When I moved to Melbourne in 2014 – to gain more experience in emergency medicine – I thought I would return home, like the majority of junior doctors before me. But the more I listen to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the more I think this won’t happen.
People will differ in their views on whether £23,000 is an appropriate basic starting salary for junior doctors. I am aware that we are not the only professionals to work hard, long hours. But I am unaware of other professions that are tasked with the sort of responsibilities thrust on junior doctors. By the age of 25, I had told people that they might die or that their relatives had died. I had been part of a team that treated three young men who had been shot. I had witnessed a child die suddenly and helped, unsuccessfully, to resuscitate her. I have known that, following an accident, a 30-year-old would be quadriplegic before he did and watched as he was told. These, Mr Hunt, are regular experiences for junior doctors.
Yet, despite working conditions and a salary that is much more favourable in Australia and New Zealand, we are yet to see a mass exodus of junior doctors who are willing to stay in these countries for training. Therefore we can assume that, like me, most junior doctors consider the current contract conditions to be fair.
However, Hunt has decided in recent months to insult my profession by trying to enforce an unsafe and unfair contract on junior doctors and by indulging in falsehoods such as blaming consultants and then junior doctors for 11,000 “excess deaths” at weekends. He has also had the audacity to use rhetoric suggesting that junior doctors are the barriers to providing 24/7 NHS care. A lack of funding is the barrier to a truly 24/7 service.
Hunt’s most recent political game and ploy to grab headlines has been to offer a “last-minute 11% pay rise”, not in writing to our union (as one might expect), but to the media. In this, he fails to outline that he intends to classify Saturday as a normal working day and remove a large part of the on-call hours that are paid, quite rightly, at an increased rate. The result? Junior doctors working more antisocial hours for less money: not quite the 11% pay rise promised. It’s clearly an attempt to undermine the BMA and junior doctors’ negotiating position as he fears losing public opinion if junior doctors strike. However, in attempting to avoid a strike, Hunt, with his myopic politics, misses the crux of the issue.
Despite Australia offering nearly twice the salary for 10 fewer hours a fortnight, and much greater respect from its government, I was planning on returning to NHS England next August. That’s no longer the case and the tipping point for me has been Hunt’s constant attacks. I am not prepared to work for a government that undermines me daily. The contract he proposes to enforce demonstrates how little respect he has for my profession, which has lost all trust in him. Irretrievably. Even if a strike is avoided, junior doctors will simply leave or not come back to NHS England if this contract is imposed.
As a cabinet minister of a Conservative government, Hunt, I am sure, understands that, while the employment market of doctors is far from representative of a strictly free market, we do have options to sell our trade elsewhere and we will. The employment opportunities are many and our degrees and training are valued highly, often more so than native graduates.
Those who have families may well find a move to the southern hemisphere difficult, but Scotland and Wales have dismissed Hunt’s draconian contract, providing alternative employment opportunities closer to home. Others are seeking work outside medicine.
Junior doctors are a highly educated, skilled and motivated workforce with a multitude of transferable skills. Our opportunities for employment in private industry are many. Make no mistake, Mr Hunt, junior doctors will leave NHS England to work where they are valued and respected.
