Junior doctors row has derailed seven-day NHS plans, says top doctor

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/24/junior-doctors-row-derailed-seven-day-nhs-plans-bruce-keogh

Sir Bruce Keogh signals unhappiness with Jeremy Hunt’s decision to impose contract and rejects justification of new terms

Junior doctors row has derailed seven-day NHS plans, says top doctor
Denis Campbell and Alan Travis
Thursday 24 March 2016 15.41 EDT

The NHS’s top doctor believes that Jeremy Hunt’s row with junior doctors has “derailed” the government’s push to turn the NHS into a seven-day service.

Prof Sir Bruce Keogh also signalled his unhappiness with the health secretary’s controversial decision to impose a new contract on the 45,000 junior doctors in England, calling it “one of the saddest days I have seen in the NHS”.

Keogh also rejected Hunt’s key justification for forcing all doctors below consultant level to accept new terms, that more of them need to work at weekends to improve the care of patients.

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He said initially “there was good clinical consensus” across the NHS and medical profession about the need for seven-day services. However, “where this became derailed was when the seven-day services was loosely linked in some way to a discussion about junior doctors.”