Sir – I write to express strong feelings of sympathy and support for the junior doctors who have in the last week overwhelmingly voted in support of industrial action try to persuade the Government not to penalise them by unilaterally modifying an agreed contract that is already harsh.

I am a retired consultant, having devoted over 40 years to service in the NHS. I am grateful not to be working in the NHS any longer under the current regime, having had a rich and fulfilling career which, even though exhausted on many occasions, rarely seeing my young sons when they were awake during weekdays, and frequently interrupting my meals at night and weekends to return to the hospital.

As a junior doctor in the late 60s and 70s it was not unusual to work excessive hours, such that I have no doubt our judgement was frequently significantly impaired. Since then as I progressed up the tree of my chosen specialty, the individual junior doctors’ hours were reduced, and their salaries improved so that they were less impoverished zombies, but their training, whilst highly regulated became less intensive, and their personal lives were still blighted by antisocial working practice.

Back then we were told it would all be all right once we were consultants. The truth of the matter is that in the majority of hospitals in this country, consultants have needed to increase the hours they spend in hospital, and their contracts which were originally based on trust on both sides (employee and employer), became increasingly rigid and demanding.

The position now is that the ‘carrot’ of good times ahead is no longer valid, and what the Government is attempting to impose now will significantly damage not only employer/employee relationships, but also diminish training once again.

The junior doctors of 2015 are not the first to be driven to this extreme measure. It has occurred twice in my lifetime, and the outcome on each occasion has been bad for medicine and bad for the public. The current Secretary of State for Health is misguided, intransigent and a bully.

I trust the public can see through his half-truths, which he is using as a propaganda tool, and that like me they can sympathise with the Junior Doctors in their fight for a reasonable return and quality of life in today’s medicine.

As I write, I hope the Government see the error of its ways and relent and return to the negotiating table with a more open mind. I hope your readers, the public, can support the doctors and be tolerant of their wish to preserve medicine in the NHS at the high standard we have come to expect.

Dr Michael Ward
Oxford