doctors on strike

Great, so it is red line that they need not be concerned with.

Great, so it is red line that they need not be concerned with.

Yes, it’s difficult to see why they have a problem with trusting Hunt.

Incidentally my missus is a “less than full-time” junior doctor – a decision we took so that our kids will at least vaguely recognise her.

She’s working today, Saturday and Sunday, 9am till 10pm. She was working Wednesday and Thursday, 8:30 till 5.

So that’s 56 rota’d hours this week, not including the evenings she spent working on her training and e-portfolio, or the all-day course she went to on Tuesday, her day off.

Can you see why they are worried about being made to work longer hours?

Interesting way of accepting you were wrong.

Interesting way of accepting you were wrong.

Not at all – just responding in kind to the favoured STW tactic of making a smart arse point that doesn’t address the issue.

She’s working today, Saturday and Sunday, 9am till 10pm. She was working Wednesday and Thursday, 8:30 till 5.

I can’t see how that is safe. I couldn’t guarantee that my last patient of the day got the quality of care that the first person did if I was working those hours.

And to think that is classed as part time.

She’s working today, Saturday and Sunday, 9am till 10pm. She was working Wednesday and Thursday, 8:30 till 5.
I can’t see how that is safe. I couldn’t guarantee that my last patient of the day got the quality of care that the first person did if I was working those hours.

And to think that is classed as part time.

That sucks for part time.

My ‘Full Time’ week this week. Monday/Tues 8am till 8.30pm Wed/Thurs 8am till 5pm Fri/Sat/Sun 8pm till 8.30am – a cool 80 hours. In fact Ive already worked 43 hours this week before I start 3 night shifts. I really dont want to work any longer hours – I dont know how it would be possible!

When I sliced my hand up, the doctor who saw me was at the wrong end of an 11 hour shift, at 3am. When he went to do the ring block on my finger, he had a wobbly moment and stuck the needle right through my finger and into the work surface 😆 It did wake him up… Poor bugger was horrified at the lapse, but it’s not like he created the situation. It’s just mad that we consider this normal tbh.

Hunt’s comments suggest he’s going to reduce the maximum number of hours, but he doesn’t say how he’s going to staff that change.

As a wee aside; the fact checker page linked earlier states that the new offer sets maximum working hours at 72, but also specifies that overtime rates kick in at 87. So I was wondering… If the limit is 72, why is there anything in there for things that happen at 87? If it’s correct (and I don’t know), then you’d have to conclude that the 72 hour limit is no such thing really.

It’s just mad that we consider this normal tbh.

+1

Not at all – just responding in kind to the favoured STW tactic of making a smart arse point that doesn’t address the issue.

Eh…what ..you said they needed to allow the creation of a 7 day NHS everyone pointed out that the NHS is 7 days per week – even Hunt accepts this point

There is nothing smart here its just you being dumb.

Eh…what ..you said they needed to allow the creation of a 7 day NHS everyone pointed out that the NHS is 7 days per week – even Hunt accepts this point

I think he was talking about me. In which case I just didn’t understand what he was trying to argue.

Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt couldn’t be bothered to turn up to discuss the doctors’ strikes.
I suppose that’s better than last time when he just walked out in the middle of the debate.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/jeremy-hunt-didnt-turn-up-for-a-commons-statement-on-the-doc

Eh…what ..you said they needed to allow the creation of a 7 day NHS everyone pointed out that the NHS is 7 days per week – even Hunt accepts this point

In the context of the dispute it is pretty clear in broad terms what is meant by a seven day NHS as used in Hunt’s letter and it is quite clear if you read the paper I linked to. I appreciate context is not one of your stronger suits.

Deck chairs, titanic

Blood mess

BMJ might also do a survey on admissions on Friday where basically stuck in the bed waiting for consultant to come on a Monday.

waiting for consultant to come on a Monday.

Less than 1% of consultants choose to opt-out of weekend work:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/less-than-one-per-cent-of-nhs-consultants-use-control-loophole-to-opt-out-of-weekend-work-10436080.html

If there is a lack of consultants at weekends then it is due to a lack of numbers, not a lack of willing.

In the context of the dispute it is pretty clear in broad terms what is meant by a seven day NHS as used in Hunt’s letter and it is quite clear if you read the paper I linked to. I appreciate context is not one of your stronger suits.

and admitting you were wrong and dealing with facts is not one yours.
You can get indignant and insult me all you like but it wont change the fact you made an error and , despite the evidence, you wont admit what we can all see
Are you sure you are not Hunt? 😉

Ps I think you just tried a STW tactic of making a smart arse point that doesn’t address the issue oh the irony

The unlikeliest of allies Peter Stefanovic, a Medical Negligence Lawyer, tells it exactly like it is:

BMJ might also do a survey on admissions on Friday where basically stuck in the bed waiting for consultant to come on a Monday.

