Having successfully averted a strike by junior doctors before Christmas, the Health Secretary arguably won the battle but not the war. It is evident that the BMA is doing all it can to stir up discord among the new recruits and this spells bad news for everyone. A junior doctor with a penchant for industrial action will go on to become even more militant as they sail through their subsequent careers.
But what exactly is driving this militant tendency? Is it really all to do with money? Well, from my own experience, I would say a resounding "yes". I can never forget the experience from my first week at Medical School in 2008. A First Aid trainer asked first year medical students off the record to give the main reason for choosing to pursue a career in medicine. To my utter shock and horror, the majority cited money as their principle motivator. Am I the only one to be horrified by that? I naively assumed that people were choosing a career in medicine principally to make a difference to people. Evidently, I was mistaken.
It is instructive to examine just how poorly paid a junior doctor really is. A basic salary of about £22,000 does sound pretty meagre on the face of it. With banded rotations in which they are expected to work the long hours of on-calls, week-ends and nights, that figure often increases to about £30,000. And the hours are very long with lots of stress and pressure having to work in sparsely staffed environments in which patient care is all too often compromised.
As far as I understand, the Health Secretary is proposing to address this by alleviating the strain on junior doctors. Given their obvious inexperience at this stage in their fledgling careers, one might expect them to be cock-a-hoop about such a suggestion. It is evident that too many have entered the profession first and foremost to earn with care coming a little while after that. As much as I have come to loathe the Machiaevellian approaches of the Tory Party, this is one area where they seem to have got things right. My advice to the junior doctors would be this: Careful what you wish for. If they go ahead with their threat to strike, they will ultimately alienate a public whose primary aim has changed very little over the years - to be cared for in their hour of need.
The junior doctors of today will soon enough become the surgeons, consultants and general practitioners of tomorrow with salaries beyond the comprehension of the many. Maybe the time has come to reappraise selection for medical school?
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