Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:21 pm on 11 July 2017.
Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement and thank Dr Ruth Hussey for her hard work—her and her team—so far? Would the Cabinet Secretary agree, however, that some matters need urgent action now? We’ve heard some of them from Rhun and others, but, in particular, the recruitment and retention of junior medical staff in our hospitals. Now, once qualified, you stop being a medical student and you end up being a junior hospital doctor—everybody’s a junior hospital doctor, in other words—before you carry on further training to become a consultant surgeon, a GP, a consultant physician, or whatever. So, that’s where our doctor pool comes from. But our junior doctors are feeling unloved at the moment, and their tremendous commitment to their vocation is going unrecognised by managers in hospitals at all levels, as they cope with huge workloads, rota gaps, high-risk life-and-death decisions, and having to battle for time off for study leave and exams and even time off to get married. Now, it wasn’t like that in my day as a junior hospital doctor, admittedly some time ago now. But, Cabinet Secretary, how do we address these matters today?