102 CONSULTANTS have written an open letter to Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of NHS England, in support of the junior doctors. It reads:
‘OPEN letter from 102 consultants to Sir Bruce Keogh.
Dear Sir Bruce, Re: Proposed junior doctors contract changes.
We, the under-signed, wish to express our total support for our junior doctors in the on-going dispute between them and the Government. We are profoundly disappointed at the intransigence shown by the Secretary of State for Health and the public misinformation which he has spread about the negotiations and his persistent partisan misinterpretation of the available scientific data.
We value our junior colleagues’ selfless dedication, their professionalism and the enormous contribution they make daily providing excellent care for our patients and sustaining the National Health Service. We strongly support our junior doctors and agree with them that the proposed contract changes are neither safe nor fair. We were looking to you to offer your support to the junior doctors also. It was disappointing to hear that you felt that, in the possible event of case of a terrorist attack, junior doctors might lack sufficient commitment to medicine and to humanity that they might not immediately come in to their respective hospitals during industrial action to help cope with the emergency. The subsequent release of your correspondence leading up to that press statement damaged your standing and credibility on commenting on this dispute in an impartial fashion.
Equally unfair were the threats made by Mr Jeremy Hunt that in the case of deaths of patients during the strikes, he would make every effort to have junior doctors struck off the Medical Register. This aggressive and bullying approach should have been condemned. It is disappointing that you allowed Mr Hunt’s comments to pass without defending the medical profession.
The Government has set out to impose a new junior doctor contract which will have wide ranging and negative impact on the training, the retention of highly skilled doctors and the morale of the whole NHS workforce. It will affect the pay and working conditions of the junior doctors, and ultimately will impact on the safe provision of healthcare. The new contract will be unfair to trainees who wish to balance time spent raising families with their training, who wish to undertake original medical research or who choose to increase their expertise by training in more than one specialty. In an interview in January 2011, on Leaders in Medicine, you went to great lengths to explain that the weekend was for you and your family only and not for work. Indeed, the Government’s own equality and diversity impact assessment clearly indicates that it will discriminate against female colleagues and regards this as justifiable collateral damage in the pursuit of other ends. The proposed contract will remove the statutory safeguards which currently protect trainees from working unsafe and unfair hours in a given week, leading to an overworked, overstretched, and exhausted workforce, which will still be relied upon twenty-four hours a day to provide safe healthcare. Thus, the new contract is a threat to patient safety and goes against the very principles that you and the NHS promote.
The Government has repeatedly linked its proposed new contract to the provision of a “7-day service”. You know that our junior doctors already provide round the clock care every day of the year. The so-called “weekend effect” is based on persistent misrepresentation of the available data. Similar concerns have been expressed by consultants about the use of inaccurate and unreliable data of the stroke services to undermine clinicians and the services.
The proposed new contract will have a serious adverse effect on the recruitment, retention and morale of the junior doctors who currently provide the “7-day service” that the Government keeps promising for the future. You will be aware of the problems of recruitment and retention faced by smaller specialties, such as Paediatrics, and particularly Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, and by the acute specialties, including A&E, Acute Medicine & ICU. In these specialties, because of the stresses involved, and not helped by the Government’s expectations and lack of commitment to improve the morale, more than 10% of the consultant body has already left the NHS in the last two years to move abroad to better working environments. There are more consultants likely to move abroad in the near future too. The NHS should be aiming to replace these consultants by trainees either currently in training or from among new recruits, the very people who are being discouraged by the new contract changes.
In a recent article (The Observer, April 9th) you correctly state that junior doctors feel “disengaged and powerless”. You did not clarify that they have been brought to this state by a Government which refuses to negotiate with them and is imposing a contract which is neither safe nor fair. Junior doctors, represented by the BMA, have the backing of the Royal Colleges and of Patient Associations when they call for the Secretary of State to de-escalate the situation, withdraw from imposition of the proposed new contract and enter into meaningful negotiations. In failing to call upon the Secretary of State to stand down from imposition and to negotiate, you are ignoring the opinions of the Colleges and the vast majority of the medical profession.
Responsibility for the on-going dispute rests not with junior doctors but with the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State for Health. We are immensely appreciative of the dedication and excellent service provided by the junior doctors in the hospitals throughout the country. We stand by them and fully support their reluctant decision to undertake industrial action. On April 26th and 27th, emergency services will be provided by the most senior doctors in support of their junior colleagues and we will take every possible step to ensure that there is no disruption to the safe care of the patients. We support all genuine efforts to achieve a sustainable agreement on the contract issue in order to maintain a safe NHS and produce a contract that will be fair for the junior doctors and safe for the patients. We urge you to support the junior doctors also.
