

If the patients are either Tory politicians or Tory voters then I think the doctors should be presented with gold stethoscopes in recognition of their services to the nation.

[Anubis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnH-Pc6MicM

 

Very good.

 

That's very clever. But those committee members aren't sarcastic enough.

 

"Data gap? Data gap? That's not a data gap. It's a data Grand Canyon. It's the motherfucking Mariana Trench of missing data."

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Heidi Alexander twatting James Hunt.

 

https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/videos/1187854097891993/

[Stu Monty]

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has made a last-minute bid to junior doctors to call off tomorrow’s strike. He said that withdrawing labour from emergency cover would amount to “crossing the Rubicon” and he hinted that the government could outlaw strike action of this kind in the future. In a statement to MPs Hunt also said that the new contract for junior doctors offered them more premium pay for working on Saturday than almost anyone else in the private or public sector gets. He said:

 

I wish to appeal directly to all junior doctors not to withdraw emergency cover which creates particular risks for A&Es, maternity units and intensive care units. I understand the frustration many junior doctors feel that because of pressures on the NHS frontline they are not always able to give patients the highest quality of care that they would like to. I understand that some doctors may disagree with the government over our seven-day NHS plans and particularly the introduction of a new contract. I also understand that doctors work incredibly hard, including at weekends, and that strong feelings exist on the single remaining disagreement of substance, Saturday premium pay. But the new contract offers junior doctors who work frequently at weekends more Saturday premium pay than nurses, paramedics and the assistants who work in their own operating theatres, more than police officers, more than firefighters, and nearly every other worker in the public and private sectors.

 

The Tory MP Julian Lewis said that junior doctors had not specifically been balloted about withdrawing emergency care. He asked Hunt if he agreed that if patients died as a result, public demand for a law stopping a strike like this happening again could be “irresistible”. Hunt hinted he was open to the idea. In reply to Lewis he said:

 

[Lewis] is right. The public will be extremely disappointed that professionals are putting patients at risk in this way. I think it is extremely tragic that they are doing that. So I’m afraid I do think this is a crossing of the Rubicon, a crossing of the line, in a way that has not happened before. I think it is totally tragic and I would support his concern on that point.

 

He keeps trying to make it about pay, instead of what it actually is; running an unsafe and understaffed NHS.

 

There's only one person crossing the Rubicon here and it isn't the medical staff. It's the bloke that want to break the NHS to sell it.

 

Hope the cunt dies in a house fire.

[Bobby Hundreds]

The Tories and hunt are praying people die during the strike life means fuck all to them

They just want to destroy the right to strike. He's loving it the fucking twat of a man and party.

[Sugar Ape]

[Sugar Ape]

http://www.drphilhammond.com/blog/2016/03/09/private-eye/the-junior-doctors-dispute-explained-simply-but-in-detail/

 

 

The junior doctors dispute explained simply and in context…

 

It is not possible to explore the Terms and Conditions of the proposed contract in detail because they have not been published yet and may still not have been finalised. The announcement of the imposition of a contract that has yet to be finalised and can’t be scrutinised by the junior doctors who are be imposed upon has been highly counterproductive. Irrespective of the content of the final contract, I believe imposition is wholly wrong.

 

This is not a dispute about Saturday pay, it’s about safe staffing. Safe staffing requires both safe rotas and a safe number of staff to fill them.

 

Junior doctors have not asked for more money, but for a better, safer NHS. However, a better safer NHS will cost us more because it needs more staff at all levels and occupations The government’s manifesto promised ‘a truly 7 day NHS… to ensure you can see a GP and get the hospital care you need 7 days a week by 2020.’

 

Urgent NHS care is already available 24/7, but this commits the NHS to providing the routine care you need 7 days a week, in general practice and in hospital. Many GPs already offer routine and emergency appointments on Saturday mornings. The government has promised you will able to see a GP 12 hours a day, every day, 8am – 8pm, by 2020. We need at least 5000 more full time GPs just to keep the current service safe.

 

Some hospitals do routine work on Saturdays but nearly all routine hospital work is done on Monday to Friday. To extend this to a ‘truly 7 day service’ would require an increase in routine work of around 40%, to be done on Saturdays and Sundays

 

This extra work for GP practices and hospital staff over weekends can either be done by training and employing more staff. Or by spreading the existing staff more thinly.

 

Extending services over 7 days without employing extra staff could make the NHS less safe, not more.

 

The junior doctors’ contract offer is ‘cost neutral’ – no more money is available to employ more staff. So existing staff would have to be spread more thinly. Wards would be less well staffed during the week to move more staff to the weekends. This could make the NHS less safe for patients, not more.

 

The government’s manifesto also promised: ‘We will continue to ensure we have enough doctors, nurses and other staff to meet patients’ needs.’ However, the government halted and then tried to prevent the publication of vital work by NICE to determine safe staffing levels, developed after the Mid Staffs scandal to try to prevent future scandals where there are dangerously low levels of staff. This withholding of crucial evidence is seriously at odds with the government’s manifesto commitment to make the NHS the safest health service in the world. The only plausible explanation is that they do not wish to commit the money to funding the safe staffing levels needed.

