United Change & Junior Doctors’ Contracts
The Junior Doctors Compulsory Contract imposed by Jeremy Hunt clarifies the disengagement and loss of touch the Tory Party has with the electorate and public sector workers. What should have been assessed and extended to the junior doctors, is a package similar to that of one below.
Career Stability during Weekends
Junior Doctors’ are striking because the forced element of having to work overtime on weekends is making them more stressed and less remunerated. Wouldn’t it be better to tackle to root of this problem? There are qualified doctors & consultants who could, for a small national incentive take under their wings a group of junior doctors, for instance during weekends — and offer them performance related bonuses.
This would solve an ongoing problem two-fold. It would ‘lure’ top fully qualified doctors and consultants back into working ‘target-related’ extra hours and provide their ‘teams’ with fully accredited bonuses. It is the lack of supervision for these higher-level ‘overseers’, which stresses and strains junior doctors.
This would act as an ‘incentive’ to junior doctors during weekends…if they work these unsocial hours, they will be repaid for good performance and also not have to worry about being unsupervised.
It also injects back into the NHS system the lost value of top consultants and doctors during the weekend period.
So it tackles the problem two-fold. It brings into the cycle more top consultants, doctors and junior doctors during weekends and creates cross-efficiency in terms of bringing down waiting lists, performance of hospitals at weekends and general frustration all-round during the weekend period for the medical services.
Beds set aside for overworked doctors
This is a ‘blanket’ statement. It should not just cover junior doctors. It should cover ALL personnel who feel stressed, overworked and fatigued by their work…beds in hosiptals, in special sectioned-off areas, should be allocated for the use of junior doctors, doctors and SAS doctors when they feel these strains.
This should be a relatively easy measure to implement, as the resources are there. It comes down to the question ‘Who looks after the doctor, whilst they are looking after you?’ I’m sure many junior doctors would see these as an optimistic and revitalising procedure for their own well-being.
The beds should be monitored to help the more fatigued doctors. It may prove a make-or-break principle as this tool could allow them to keep their current rate of work up.
Teams of Junior Doctors for individual patients
Let’s face it. We all know as NHS patients we are getting passed around from junior doctor to junior and if we are lucky to doctor. Why not create specialised teams of junior doctors determinant on their specialised fields already? It would save having to pass the patient around ‘deceptively’…it would be above-board and the patient would know that they have a ‘team’ on hand for their needs.
Broken down this would, for example, create a team of three junior doctors for a patient coming into surgery. If they come in during the weekend, they will be told who their current weekend junior doctor would be, who their weekday junior doctor would be and who their back-up junior doctor would be. They would also benefit from the expertise of junior doctors who wanted to specialize in mental health, if the patient has mental health themselves. This team would be headed by a specialist consultant, in all cases. This tool of ‘transparency’, would alleviate patients fears and regain trust in failing NHS. It would also spread and minimise the risk of one junior doctor making a mistake.
Here are just three easy ways in which Jeremy Hunt could have done better.
Written by Vinny Munbodh
Founder of United Change
