Yesterday I did not cross a picket line. I don’t yet know the figures for how many junior doctors did choose to work, aside from those who were unable to strike, but I would not blame anyone who chose to. I almost did. I woke up at 5am and my heart was racing with moral […]
Richard Smith: The deeper causes of the doctors’ strike—a thought experiment
I’m on my way to walk among bluebells, but my mind is on junior doctors engaging in a total strike, not providing even emergency care, for the first time in the 68 year history of the NHS. How did it come to this? I feel that as “a sort of Doctor” for 40 years and […]
Michelle Sinclair on the GP forward view
It’s not about the money sings Jesse J. Well yes, actually, it is. The release this week of the General Practice Forward View sounds good, doesn’t it? £2.4bn recurrent investment in general practice, £500m sustainability and transformation package to include a practice resilience programme, redesigning of services and support for collaborative work, a reduction in […]
Taryn Youngstein: “No doctor wants to strike”
Ethical dilemmas are the essences of medicine. As doctors, we frequently have to act in our patient’s best interests; when they are confused, demented, or suicidal for example. We have to act fast, and make decisions they can’t, for their own good. At medical school great lengths are taken to prepare us for these situations […]
Richard Smith: The NHS is a fiction, but what’s the story?
Ask somebody “What is the NHS?” and they are likely to answer to “The people who work in it, the buildings they work in, and the tools they use to do their work.” But it clearly isn’t that. The people who work in the NHS come and go, and none were working in the NHS […]
Elizabeth Wortley: Should I strike?
I am in a moral quandary, I am in a personal quandary, and I am in a professional quandary. I cannot answer the question “Should I strike?” As a doctor, I’m very used to questioning, reviewing evidence, and coming to a conclusion. One of my favourite topics for discussion is bias and avoiding it every day. […]
Alice Gerth: Taking sides in the junior doctors’ strike
As a full walk out is planned for this week, juniors need to ensure that they have carefully considered which side of the picket line they will stand on. Full disclosure, I have not been participating in strike action and my reasons can be found in a previous blog post: Strike action is not the answer. […]
Junior doctors’ strike 26 – 27 April 2016: Live blog
This week, junior doctors in England will be undertaking a full withdrawal of labour between the hours of 8am and 5pm on Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 April, as the ongoing industrial dispute between the BMA and the government shows no sign of ending peacefully. This latest action marks an escalation from previous strikes this year as […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—25 April 2016
NEJM 21 April 2016 Vol 374 Aliskiren in Cardioland 1521 What does the R in the RAA pathway stand for? I used to pose this question in lectures several times a year, believing all that I had been told about the importance of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone pathway in heart failure. I’d explain that we had drugs […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A contract or a contra-act?
So, the junior hospital doctors’ “contract” has been published, and the secretary of state for health, described in BMA documents as “SoSH”, which is also an obsolete word meaning a dull, heavy sound or a thud, has called it a “draft final version”—a contradiction in terms. The word “draft” comes from an Indo-European root meaning […]