Dr Mary McCarthy: Contract decision a sign of total failure

These doctors have studied for five or six years, emerging from medical school with student loan debts of up £100,000, and even after qualifying continue to train, and take exams, for between five and 10 years.

They were aware, when they entered medical school, that their life would be disrupted by weekend shifts, late-night operations and emergency calls at 3am.

They knew the toll this would take on relationships, leisure time and the ability to be able to be present at such family occasions as weddings or parties. This only serves to highlight the anger, frustration and low morale they must be feeling to have taken part in the strike this week.

For the second time they were standing, cold and resigned, outside the hospitals they work in knowing that regardless of their concerns the secretary of state was threatening to impose the contract anyway – a threat he carried out the next day.

This decision to impose the contract is a sign of total failure on the Government's part. Instead of working with the BMA to reach an agreement that is in the best interests of patients, junior doctors and the NHS as a whole the Government has walked away, rejecting a fair and affordable offer put forward by the BMA. Instead it wants to impose a flawed contract on a generation of junior doctors who have lost all trust in the health secretary.

The government claims it is all to achieve its manifesto pledge of a seven-day NHS but junior doctors already work around the clock, seven days a week, and they do so under their existing contract.

If the Government want more seven-day services then quite simply it needs more doctors, nurses and diagnostic staff, and the extra investment needed to deliver it.

It is notable that the rest of the UK has chosen a different, constructive path on junior doctors' contracts with only the health secretary in England choosing imposition over agreement.

The Government's mishandling of this process from start to finish has totally alienated a generation of junior doctors – the hospital doctors and GPs of the future, and there is a real risk that some will vote with their feet.

Some junior doctors are talking of leaving the English NHS and working in other parts of the U.K that are more 'doctor-friendly'.

The Health Secretary seems intent on following a course of action which, instead of improving the health service in this country may end up damaging it badly.

We need junior doctors. They are the backbone of the NHS.

Quite rightly they will not accept a contract that is bad for the future of patient care, the profession and the NHS as a whole – and with the government's decision to impose it on them the BMA will now need to consider all options available to it.