On the day he imposed a morale-busting contract on junior doctors, the health secretary also announced… an urgent inquiry into the state of doctor’s morale. Beyond satire?
A leap into the future- The eight key reasons for junior doctor’s low morale
1.One of the key drivers of low doctor morale is the way that the militants have stopped them from not being able to see how right Jeremy Hunt is all the time. To have their pay capped and to work dangerous long hours all seems so sensible until the 98% of militants come along and twist things with their socialist spells. Something urgently needs to be done about this.
2.Low morale is also directly related to being public servants. Junior doctors are desperate to work for private companies who deliver poorer fragmented care and where poor people have no access to comprehensive health coverage. It makes them so sad that payday loan companies aren’t able make fortunes out of vulnerable people.
3. One of the big drivers of low doctor morale was the way that the academic communities insist upon people being careful about the conclusions drawn from uncertain research findings. More than one junior doctor has in the past had to be talked down from a ledge mumbling about “why can’t people just say what they like about uncertain research findings”.
4. When they while away the hours playing ‘throw the paper ball in the bin’ to relieve the tedium of underwork, some junior doctors have reported feeling really low about missing the bin. Longer hours for less pay would be an obvious solution for this.
5.More work for less money would also put pay to one of the most disturbing findings – the gang culture that has emerged among junior doctors in recent years, essentially out of boredom. This simply has to stop. In one hospital junior doctors were mugging patients with flick knives. When caught, one wailed “My morale is just so low due to boredom”.
6.On a related issue, junior doctors themselves feel very strongly about having too much money. Long before this recent crisis erupted demonstrations were found around the country outside hospitals. It was not uncommon to hear the chant “What do we want? To have our pay cut and hours extended? When do we want it? Whenever, we’re free most days due to underwork.”
7.Perhaps one of the key drivers of low junior doctor morale was not being given the chance to make a fatal prescription error due to overwhelming fatigue. Most junior doctors will tell you that falling asleep while resuscitating a motorcycle fatality was why they became a doctor in the first place. To have this taken away by bloody unions is a disgrace.
8. A survey of junior doctors carried out last year on the key challenges to their everyday working environment, found that top of the list was how frustrated our junior doctors were by the lack of vindictive and pathologically ambitious neoliberal poster boys to publicly and routinely denigrate them in the press.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/carl-walker/jeremy-hunt-launches-doctor-morale-inquiry-heres-sneak-preview-of-its-findings