Yours sincerely
The undersigned consultants have individually confirmed their support through this letter:
cc: Mr Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London, SW1A
1. Shakeel Qureshi FRCPCH Professor of Paediatric Cardiology
2. Kevin O’Kane FRCP Consultant in Acute Internal Medicine
3. Ben Fitzwilliams FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
4. Amit Pawa FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
5. Katy Nicholson FRCPCH Consultant Paediatric Oncologist
6. Louise Izatt FRCP Consultant in Cancer Genetics
7. Jon Lillie MRCPCH Paediatric Intensive Care Consultant
8. Sarah Good FRCPS Consultant Orthodontist
9. David Wrench FRCPath Consultant Haematologist
10. Dan Smith FRCR Consultant Clinical Oncologist
11. Finbarr Martin FRCP Professor of Elderly Care Medicine
12. Adil Ajuied FRCS Consultant Specialist Knee Surgeon
13. Leon Monzon FRCR Interventional Radiology Consultant
14. Mary Wain FRCP Consultant Dermatologist
15. Imran Mohammad FRCA Consultant in Anaesthesia
16. Tarun Sabharwal FRCA Consultant in Anaesthesia
17. Dhruba Dasgupta FRCR Consultant in Nuclear Medicine/ Radiology
18. Robert Sarkany FRCP Consultant Dermatologist
19. Robert Carr FRCPath Consultant Haematologist
20. Claire Hopkins (FRCS-ORLHNS) Consultant ENT Surgeon
21. Anna Fourie FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
22. Shehla Mohammed FRCP Consultant Clinical Geneticist
23. Michael Marber FRCP Professor of Cardiology & Hon Consultant Cardiologist
24. Sheng Lim FRCOphthalmol Consultant Ophthalmologist
25. Rosalinde Tilley FRCA Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine
26. Duncan Wyncoll FRCA Consultant in Intensive Care
27. Nicholas Ioannou FRCA Consultant in Intensive Care, ECMO & Anaesthesia
28. Charlotte Taylor FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
29. Jake Powrie FRCP Consultant in Endocrinology
30. Michael Douek FRCS Consultant Surgeon
31. Heng Gan FRCA Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist
32. Luis Amaya FRCOphth Consultant Paediatric Ophthalmic Surgeon
33. Teresa Syszko FRCR Consultant Radiologist
34. Martin Drage FRCS Consultant Transplant & Access Surgeon
35. Zameer Shah FRCS Consultant Orthopaedic & Trauma Surgeon
36. Jo Howard FRCPath Consultant Haematologist
37. Shaheen Khan MRCP Consultant in Palliative Medicine
38. Marc George FRCS Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
39. Aisling Brown MRCP Locum Consultant in Infectious Disease & General Medicine
40. Steve Connor FRCR Neuroradiology Consultant
41. Deepti Radia FRCPath Consultant Haematologist
42. Roshan Navin MRCP Consultant in Acute Internal Medicine
43. Susan E Robinson FRCPath Consultant Haematologist
44. Eithne MacMahon FRCPath Consultant Virologist
45. Rebecca Preston FRCR Consultant Radiologist
46. Mufaddal T Moonim FRCPath Consultant Histopathologist
47. Pippa Kyle FRCOG Consultant Obstetrician
48 Amelia Hughes MRCP Consultant in Genitourinary Medicine
49. Nigel Beckett FRCP
Consultant Physician in Ageing & Health
50. Roland Walker FRCS Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeo
51. Yasmin Dean FRCA Consultant in Anaesthesia
52. Stam Kapetanakis FRCP Consultant Cardiologist
53. James Gossage FRCS Consultant Oesophagogastric & General Surgeon
54. Ali Kubba FRCOG Consultant Community Gynaecologist
55. Andy Gaya FRCP Consultant Clinical Oncologist
56. Andrea Bille FRCS Consultant in Thoracic Surgery
57. Thomas Krasemann FRCPCH Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist
58. Anthony Hulse FRCPCH Consultant Paediatric Oncologist
59. Jason Scott FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
60. Jonathan Lucas FRCS Consultant Spinal Surgeon
61. Tony Wierzbicki FRCPath Professor of Clinical Chemistry
62. Jugdeep Dhesi FRCP Consultant in Geriatric & General Medicine
63. David Daniels FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
64. Rob George FRCP Professor of Palliative Medicine & Palliative Care Consultant
65. Gareth Morgan FRCPCH Consultant in Paediatric & Adult Cardiology 66. Jamal Mortazavi FRCEM
Consultant in Emergency Medicine
67. Martin Laque FRCPCH Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine
68. Holly Gettings FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
69. Shallini Panchal FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
70. Luigi Camporata FRCP Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine
71. Jim Fleet MRCP Locum Consultant Geriatrician
72. Rupert Oliver MRCP Consultant Neurologist
73. Angela McLuckie FRCA Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine
74. Nadia Short MRCP Consultant in Acute Internal Medicine
75. Vivek Srivastava FRCP Consultant in Acute Internal Medicine
76. Koorosh Alaghband FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
77. Peter Jay FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
78. Shum Dev FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
79. Charles Thorburn FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
80. Sian Griffiths FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
81. Ajanta Kamal MRCPCH Consultant General Paediatrician
82. Sanjay Gulati FRCA Consultant Anaesthetist
83. Nizam Mamode FRCS Professor of Transplant Surgery
84. Dan Tweedie FRCS(ORL-HNS) Consultant Paediatric ENT Surgeon
85. Chris Meadows FRCA Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine
86. John Criddle FRCPCH Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine
87. Ivan Tomasi FRCS Consultant in Emergency Surgery
88. Rebekah Schiff FRCP Consultant in Elderly Care Medicine
89. Irene Carey FRCP Consultant in Palliative Medicine
90. Anthony Kaiser FRCP Consultant in Neonatal Paediatrics
91. Babu Kulasegaram FRCP Consultant in HIV & Genitourinary Medicine
92. Caroline Davies FRCA Consultant Anasethetist
93. Matthew James FRCS Plastic Hand and Aesthetic Surgeon
94. Matt Wright FRCP Consultant Cardiologist
95. Andrew Slack MRCP Consultant in Critical Care
96. Catherine Williams FDSRCPS(Glasg) Consultant Paediatric Dentist
97. Taryn Pile MRCP Consultant Physician & Nephrologist
98. Di Back FCRS (Ed) Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
99. Ali Abbasuan FRCS (T&O) Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
100. Rachel Kesse-Adu FRCPath Consultant in Clinical Haematology
101. Jane Terris FRCEM Consultant in Emergency Medicine
102. Saurabh Goyal FRCOphthalmol Consultant Ophthalmologist .’