Greed And Irresponsibility Has Been Revealed

Doctors ought not to go on strike. This principle is so fundamental that it should need no debate.

By striking for four days this week, junior doctors reveal their greed and irresponsibility because they’re prepared to put their own interests above those of their patients.

They claim no one will die because of their action, emergency services will be maintained and routines necessary to save people in extremis will not be affected.

Believe that if you like. After all, it’s not as if emergency services were operating flawlessly before the walkouts.

But even if ambulance response times are unaffected, operations and outpatient appointments will have to be delayed.

The entire goal of the walkouts is to impose suffering on the masses, if nobody suffered, the strike would be meaningless.

Indeed, according to NHS England, the walkout by 61,000 junior doctors will have a greater impact than any of the recent health service strikes.

The chief executive of the NHS Confederation, an organisation of health service bodies, went further, saying it would have a catastrophic impact on NHS waiting lists, with up to 350,000 appointments and operations likely to be cancelled.

In other words, the junior doctors have changed the overriding principle of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Their principle appears to have become: First do harm, then we’ll see.

By means of imposing avoidable suffering on large numbers of people, with the threat of more to come, they hope to put pressure on the Government to give them a pay rise of 35 per cent, far more than any other public sector pay claim.

The British Medical Association union is behaving more like the unions that did so much to destroy the British car industry in the 1970s than an association of professionals.

Reading the British Medical Journal, the BMA’s flagship publication, sometimes gives you the impression you’re wading through the old Soviet propaganda sheet, Pravda, so little dialogue is there in its opinion columns, so taken for granted are its Left-wing principles.

This walkout will also inevitably lower the esteem in which doctors are held by the masses, and rightly so. The reservoir of respect for the medical profession, built over decades, is derived in part from the willingness to work long hours irrespective of pay.

Both the doctors, or at least their representative organisation, and the Government have worked to erode the dignity, trust and admiration of the profession.

Surely these junior doctors knew what salary they would be on when they took the job, and I’m sure they would be handsomely rewarded as their careers progressed. You can’t be in a junior position and expect the same or near the same salary as a person with years of experience.

However, there’s no motivation for junior doctors who work long hours and have to take out loans to study, but that’s the way it’s always been and not just for junior doctors but for other professions as well.

Junior doctors are called Junior doctors for a reason, they’re not fully qualified, and unfortunately, now, they’re violating the Hippocratic Oath, directly or indirectly and that’s extremely sad indeed.

Actually, doctors don’t take the Hippocratic Oath, although they do take a variant of it.

Either way, it’s a solemn pledge of solidarity to do good and avoid evil, and non-maleficence towards patients. Not to assist suicide or abortion, and to leave surgery to surgeons. Not to harm, especially not to seduce patients and maintain confidentiality and never gossip.

Doctors should be reminded that it might not be the Hippocratic Oath, but nevertheless, it’s still an oath to never intentionally cause harm to patients, and that they should have the highest regard for human life. That they should practice medicine with integrity, humility, honesty and compassion, and they should remember that the practice of medicine is a privilege with which comes considerable responsibility and that position should never be abused. So, do they believe that a four-day strike and 250,000 procedures cancelled is living up to their oath?