Junior doctors’ strike is “totemic” of a system that undermines staff, says McNeil

Abstract

The junior doctors’ ongoing industrial action over contract changes is “totemic” of a system that undermines staff efforts to improve healthcare, the former chief executive of Addenbrooke’s Hospital has said. Keith McNeil believes that the future leaders of the health service are being demoralised. “We’re getting them while they’re young and we’re disillusioning them, disengaging them, and disempowering them,” he told BMJ Careers . McNeil left his job as chief executive of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the Rosie maternity hospital, last year. He made the …