Ninety per cent of patients and members of the public surveyed by campaign group I'm in Work Jeremy agreed with NHS clinical staff that paying doctors the same to work on a Saturday night as on a Tuesday morning would be unfair.
The lift to freedom after the Saturday covering the special care baby unit - on a weekend! #IminworkJeremy @butNHS
The claim refers to responses from 2,265 people, including 1,592 NHS clinical staff and 502 patients and members of the public, who were asked how fair they found a change in the junior doctors' contract proposed by health secretary Jeremy Hunt that could see the "sociable working hours" for which junior doctors are paid a standard rate change from 7am-7pm Monday-Friday to 7am-10pm Monday-Saturday.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme last Saturday ahead of a demonstration attended by almost 20,000 medical professionals and their supporters to protest against changes to the contract, Hunt said: "We need to change the balance of pay between weekdays and weekends so that we don't force hospitals to roster three times less medical cover at weekends."
Many doctors have been using the hashtag #ImInWorkJeremy to highlight the fact that they're already working long hours at weekends, but currently at a higher rate of pay than they receive during the week.
Hi Jeremy. Its 0320 on saturday here in A&E. Could we conference call to discuss my lack of vocation? #ImInWorkJeremy
Another key change to the contract is the removal of incremental pay rises, with increases instead based on moving through training stages, which 95% of NHS clinical staff and 82% of patients surveyed said was unfair.
Doctors have said that this change to pay structure means they would be heavily penalised financially for changing specialties, and that this element of the contract would be especially detrimental to women who take time out to have children.
I' ve had a baby, doing a PhD and work in urology. Under the new #juniorcontract could I afford 2 go 2 work? @IminworkJeremy #notsafenotfair
"I certainly feel the conflict between pursuing the dream of becoming a surgeon and becoming a mother," junior doctor Amy Lindh told BuzzFeed News. "There is no doubt in my mind that the new contract will make it more difficult to pursue the latter, and it would come at the cost of the former."
Ninety-five per cent of patients and 98% of NHS staff felt it was unfair to remove monitoring that aims to prevent doctors working unsafe hours.
Day 6of12. 48h Oncall wkend. