I write in response to Prof David Cameron (Letters, 28 July). I also trained as a doctor during the 80s and early 90s and experienced the long working hours of that time. It is easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia and selective memory as we become older and detached from the frontline. I was looked after by the hospitals in which I worked, which were less managed than they are today. I worked in a close team, led by a consultant to whom I was responsible, and who was responsible for me. I spoke to no managers. I was provided accommodation, hot food day and night, and other privileges.
I speak to many young doctors in my current workplace and see the conditions in which they work. They are isolated and harassed by managers, who are in turn harassed by a target-driven culture. Their training is politicised and diluted by the physician assistant programme. They cannot get hot food after 4pm or at weekends, they pay for parking, they are ripped off by hospital accommodation services and see their pay eroded by below-inflation awards over many years. Small wonder they are angry. Pay is the quickest way by which they can obtain some redress for the deterioration in working conditions which they have suffered.
Dr Robin Hollands
Consultant, Shrewsbury