Hello!

This is woefully inaccurate. I have just returned from my hospital shift. Every patient admitted is reviewed by the consultant on call (almost always within 12 hours). My Consultant left tonight at 10pm with the cheery words ‘see you at half eight in the morning, feel free to phone me if you have any problems overnight’

This image of them on call from the golf course undermines a very hard working group of professionals! In my humble opinion. Actually working with them and all.

Oh Christ it’s the missus. Now I’m in trouble.

and admitting you were wrong and dealing with facts is not one yours.

You will see from Hunt’s letter he talks about the need to secure “a truly 7 day NHS” – to make it easy I will link it again. It is sitting there in the final two sentances of the second para.

Likewise para 3 of the Executive Summary of the other document I linked too explains the remit as

We received remits from the UK Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland
Executive to make recommendations on changed contractual arrangements for doctors
and dentists in training, including a new system of pay progression. We were also asked
by them to make observations on pay-related proposals for reforming the consultants’
contract. In both cases, our remit was linked to a desire to facilitate the delivery of
healthcare services seven days a week, in a financially sustainable way. The Scottish
Government gave us a remit to make observations on new contractual arrangements
for doctors and dentists in training only. We thank all parties for their written and oral
evidence and we hope that our report assists them in reaching a negotiated conclusion
on both contracts to support the provision of excellent patient care. We were asked to
have regard to any read-across to the similar remit given to the NHS Pay Review Body
(NHSPRB), and we have been made aware of their observations.

In this context, I really struggle to see where what I said was incorrect as I was talking in the context of the negotiating position.

You can get indignant and insult me all you like but it wont change the fact you made an error and , despite the evidence, you wont admit what we can all see

Matthew 7:3

As per other posts – the NHS runs seven days already for emergency care.

No health system in the world runs a seven day elective service.

Elective surgery frequently gets cancelled Monday to Friday in winter due to lack of beds. Running operating lists on a weekend will just mean more cancellations as there will still be no beds.

It would also need a huge increase in staff – we have one junior mon-fi which some weeks is a locum – we don’t have enough staff and they all work maximum hours. More on at weekend = we would need even more locums. The sound bite is great, the reality is seven day services are nowhere near happening.

I’ll just add in that I’m about to leave for a 10hr shift in the hospital laboratory and I’ll do the same again tomorrow. We’ve been providing a full 24/7 diagnostic lab service to my local acute and community services for nearly 20yrs.

I had elective surgery on xmas eve once. Went home xmas day. So its not just 7 day a week its also 365 days a year.

In this context, I really struggle to see where what I said was incorrect as I was talking in the context of the negotiating position.

You are the only one “struggling” to see why when you asked for a 7 day NHS you got something wrong. The answer is that there is a 7 day NHS. I am not sure how many people need to tell you this over how many pages for you to get it. Its really not that hard to work out.

Continuing to insult me wont make you right you will just look wrong and rude.

but any solution they come to must allow the creation of the 7 day NHS

That is what you said and we still have a 7 day NHS so we cannot create it.

Anyway I think we have found your red line on negotiations its somewhere around factually accurate/prevaricate endlessly 😉

why when you asked for a 7 day NHS you got something wrong.

But I didn’t ask for a 7 day NHS, I was merely paraphrasing what Jeremy Hunt wrote in his letter to the BMA with a view to looking at the lemonysam’s question/contention that this was same thing as not being willing to negotiate on the 23 issues. My conclusion, from reading the conditions, was that there was room for movement without breaching the 7 day redline and therefore they weren’t equivalent. It is therefore wrong for the BMA to say he is not willing to negotiate on the 23 conditions.

Frankly, I do not have an informed view on the relative merits of the Tories’s 7 day NHS manifesto committment and very limited interest in coming to one.

I think the point that is being failed to be adequately addressed is that this whole dispute is NOTHING TO DO WITH CREATING A SEVEN DAY SERVICE.
Evidence;
1) There already IS a seven day service.
2) There is no actual evidenced NEED for the services that aren’t currently available at the weekend; only a discredited study that stated that more people die at the weekend, which actually stated ITSELF that there was no causal relationship proven.
3) If we did want to increase provision at the weekend, the staff group that ALREADY PROVIDE THE BACKBONE OF WEEKEND COVER (Hunt, 2015) are hardly the prime targets for reform.
4) Mr Hunt is not interested in making the NHS work. All available evidence would suggest that he has been appointed to **** the whole system up to such a degree that mass privatisation is the only option left. He is a hatchet man, nothing more, nothing less.

