Letters: Patients want well-paid, well-rested doctors

These letters appear in the 14th January edition of The Independent

A junior doctors' strike was held 12th January 2015 (PA)

Steve Richards is the columnist I trust most. However, his article of 12 January makes a completely false contrast between the young entrepreneurs working all days of the week at their laptops in his local coffee shops and the old-fashioned junior doctors with their expectation of five-day working.

Can we get it straight? Hospital doctors work at weekends; they also work “ordinary” weekday shifts, sequences of nights (including weekend nights) and sequences of 12-hour or more “on call” sessions – which does not mean staying in bed just awaiting a phone call, but is often non-stop tending to patients. They don’t have the entrepreneurs’ freedom of choice as to their work pattern and they work in a hugely stressful environment.

There is no more money on the table, so no expectation that there will be more trained doctors filling the current gaps.So which days of the week would Jeremy Hunt suggest get less cover to enable the weekend increase?

Junior doctors know there will simply be more pressure to work longer hours than their already heavy commitment. They will fear doing harm and they’ll even end up with a pay cut. With a low basic wage, and so much of their salary made up of out-of-hours and responsibility banding, the 11 per cent offer is just an underhand way of cutting salaries.

When I’m next in hospital, I’ll want well-paid, well-rested, non-resentful doctors with happy homes looking after me.

And I’m sorry for Steve Richards’ local entrepreneurs. If he interviewed them I’d guess they would include some desperate souls scrabbling for a living, high on anxiety and, just like the junior doctors, wishing for time with their families.

Jill Lake

Reading

As a junior doctor who was on the picket line on Tuesday (before going in for an A&E night shift) I just wanted to say a massive thank you for the unanimous support and kindness my colleagues and I received from the public.

We are striking to ensure patients are not exposed to overtired, unsafe doctors. We are striking to ensure we keep doctors in the NHS. We are striking to stand up for and protect every NHS worker and the NHS itself.

As government healthcare spending falls as a proportion of GDP, while demand continues to rise, now is the time to tell them enough is enough. We need to win this battle to save our NHS and ensure our children enjoy the privilege of free healthcare that we have all enjoyed.

Dr Jonathan Barnes

London N4

I do wonder if the raised death toll in hospitals at weekends is caused by the absence of junior doctors.

In recent years I have spent some time by my husband’s bed in various hospitals and have observed that there is a general absence of staff of all kinds on Saturdays and Sundays, accompanied by an atmosphere of relaxation, a sense that everything is briefly on hold.

Moreover, families visit in droves at weekends – has anyone thought to correlate the increased number of visitors with the deaths of patients?

I would be amazed if the Government’s efforts to lengthen the working week for doctors has any noticeable effect at all on the patients, but might well make the doctors ill.

Doraine Potts

Cheltenham

In respect of the junior doctors’ strike, there is much confusion as to the merits and safety of the deal as proposed by the Government. It is not clear if this is a good deal (so says the Government) or a bad deal (so say the doctors).

So, how is an outsider to judge? Put it like this: either the mass of highly educated striking doctors are all bad at maths and English and do not understand the terms of the deal properly, or the Government is misrepresenting the terms of the deal to the public and is offering a deal which is bad for patients and doctors alike.

I wonder which is more likely.

Joseph de Lacey

London E9

Ways to cope with climate change

Bob Ward praises the governmental pledges at Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Robin Russell-Jones calls for a carbon tax to help achieve these cuts (Letters, 12 January).

However, big enough cuts and a large enough tax will not be implemented, because the reductions in emissions that would be needed to prevent disastrous runaway climate change would require big cuts in car use, air travel and meat consumption in the West, and an end to rapid industrialisation in China, India and elsewhere. No government would dare to implement these policies, and so the pledges are meaningless.

Therefore, we have to urgently invest in technologies that will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon scrubbing) and artificially cool the planet (geoengineering). The tens of billions of pounds per year that these measures would cost could be funded by a 0.05 per cent financial transactions tax agreed between the world’s biggest economies including the UK. David Cameron needs to take a lead, or else his legacy will be global crop failures, famine and unprecedented levels of human migration.

Richard Mountford

Hildenborough, Kent

Following the recent floods some people have chosen to blame the protection of wildlife by the Environment Agency for the devastation caused by the record levels of rainfall. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is nature which could help protect our communities from such extremes of weather due to climate change.

We could reintroduce beavers into river catchments, after the ignorance of landowners who hunted and poisoned them to extinction. All we need to do then is to let the beavers do what beavers do best – dam our streams and rivers. This geo-engineering on a massive scale by this small but determined mammal would create thousands of ponds and lakes, with no cost to the taxpayer, and so hold back millions of gallons of rain water.

By investing in the reforestation of our uplands with native trees we could soak up, as in a giant sponge, the deluge of water currently pouring off the barren and desolate land.

By stopping the destruction of our peat bogs, which also act like sponges, we could once again ensure that the deluge is held back and allowed to trickle down the hillsides over weeks and months instead of minutes and hours.

As a society we must learn to live with nature and not against her.

Cllr Rob Curtis

Barry, Vale of Glamorgan

Not all that tough at the top

In Sam Bowman’s virtual reality (letter, 13 January) his super CEO doubles her annual salary to £2m after raising her firm’s value from £100bn to £101bn.

Since this £1bn rise in value has so clearly been all her own work, why is she bothering to still employ the thousands of others usually involved in a £100bn enterprise? Also there is no mention of share options and other perks, so her returns still look barely above subsistence level in today’s market.

Surely such a wonder woman would have long since decamped to another company paying £20m or more, plus extras. After all, self-interest is supposed to be what markets are all about.

Steve Edwards

Wivelsfield Green, East Sussex

Customers with no choice

You write that privatisation of water was not a good thing because as consumers we have no choice (editorial, 13 January).

Much is the same with passengers on the railway. If I want to go to London or Birmingham I have no choice but to use Virgin Trains, but they are at least a franchise which can be terminated. Nevertheless the rise in train fares since privatisation has been much worse than the rise in water charges.

Ian K Watson

Carlisle

According to the Public Accounts Committee we have all been paying too much for water in recent years because Ofwat has failed to set prices accurately.

Well, overpaying for water is nothing new. Before privatisation we were routinely ripped off by water boards and before them local councils, who took more and more of our money while investing the bare minimum in the infrastructure. At least we know that all surpluses made by the privatised industry are retained in the economy and not creamed off by quangos and government departments.

Roger Earp

Bexhill, East Sussex

Good songs, but a cultural oddity

David Bowie has left us a number of memorable songs, many of which will endure for a long time, but if he also “personified our culture” as stated in your editorial headline (12 January), then the majority of us must be be bisexual, take cocaine and wear flowery jump suits.

That is not the culture that I see around me.

Terry Lloyd

Chorleywood, Hertfordshire