The British Medical Association, which represents the junior physicians, has also suspended threats for additional strikes during the five-day negotiation period, according to the report.
Issues with the contract include Saturday pay and unsocial hours. General pay would increase 13.5 percent on average under the new contract, but Saturday daytime hours would no longer be considered unsocial and junior physicians would receive lower than current bonuses for working unsocial weekend hours, according to the report. The aim with this contract is to create a “seven-day NHS,” an initiative spurred on by a controversial paper that suggested mortality rates were higher over the weekend, according to the report.
Since January, junior physicians have gone on four strikes that affected routine care only, but they ramped up industrial actions last week with two one-day strikes that affected all care, including emergency care, according to the report.
Plans to refresh the contract have been in the works since 2012, but began to break down in 2014, according to the report.
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