Make no mistake, this campaign of destruction and demoralisation is nothing to do with providing a more effective service. It is a concerted ideological attack on the fabric of the National Health Service. If any other ‘leader’ of an organisation had failed to engage his employees to such a degree that 98% of the staff group in question had effectively voted ‘no confidence’ in him, he’d be out on his ear. Instead the Tories are laughing all the way to their fat, (directorships of international healthcare corporation funded) piggy banks.

It is a concerted ideological attack on the fabric of the National Health Service.

Oh come on, public school educated Tories with aristocratic backgrounds, such as Jeremy Hunt, love the NHS – it represents everything that they fundamentally believe in.

If any other ‘leader’ of an organisation had failed to engage his employees to such a degree that 98% of the staff group in question had effectively voted ‘no confidence’ in him, he’d be out on his ear.

Gove? You watch Hunt will **** it all up then piss off elsewhere to be replaced by someone who talks a much nicer game but carries on with all the same shit.

Bring back Liam Fox and Atlantic Bridge !

Senior Tories’ links with Republican NHS-bashers revealed

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, and Michael Gove, shadow children’s secretary, are all on the advisory council of Atlantic Bridge, a conservative, transatlantic organisation aimed at promoting the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States.

The group is chaired by Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, and has Baroness Thatcher as its patron.

Also on the advisory council are a number of leading US critics of President Barack Obama’s plans for health care reform, which opponents have likened to the NHS. [/b]

But ultrasound and xray? Centralising gets the hardware and expertise where it’s needed and where we get the most use out of it, doesn’t make any sense to put expensive kit in GPs surgeries if it doesn’t get used enough.

Righto, to clear up this one. There are any number of AQP (any qualified providers) offering community based direct access ultrasound that are based in GP surgeries, however there are very few offering those services for pregnancy (or cancer for that matter) as the CCG don’t (generally) want them to. The two O’s (oncology and Obs) have their own pathways that are well established, little to be gained by having the scans for those in different places than the specialists generally are.

The Ultrasound Kit that is used is portable (so not fixed) in the surgery, and AQP services generally go from practice to practice and see 20-25 pts a day for most non-obstetric scans.

The problem is not that it doesn’t get used enough, it’s that once GPs realise that they can have access to NOUS pretty much weekly, it becomes a diagnostic tool, rather than a PITA (sending pts to a hospital miles away with a 6-8wk wait time). The problem is often that the budget for scans gets burned through too fast.

The “7-day NHS” thing is a whopper of a red herring – ignoring both the reality of NHS acute care, and the simple fact that services will not be improved by spreading existing resources ever more thinly.

Hunt is a disgrace. Full stop. Whatever the political tendencies of an incumbent Government, no Secretary of State should be dispensing such blatant misinformation and disingenuous spin.

no Secretary of State should be dispensing such blatant misinformation and disingenuous spin.

You think their case would be stronger if they told the truth?

You think their case would be stronger if they told the truth?

I’ve just finished a long day at the NHS coalface, Ernie – I am not in a forgiving mood. 8)

I think Nye was spot on there, specially with reference to electoral success.

Make no mistake, this campaign of destruction and demoralisation is nothing to do with providing a more effective service. It is a concerted ideological attack on the fabric of the National Health Service. If any other ‘leader’ of an organisation had failed to engage his employees to such a degree that 98% of the staff group in question had effectively voted ‘no confidence’ in him, he’d be out on his ear. Instead the Tories are laughing all the way to their fat, (directorships of international healthcare corporation funded) piggy banks.

Are you sure you know what you’re talking about? Because it seems to me you are talking about the police, the Home Secretary, and her massive financial interest in G4S.

😉

Jeremy Hunt – Does He Actually Know What the Junior Contract Row Is About? (HuffPo)

Tories … such as Jeremy Hunt, love the NHS – it represents everything that they fundamentally believe in.

Indeed they do, that’s why they committed to spend an extra £8bn a year vs the Labour pledge of just £2bn.

That’ll be why they’re trying to privatise it, then – out of love.

it represents everything that they fundamentally believe in.

That’ll be ……..from each according to their ability, to each according according to their need.

The Tories don’t stop banging on about that, eh jambalaya?

I see Jeremy is still playing games.

He has now agreed to talks with the BMA at ACAS, so he can spin himself as the hero trying to avoid the “serious harm to patients” caused by a strike*.

But he is going into those talks saying he will still impose the contract whether they like it or not.

So the doctors are still striking and he can portray them as unreasonable.

.

* (statistically deaths go down during junior doctor strikes, but let’s not let that get in the way of spin eh Jeremy)