 

Tax payers should be asked if they wish to pay more into the NHS to fund safe staffing.

 

The NHS currently has dangerously low levels of staff and large numbers of vacancies. A recent BBC Freedom of Information request shows that on 1 December 2015, the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had more than 23,443 nursing vacancies – equivalent to 9% of the workforce. For doctors, the number of vacancies was 4,669. In England and Wales, there were 1,265 vacancies for registered nurses in emergency departments – about 11% of the total. For consultants in emergency medicine there were 243 vacancies – again 11% of the total. Paediatric consultants – specialists in the care of babies, children and young people – were also hard to recruit, with 221 vacancies – about 7% of the total.

 

For junior doctors, there are already dangerous gaps in the rotas for many specialties every day of the week because there simply aren’t enough doctors to fill them. Putting a cap on locum fees has made the rota gaps worse. Extending cover safely over the weekends can only happen with more doctors, not by spreading the already exhausted workforce more thinly.

 

Doctors are expensive to train and employ, so this is also a question for us. How much are we prepared to put into the NHS to staff it safely?

 

The current funding cannot cope with the current demand on services as we live longer, and survive more illnesses. We do not have enough doctors, nurses and staff in most other professions at present.

 

Staff in hospitals which have large numbers of vacancies already work well above their contracted hours, often for no pay. Some are bullied into doing so. There needs to be a robust and proven mechanism of preventing overwork and exploitation because tired NHS staff make mistakes that can harm and kill patients. The new junior doctors’ contract does not have this.

 

The number of deaths in hospitals does vary during the week but we do not yet know why. It may well be that introducing safe staffing levels would reduce some of the avoidable deaths. However, this can only be safely done by employing more staff, not by spreading the existing staff more thinly.

 

A leaked report from the Department of Health has suggested that equal NHS cover over 7 days would need 7,000 more nursing and ancillary staff, and an extra 1600 consultants and 2400 junior doctors, and would cost £900 million. And yet the junior doctors contract is cost neutral.

 

Shift systems harm both mental and physical health, and where they’re unavoidable, such as in the NHS, a great deal of care and expertise needs to be put into designing them to ensure minimal sleep disruption, adequate recovery time and a fair work life balance. Junior doctors have the additional requirement that they are doctors in training, and so need protected training time alongside providing a safe service.

 

In attempting to increase cover at weekends without increasing overall staffing levels, NHS Employers has produced sample rotas that probably aren’t safe for doctors or patients. They would appear they have been rushed through without the essential input of sleep and fatigue specialists. As Dr Michael Farquar, a Consultant in Paediatric Sleep Medicine, wrote in the Independent: ‘I note with dismay the rotas that include frequent rapid cycling between long (13 hour) day and night shifts. These ill-considered proposals run a risk of creating increasingly jet-lagged doctors, more likely to make mistakes while carrying out tasks which require high levels of attention and judgement. I urge NHS employers to reconsider, taking into view evidence collated by the Health and Safety Executive and the Royal College of Physicians.

 

The new junior doctor work rotas need to be properly trialled, to see what effect they have on attention, judgement and reaction time in a very stressed NHS frontline environment. Written evidence by the Cass Business School for the National Audit Office expresses serious concerns about stress and fatigue of junior doctors on shift work and recommends ‘a rigorous feasibility study’ of the new contract prior to implementation to ensure safety.’

 

The new junior doctors contract would appear to reward doctors in specialties with little or no on-call duty, but may penalise those in specialties with lots of emergency duty. These are precisely the doctors we need to train to improve 24/7 urgent and emergency care in the NHS and the fear is that these emergency specialties will become less attractive to doctors.

 

Doctors have a professional duty to protect patients and to speak up if they believe care is not safe. Most doctors believe the new contract for junior doctors could make the NHS less safe for patients, which is why so many consultants and GPs are supporting their junior colleagues. Because the government has announced it will be imposed, most junior doctors believe that the only option is to take industrial action. This has to be balanced against a doctor’s professional duty not to harm patients. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and many doctors have been reduced to tears having to make it.

 

My greatest concern is for the mental health of NHS staff. Many are struggling to provide a safe service in very difficult circumstances and levels or work related stress, anxiety and depression are very high. It is hard to imagine how the imposition of a contract that many doctors believe is not safe or fair will improve their morale and mental health. Rather, imposition could have a disastrous effect on morale, recruitment and retention of staff.

 

There is no urgent need for a new junior doctors’ contract, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have no plans to introduce any such changes. If it is imposed in England, industrial action could be prolonged and a whole generation of doctors may be alienated and demotivated. Many may leave the NHS entirely, at huge cost to the taxpayer and to patients. Other bright students may decide not to enter medicine at all.

