We, as Doctors (and indeed those in allied health professions) are in a difficult position as we are professionals who are answerable to a public body. We have devoted much of our lives and our freedoms at considerable expense in order to pursue a vocation that we chose to enter in the belief that we can be equipped with the skills to help individuals who are faced with ill health. We emerge from our training with large amounts of debt, and are then committed to a life of further study with further examinations and courses, all of which go towards improving our abilities as health professionals and our ability to help those patients whom we treat. We all do this not for personal financial gain, but for those people who we meet in our professional lives.

The degradation of our profession has occurred over a number of years through successive governments. In my case it has led to me choosing to leave the UK in order to take up a job in a country where Doctors are still regarded as professional people and respected for the efforts that they put in for the good of others.

In the case of the current contracts it is simply the last straw. We accepted it when the government changed training making it harder to change specialties, we accepted large cuts to our pensions, we accepted it when basic privileges such as being able to drink a coffee at work were removed. But this dramatic change to the contract, which has been swept into place with little care for the workforce who it affects or consultation with those people, all of whom are hard working people with families and mortgages is the final insult from an uncaring government who has taken advantage of a sympathetic work force for too long.

UKExpat