JUNIOR doctors at North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke and the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester joined around 50,000 others across the country in two days of industrial action, objecting to the prospect of a new contract in England imposed by the Government who have described the current arrangements as “outdated” and “unfair”.

The row has erupted over proposed changes to pay and what constitutes normal and unsociable working hours. Junior doctors already work weekends and are said to provide the bulk of the medical staffing on Saturdays and Sundays.

While the proposal is to increase basic pay by 13-and-a-half per cent on average, doctors are unhappy as the changes would extend “normal working hours” to Saturday daytime, while extra premiums on offer for night shifts and the rest of the weekend would be lower than what is currently paid.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has argued that he wants to improve care on Saturday and Sundays because research shows patients are more likely to die if they are admitted on a weekend, but doctors disagree, arguing that patients admitted at weekends tend to be sicker.

Talks broke down in January and, after a final offer from the government was rejected by the British Medical Association (BMA) in February, ministers announced that the contract would be imposed.

Two legal challenges are being pursued by doctors against the imposition. In the meantime, doctors have resorted to industrial action and on Tuesday and Wednesday this week staged the first ever all-out strike, affecting routine and emergency care.

The term junior doctors covers medics who have just graduated through to those who may have more than a decade of experience on the front line.

The starting salary for a junior doctor is currently just under £23,000 per year, but with extra payments for things such as unsociable hours, this can quite easily top £30,000.

Junior doctors at the top end of the scale can earn more than £70,000.

On what has been described as a “bleak day” by ministers, junior doctors at the three hospitals (Basingstoke, Winchester and Andover) covered by the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust walked out on Tuesday at the start of a 48-hour strike.

Chief executive Mary Edwards said: “We have planned ahead to minimise disruption to our services and to ensure our patients are safe and well cared for. Our staff have worked together to ensure we have safe staffing levels across all our services.

“Patients whose appointments are affected by the strike have been contacted. We have postponed a small proportion (approximately 10 per cent) of appointments across our three hospitals and over the two days of industrial action, and many of those patients have been offered alternative appointments and booked in for new time. We have also had to move around a handful of operations on our lists for Tuesday and Wednesday and we have done this in such a way as to minimise the impact on our patients”

n Following the one-day strike by junior doctors in January, just two operations were postponed across the Trust area, at North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke, and 12 out of 115 scheduled outpatient clinics postponed.

Three out of seven were postponed at Alton Community Hospital, four out of 57 at Basingstoke, three out of 35 at Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, and two out of 16 at Andover War Memorial Hospital.