 

To repeat, the new contract has not even been published in full, and the final terms and conditions are still being decided. To announce imposition of an unwritten contract so far in advance of publication has been hugely divisive. Sample rotas and pay calculators have been rushed out, found to contain significant errors and then withdrawn. Such an important contract cannot be rushed through and made up on the hoof just to meet a political deadline. It’s far more important to slow down, think clearly and get it right.

 

A far more sensible and safe option would be for both sides to call a pause both to imposition and to industrial action. This would allow independent analysis of safe staffing levels and what seven-day services can safely be delivered with the staff we currently have. It might also identify the extra funding we would need to put into the NHS to provide an extended seven day service, if indeed that is the best use of NHS money. It makes no sense for a government that wants to improve the NHS to go to war with the workforce. Particularly when the workforce is kind, committed and able to come up with many of the solutions the NHS needs if only it were included and involved. The views of patients, carers and tax payers must also be heard. Any solution has to be guided by compassion, collaboration, evidence and sustainable funding. Any final proposed contract – and the new rota patterns – have to be calmly and rigorously tested, costed and safely staffed. And it has to be agreed, not imposed. Negotiations must restart as soon as possible.

 

Declaration of Interests

 

I am an NHS doctor and patient, but not a member of the BMA or any political party. As a junior doctor, I was an active campaigner for a better, safer NHS from 1987-1992. I was invited to become a Vice President of the Patients Association for my role in uncovering the Bristol heart scandal in 1992. 24 years later we still haven’t safely reorganised child heart surgery in the UK, for all manner of complex political and professional reasons. I have campaigned for many years for the rights of NHS whistle-blowers, and although this current conflict may take a while to resolve frontline staff, patients and carers must be encouraged to speak up and express their safety concerns.

 

Any errors in this article are entirely mine, for which I apologise. Please correct them, join and improve the debate. Please do not impose.

[Sugar Ape]

The fucking cheek of it is if people die, Hunt will have the sheer gall to stand up in parliament and blame the doctors for It and not himself.

 

http://gu.com/p/4tj7c?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

 

The government sees the long-running wrangle as a dispute it cannot afford to lose and David Cameron and George Osborne fully back what critics see as Hunt’s uncompromising tactics, Whitehall sources told the Guardian. Ministers fear that capitulation to British Medical Association demands to change the terms and conditions Hunt will force England’s 45,000 junior doctors to work under from August might encourage other public sector trade unions.

 

“With all negotiations if you buckle at the end you send out a message to other union groups that you’ll back down,” one Whitehall source said.

 

Some ministers are privately describing the bust-up with doctors in training as “a miners’ moment – a dispute we cannot lose”, in a reference to Margaret Thatcher’s struggle with the National Union of Mineworkers in 1984-85. “That phrase is being heard inside government. Ministers see the junior doctors’ dispute in that light. They say that there’s no going back,” said a second Whitehall senior source familiar with the ministers’ thinking.

[VladimirIlyich]

They dont give a fuck and see this as another way of killing off the NHS and any lower class 'oiks',which includes pretty much everybody who uses the NHS. Its simply another step in their class war but the irony is that a lot of the people they are trying to use to do it,Junior Doctors,feature a hell of a lot of middle class people and Tory voters.

If anybody thinks a PM who uses his own dead son as an emotional bulletpoint gives a shit about them and their children forget it.

[Dr Nowt]

He keeps trying to make it about pay, instead of what it actually is; running an unsafe and understaffed NHS.

This really can't be emphasised enough to all the fuckwits parroting his ugly smear against people holding the NHS together, for all our benefit.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

Heidi Alexander twatting James Hunt.

 

https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/videos/1187854097891993/

 

That is some fucking speech, Hunt squirming like the lying cunt he is. 

[Stickman]

You tell the smarmy faced cunt Dennis...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWUYRxSE3Yk

[Hades]

 

 

They dont give a fuck and see this as another way of killing off the NHS and any lower class 'oiks',which includes pretty much everybody who uses the NHS. Its simply another step in their class war but the irony is that a lot of the people they are trying to use to do it,Junior Doctors,feature a hell of a lot of middle class people and Tory voters.

If anybody thinks a PM who uses his own dead son as an emotional bulletpoint gives a shit about them and their children forget it.

Spot on. All symptomatic of being so wickedly greedy you sold your soul to the devil and thought he wouldn't come to collect. Labour have a lot to answer for. As for Tories, mount their heads on spikes.

[Anubis]

Was listening to 5 Live this morning, and they'd invited some beaut from right wing think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, who was insisting on how the dispute was about pay and how the BMA were representing their members badly. I guess Hunt's spin doctor has been looking for allies

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Heidi Alexander twatting James Hunt.

 

https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/videos/1187854097891993/

er... Jeremy, obvs.

[Carvalho Diablo]

Heidi Alexander twatting James Hunt.

 

https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/videos/1187854097891993/

 

Fantastic.

[Teflon Don]

Heidi Alexander twatting James Hunt.

 

https://www.facebook.com/labourhealthteam/videos/1187854097891993/

 

James Hunt would be able to organise the NHS better, despite the obvious inconvenience of having been dead for over 20 years.