Shropshire Star

Star comment: Doctor is barking up the wrong tree

The wit with which local medic Dr Laura Land evidently wipes the floor with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is quite brilliant.

Published

Her outraged Facebook post seems to undermine Mr Hunt's recent remarks regarding weekend working.

Dr Land takes him to task and points out some of the weaknesses of his argument and also his own position.

She leaves the public at large in no doubt that the NHS is staffed by well-meaning, hard-working and dutiful public servants who try to make a difference.

The only trouble is she and Mr Hunt are talking about quite different things. Clever and devastating though her remarks are, she may be barking up the wrong tree.

Dr Land goes to great lengths to point out that the NHS workforce ploughs a lonely furrow at weekends, working long hours and providing devoted service. She symbolises the best of a caring service and were Britain filled with more people like her, it would undoubtedly be a better place.

But Mr Hunt has no argument with people like Dr Land. Nor does he expect her and her colleagues to work longer hours, particularly of the unsociable variety. Mr Hunt's beef is not with nurses, midwives, paramedics and ambulance drivers, it's with consultants.

In 2003, the then-Government gave consultants the right to opt out of working weekends and Mr Hunt believes that is wrong. He sees no logic to a system where some of the most important cogs are removed for two days per week. And he is right.

Illness is not a Monday-to-Friday affliction. People do not choose to get ill when consultants are in work. And consultants ought to be on hand to provide the high level care that is required.

As a nation, we have long accepted the practice of the six-day week. And the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 has enshrined the principle of seven-day work for many for more than 30 years.

New laws are relaxing extant restrictions and soon the nation will run for seven days a week, with weekend lieu days taken between Monday and Friday. Consultants were given a free pass out of a system that governs others. That, Mr Hunt would contend, is unfair; not least to hard-working people like Dr Land.

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