Wollaston’s warnings about the junior doctors’ dispute will do more harm than good
![Sarah Wollaston said imposing a contract on England’s junior doctors will not reduce hospital deaths [Image: Martin Godwin for The Guardian].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/160404SarahWollaston-MartinGodwinGuardian.png)
Sarah Wollaston said imposing a contract on England’s junior doctors will not reduce hospital deaths [Image: Martin Godwin for The Guardian].
“Dear Sarah Wollaston,
“Stop saying the junior doctors’ strike will risk lives. You will discourage people from going to A+E and increase risk of harm.”
Of the two – and considering the sexist, oppressive disaster which is the new contract for junior doctors – which would you consider to be more concerned about the health of patients?
A senior Conservative MP has attacked Jeremy Hunt’s “entirely unreasonable” tactics in pursuit of an “unachievable” seven-day NHS, claiming he misrepresented evidence to win public support in his long-running dispute with junior doctors.
Revealing the depths of the Tory divide on the NHS, Dr Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Commons health select committee, dismissed Hunt’s argument that more doctors working weekends would reduce hospital fatalities.
Wollaston – whose daughter is a junior doctor, though working in Australia – was also highly critical of both junior doctors and the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union.
She attacked the decision of junior doctors to carry out a “disastrous” full strike on 26 and 27 April, during which doctors will abstain from all types of care for the first time, including A&E, maternity services and emergency surgery.
Although sympathetic to their case, Wollaston wrote: “Pressing ahead with a full walkout, however, will serve only to harden attitudes and solves nothing. Most importantly, it will be disastrous for patients. The BMA have no doubt calculated that people will blame the government more than themselves, but a strike which leaves patients without junior cover even for emergencies puts lives at risk. They cannot justify such drastic action by claiming to protect patients.”
Source: Jeremy Hunt’s tactics in junior doctors’ dispute attacked by senior Tory | Society | The Guardian
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the main thrust of the privatisation arguments have been sidelined. The contracts for junior doctors are sexist and clearly not acceptable. Hunt is not wanted by the UK voters and patients as a health minister.
However the tories need him as cannon fodder to take considerable flak for their endeavours to wreck the NHS system. whilst he takes flak Crabb remains on his honeymoon period as DWP cannon fodder. Both will be moved sideways before 2020 if they are not thrown to the wolves. both are in positions undesirable to their colleagues, and both are distractions for each other when media reports any details about tory policies.
I believe both are yes men to Cameron and osborne and both must feel like rats waiting to dessert a sinking ship. they probably now await negative media reports now that Cameron’s loss of a cool veneer has been noted by the public.
Another clueless, useless, arrogant, deceitful, tory bitch!
Doctors have an opportunity, if they exercise it. To reverse the Tory propaganda and illustrate it’s the government who are putting patients lives at risk, not medical staff. It’s like a captain, mutinying against his crew. If this ship goes down will the captain go down with it.