What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

The depth of the NHS junior doctors crisis is starkly illustrated by this striking picture.

The medical students at a university in England were asked to raise their hands if they plan to leave the country after graduating because of new contracts.

More than half of the trainees indicate clearly that they already intend to abandon any possible career in a hospital here – before they have even qualified.

Medics claim that the junior doctors' hated new contracts, which have sparked widespread industrial action, will lead to longer working hours, jeopardise patient safety and cut wages.

The photograph was taken by a University of Birmingham lecturer who requested the second-year students to show their intentions.

Tonight the ­lecturer, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday People: “These are pre-clinical undergraduates not yet working in hospitals but they already realise the contract has major implications for them.

“Many of them intend to cross into Scotland or Wales, where the new ­contract is not being imposed.

“Others will go to places far afield, like Australia and New Zealand.

“Who will deliver our front-line ­services then? It’s worrying.”

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

This Wednesday, junior doctors will give only emergency care for 48 hours and a total strike looms later this month over the contracts, which were imposed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt after talks with union chiefs failed.

He claims that the new contracts will move the NHS towards a seven-days-a-week service. But junior doctors insist that there are barely enough staff at present to give five days of cover.

They claim that with no new investment or staff, patients are at risk.

Read more:Junior doctors' contract could hit single mums warns study by Hunt's own department

On paper the new Government ­contract suggests a pay rise for juniors. The ­average increase will be 13.5 per cent and the basic starting salary will go up from £22,636 to £27,000 – a 19 per cent hike.

But medics say they will lose out in real terms because the contract changes those hours considered “unsociable”.

Currently junior doctors earn extra payments if they work hours outside 7am to 7pm – but the new contract sees those hours extended to 10pm from Monday to Friday, with 7am to 5pm on Saturdays.

Doctors’ leaders claim the change in unsociable hours payments will hit those who already work the most irregular hours and make it hard to attract medics to specialities such as emergency medicine, maternity pay and paediatrics.

The big worry is that the new regime will prompt a large-scale exodus of junior doctors in England – a fear our exclusive picture of the Birmingham students will do nothing to allay.

(Image: Reuters)

Hospitals already offering extra cash to plug staffing gaps

Hospital bosses are offering medics extra money for shifts in a bid to plug big rota gaps – even before the NHS moves to a seven-day service, writes Nada Farhoud.

Begging emails are being sent to junior doctors and locums.

One hospital offered £50 an hour for “urgent” shift cover – £10 over the average rate.

A junior medic on a paediatric ward said the “insane size of rota gaps all over the country” led to misdiagnoses and under-treatment, sometimes of children.

The medic, who asked not to be named for fear of the sack, added: “Inadequate staffing is the main risk to patient safety.

"People wait hours to be seen by someone like me who is perhaps having to do extra work due to a rota gap.”

The British Medical Associa­tion’ s junior doctors committee chairman Johann Malawana said: “Hospital managers will create rotas knowing there is a gap with no staff to fill it.

“When doctors turn up they’re given no choice but to make it work, then find themselves covering the jobs of two people.

“It’s immediate blackmail and a very stressful situation that puts patients at risk. There’s no honest discussion with the public.

“People should be told the only way to have a seven-day-a-week NHS is to pay for extra staff, not squeeze existing doctors.”