Junior doctors were the kids who did everything right. They studied hard from their early teens to get the best grades in the hardest subjects, then made it through one of the toughest selection competitions in British higher education. All to do a job devoted to helping others.
That makes it a crying shame that clever, generous people are being misled into badly misjudging the economics and politics of their jobs, and engaging in strike action that can only harm patients.
Those misjudgments are the reason many more senior figures in the medical establishment are so pointedly silent over this week’s strike: they worry the juniors are getting this gravely wrong. Junior doctors’ unrealistic demands are also skewing the wider debate about NHS pay.
