The recent contract will disincentivise doctors to work in an already desperately under-resourced specialty,and patients will sufferWe’ve heard very limited about how proposed reforms to junior doctors’ contracts would affect individual areas of the NHS such as mental health services.
The huge majority of mental health problems are treated by psychiatrists and GPs. These specialties tend to attract junior doctors with rich life experience, who want to build long-term connections with patients and settle into their own family lives. They often arrive via a career change from another branch of medicine. Under the current contract, or doctors who retrain in a different specialty have their preceding NHS work and additional skills recognised by continuing to progress up the pay ladder. But under the recent proposals,anyone switching specialties would slide just back down to the bottom. Instead of making two of medicines most under-recruited specialties more attractive, the recent contract would offer a huge pay carve to the invaluable doctors who consider becoming psychiatrists or GPs more than two years after they qualify.
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Source: theguardian.com