Surgical Specialist Registrar describes Hunt’s imposed contract as, “seriously harming the doctor-patient relationship.”

Arthur Dalton speaks out on the contract, “Jeremy Hunt is manipulating scant medical research and scare-mongering to drive through ill-thought-out NHS reform with ‘the Hunt effect’, that clinicians across the board in the NHS reject.”

Jeremy Hunt’s contract proposal is presumably in no way appealing to doctors of any specialism. Offering an 11% pay rise but lengthening unsociable hours has caused uproar. He has forced many junior doctors to take action to the point of striking in utter disbelief of the minister’s false claims that “the contract won’t financially harm junior doctors”.

‘Protected Salaries’

 According to Mr. Hunt’s letter, just 1% of NHS junior doctors would fail to benefit from his proposed plans; a claim strenuously denied by the British Medical Association and junior doctors alike. He claims he has advocated a basic pay rise to see a new doctor’s salary rise from £22636 to £25500.

Junior doctors decided to take industrial action during December- a time of extra winter pressures for medics, however many doctors claim to have had their shifts covered in support of the strikes by Consultants. Even the nurses support the strike action.

In an interview, Arthur Dalton, specialist registrar at James Cook University Hospital, conveyed that his opinion was far from accepting of this contract. After writing a letter to his local MP, it is clear he is disgusted with Hunt imposing this contract on him. One of his main arguments is his issue with “The weekend effect” which Hunt claims: “You are 15% more likely to die if admitted on a weekend”.

 “Jeremy Hunt has failed to mention that this figure reflects that there are no elective operations on weekends and that there are predominantly emergency admissions (the patients are sicker and more likely to die than patients on other days of the week, who include non-emergency patients)”, says Arthur Dalton, in his letter to his local MP. “It is despicable for Hunt to cause a divide in the medical profession with misleading research and to push an ill thought-out agenda to undermine public confidence in doctors.”

With regards to what he wants to achieve from the strikes Arthur explained, “I want to make it clear that the Conservatives cannot boss us around and their promises to listen to doctors have been broken as they have been ignoring all doctors who have been saying the contract is a bad idea. They are repeatedly undermining the medical profession as a whole.”

The demands within the contract include a change to what is seen as ‘unsociable hours’. Jeremy Hunt said “Doctors need to get real about seven day services”, which triggered attacks from doctors claiming they work with empathy in attending to the needs of their patients regardless of private life.

The most recent situation with regards to the contract according to the British Medical Association is that after months of dispute and negotiation along with strikes, the contract was imposed upon all junior doctors as of August 2016. The BMA continues to reject the contract and claims it risks patient safety by saying,

The removal of safeguards on hours risks exposing patients to doctors working dangerously long hours. Unsafe working practices risk patients’ lives.

 The BMA have also complained that previously the contract is arrived by negotiation and that there should have been more importance placed on the negotiation process to ensure a safe and fair contract for junior doctors. The BMA states they will,

“robustly resist an imposition of a contract that is unsafe for patients, and unsafe and unfair for doctors”.

It is evident that despite the contract being confirmed the situation is still rather fluid due to the widespread active refutation by doctors and the BMA to the contract, however now the junior doctors in England work a Saturday as a normal working day…