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THOUSANDS of junior doctors opposed to the government’s plans to impose a punishing new contract have logged the colossal number of unpaid hours they work.
Around 5,400 doctors logged nearly 10,500 hours of free work for the NHS at www.notfairnotsafe.com, which was only set up on Friday afternoon.
The work amounts to a projected saving for the NHS of more than £169,000.
But should the doctors ever stop working the extra hours, the service would be forced to hire locums, meaning the true saving is even higher.
This factor has yet to be included in the data.
Dr Ed Wallitt, who trained as a GP before starting his own medical technology company, set up the website to dispel suggestions that doctors were not pulling their weight.
“There has been a lot from the government suggesting doctors are lazy in a bid to get the public on board regarding the contract,” he said. “We wanted to show that doctors are not lazy and that they work many extra hours for the NHS.”
Now Dr Wallitt wants to use the data to gauge which types of doctor are feeling the most pressure in the chronically underfunded NHS.
The government has announced a new contract to be imposed on junior doctors — in any position below consultant level — that requires them to work more hours despite a 30 per cent salary cut next August.
After contract negotiations with the Department of Health broke down doctors warned that working medics further into exhaustion would result in diminished patient safety.
The British Medical Association (BMA), which is to ballot doctors for strike action, announced a “huge surge” in members this week.
At least 5,450 doctors signed up between September 26 and 28.
Around 80 per cent of the new sign-ups are junior doctors angry and worried about changes to working conditions.
Dr Wallitt qualified from Imperial College medical school in 2008 and worked for four years as a junior doctor in west London.
He quit his trainee position to set up medical IT firm Podmedic as he “wasn’t happy with the way things were going” with the NHS.
