Doctors dispute putting children’s healthcare at risk, RCPCH warns

The ongoing dispute between Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and junior doctors over the imposition of a new contract is making it ‘increasingly difficult to sustain the provision of safe healthcare services for UK children’, according to the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

Professor Neena Modi released a statement on the junior doctors contract dispute after separate meetings with both Jeremy Hunt and the RCPCH Trainees Committee on 14 April.

She warns that the imposition of the ‘ill-conceived contract’ has derailed the aim of delivering effective seven day services and has alienated the workforce.

According to Modi, Paediatrics already has an average 12.5 per cent shortfall in trainee numbers, rising to 20 per cent in sub-specialities such as neonatal intensive care. She warns that eight trainee paediatricians in London have resigned in the last three months, which she directly attributes to the imposition of the new contract by Jeremy Hunt.

Modi says that consultants will continue to support the junior doctors who feel the new contract leaves them ‘no option but industrial action’ and is calling on the government to suspend the imposition of the new contract and return to talks with the BMA.

She has also called for greater investment to support a safe and sustainable seven day service, and implored the government to ‘work with, rather than against’ the healthcare profession to achieve the improvements that all parties seek.