Junior doctors have a launched a legal challenge to Jeremy Hunt’s decision to impose a new contract, and announced that three fresh strikes will hit the NHS in the spring.
Preparing the ground for a new phase in the bitter conflict between the British Medical Association and the Government, the medical union claimed that ministers had failed to assess whether the contract might discriminate against particular groups of junior doctors.
It also announced three 48-hour strikes affecting non-emergency services, to take place in March and April.
The decision came as a former Government advisor on patient safety called on ministers to apologise to junior doctors over their handling of the contract dispute, and to freeze its imposition for up to three years.
Don Berwick, a US expert who helped shape Barack Obama’s health policy and conducted a review of NHS patient safety under the Coalition, said the Government had made a “mistake” and needed to “find a way out”
“You cannot achieve excellence in combat with your future workforce, it makes no sense at all,” he said at an event at the King’s Fund think-tank on 23 February.'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a6891686.html