The medical profession is split over proposals to overhaul pay and conditions for hospital consultants, with junior doctors officially rejecting the new contract as a “charter for management abuse.”
The BMA's Junior Doctors Committee, which represents doctors up to specialist registrar grade, has advised all specialist registrars and consultants to vote “no” in a referendum due in mid to late September, once the BMA has completed a UK-wide roadshow to garner support for the deal.
Dr Trevor Pickersgill, the chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, claimed last week that redefining the working day, excessive management control, and lack of recognition for part timers will prompt newly qualified consultants to leave the BMA “hand over fist” or emigrate.
“I have not met a single junior doctor who will vote in favour of this contract, which we believe will be a charter for management abuse, is discriminatory against part timers, and will allow trusts to force new consultants to work unsocial hours,” said Dr Pickersgill, who is a specialist registrar in neurology at University Hospital Wales in Cardiff.
Under the contract, from April 2003 consultants will be expected to work 10 groups of four-hour sessions a week, routinely between 8 am and 10 pm Monday to Friday and 9 am to 1 pm at weekends. Dr Pickersgill claims there is a conflict of interest between the 25000 consultant members of the BMA and the trainee consultant members—believed to be around 9000—who are to be balloted.
“Being forced to do lists or clinics on a Sunday morning on normal plain time rates is just not on,” he said. “The negotiators and many of the consultant colleagues may have to work with this for another five or 10 years, whereas I've got another 30 years to work and I won't have a choice of staying on the old contracts, which they will.”
But Dr Peter Hawker, chairman of the Central Consultants and Specialists Committee, was still hopeful of a positive outcome to the ballot, although he acknowledged that even some senior consultants were concerned about parts of it.
“I don't know what the outcome will be, but I hope those balloted will listen to both sides of the argument and be convinced by those of us working on the contract.”
He argued that most consultants already work unsocial hours, but this is not written down in their agreements, nor is it properly resourced. He said that anyone threatening to leave the BMA would find it hard to match the services it offered. And junior doctors' complaints that they would inherit a contract from existing consultants which the juniors did not like held no sway:
“On that basis, the Junior Doctors Committee couldn't negotiate anything without going to the medical students. That is no way to run an organisation.”