Portsmouth, Hampshire Tuesday 12th January 2016 Junior doctors in Portsmouth today went on strike over a row with the government about pay and working conditions. They demonstrated outside Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham over a contract dispute with the government. About 40 operations at QA have had to be cancelled because of the strike. Doctor Mohana Rutnapalan, 28, said the new contract being proposed by health minister Jeremy Hunt would lead to an unsafe NHS. Credit: uknip/Alamy Live News
Portsmouth, Hampshire Tuesday 12th January 2016 Junior doctors in Portsmouth today went on strike over a row with the government about pay and working conditions. They demonstrated outside Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham over a contract dispute with the government. About 40 operations at QA have had to be cancelled because of the strike. Doctor Mohana Rutnapalan, 28, said the new contract being proposed by health minister Jeremy Hunt would lead to an unsafe NHS. Dr Rutnapalan said: ‘The contract means that junior doctors are being asked to work more hours than we think are safe. ‘If a doctor is tired, they’re more likely to make mistakes and I don’t want to see that happening.’ Dr Rutnapalan said the contract would force doctors to work more days in a row with more hours. She said safeguards preventing doctors working seven 12-hour shifts in a row would be removed. Another doctor, Emma Patterson, 28 said said she would leave the NHS if the new contract was enforced. Dr Patterson said: ‘Even with safeguards in place we frequently work longer hours than we should be because it’s in the patients’ interest. ‘But to be told that we have lost a sense of vocation in our career and to have those safeguards taken away from us and a new contract imposed is just unfair and unsafe.’ The hospital’s human resources director Tim Powell said the cancelled operations were only a small percentage of the 300 undertaken on an average day at the hospital. ©UKNIP
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