Junior doctors committee annual report 2004
Priority resolutions from the 2003 Junior Doctors’ Conference
The 2003 conference made five resolutions priority issues:
- That this conference deplores the use of waivers by trusts in order to deny junior doctors their rightful pay or suitable standards of accommodation. It calls on the JDC to name and shame such trusts publicly and do all it can to ensure all junior doctors are made aware of their rights.
Update: examples of the use of waivers by trusts were being collected through publicising the issue in BMA News, Hospital Doctor, the Doctors.net website and asking members of the JDC. We are continuing to investigate the use of waivers and we will be looking to formulate a strategy for publicising guilty trusts once we have received enough tangible evidence of the use of waivers.
- That this meeting believes that medical hierarchies foster bullying and calls upon government to ensure that the proposed changes to postgraduate medical training address this issue.
Update: discussions have been had with the Chairman of the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board (PMETB), Professor Clive Morton. He agreed that there is no place for such a culture in medicine. Correspondence has been continuing with Professor Morton and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Aidan Halligan, and this issue is being considered as part of the broader issue of the modernising medical careers initiative.
- That, given the recent advice of the Advocate General to the European Court of Justice, the BMA should ask the Department of Health to instruct trusts to provide New Deal compliant sleeping accommodation for all doctors working at night.
Update: this is being considered as part of the accommodation issue as a whole. We are looking to produce a set of desired guidelines for future standards of accommodation. Once these have been agreed upon, we will take these guidelines as our basis for negotiations with the Department of Health.
- That this conference believes that junior psychiatric doctors are being placed at risk by mental health trusts which provide inadequate levels of security. This conference instructs the BMA to investigate security at psychiatric hospitals and act to improve matters urgently.
Update: the JDC have been working closely with the Royal College of Psychiatrists on this issue. We have agreed to conducting a survey of trusts, further research and a summer press campaign, and other organisations will be invited to take part. The college document ‘Safety of trainees’ will be revised with JDC help. We are meeting with the project manager of the National Institute for Mental Health in England project on developing positive practice for dealing with aggression and violence in in-patient settings.
- That this conference recognises the importance of comprehensive and safe patient handover between doctors, and hence calls upon:
(i) the JDC’s Hours of Work and Medical Staffing team to specifically consider the issue of patient handover, and garner examples of good practice
(ii) all those with responsibility for the planning of doctors’ rotas to ensure appropriate handover periods are in place.
Update: the Hours of Work and Medical Staffing team have been looking at previous studies and will produce a good practice guide for safe handover by Autumn 2004. Furthermore, we are looking to convene a seminar in conjunction with the National Patient Safety Agency in Summer 2004. Examples of good IT practice have been collected by the IT working group of the JDC with many positive outcomes noted as a result of IT innovations. The IT working group has met with Microsoft and Toshiba to discuss the contribution that new technology can make to this.