A Brighton hospital doctor has written to the Health Secretary saying that the proposed new junior doctor contract will create a staffing crisis in accident and emergency (A&E) departments.
Rob Galloway, an A&E consultant at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, is one of ten senior figures listed as having signed an open letter to Mr Hunt in the Daily Mail today (Wednesday 4 November).
In total 409 A&E consultants and senior doctors have signed the letter to the Health Secretary. They include more than 20 from Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Kemp Town.
The Mail also said that Mr Hunt would offer pay rises of up to 15 per cent and extra pay for doctors working in A&E to try to head off a strike.
About 30,000 junior doctors are due to start voting tomorrow (Thursday 5 November) on whether to strike.
Dr Galloway, an adviser to the NHS Support Federation, and his colleagues wrote: “We write to you as consultants and senior doctors in emergency medicine, deeply concerned about the future of patient care in our accident and emergency departments.
“We request that you urgently give the BMA (British Medical Association) the concrete assurances they need to re-enter negotiations and remove the threat of imposition of a new contract which, as it stands, is unsafe for patients and unfair for doctors.
“Without your commitment to this, we fear greatly for the wellbeing of our patients and staff and our ability as a specialty to provide excellent emergency medical care.
“We wholeheartedly endorse the letter you received from our college president Dr Clifford Mann on (Friday) 18 September, countersigned by numerous other college presidents, which stated: ‘The proposals represent a real and immediate threat to the current stated priorities of the NHS, namely recruitment and retention of frontline staff and the provision of services across seven days.’
“The intensity of the work on A&E and the proportion of work delivered out of hours means that recruitment and retention of doctors into A&E is already a challenge.
“One third of senior trainees and consultants in A&E have already left the NHS in the last five years alone.
“As it stands we believe that the new proposed junior doctor contract, with the proposal that evenings and Saturdays up until 10pm are classed as ‘normal working hours’, will make it harder for us to recruit and retain junior doctors into A&E.
“The renegotiation must involve a recognition that these times are, in fact, anti-social hours.
“The current proposed contract would have the opposite effect of what we all want. It will damage care at the weekend.
“In addition, fewer trainees in A&E today will lead to even fewer consultants in the near future.
“The staffing crisis that this promises will mean that A&E departments will be unable to meet increasing workloads and unable to provide the high standards of care that our patients deserve.
“In real terms this threatens longer waiting times and poorer outcomes.
“A&E departments are already under enormous pressures. The current proposed contract changes may just be the tipping point to cause many A&E services in this country to collapse and some A&E departments may be forced to close.
“Junior doctors are being told that this new contract will be imposed on them.
“This heavy-handed approach is leaving them dejected, depressed and disillusioned.
“They tell us they will choose specialties which involve much less out of hours work or even leave the NHS and medical practice altogether.
“The NHS, which the public cares so much about, may no longer be able to care so well for them.
“It is entirely unreasonable to expect negotiations with the BMA to resume until you remove the threat of imposition of a new contract and we urge you to do this immediately.
“As consultants and senior A&E doctors our primary professional responsibility is the welfare of our patients.
“This is why we are so concerned about the proposed new contract.
“Our junior doctors and, most importantly, our patients deserve better.”
The 21 signatories from the Brighton trust include more than a dozen emergency medicine consultants and other A&E specialists.
They include
- Simon Albert
- Fiona Barratt
- Duncan Bootland
- Geoffrey Bryant
- Alice Byram
- Aroonkumar Chouhan
- Rowley Cottingham
- Evan Coughlan
- Aaron Cummins
- Martin Duff
- Maria Finn
- Rob Galloway
- R Ghani
- Jose Martinez-Acacio
- Malcolm Mckenzie
- Magnus Nelson
- Sarah O’Riordan
- Sophie Parker
- Andrew Rahman
- Paul Ransom
- Nikolas Sbyrakis
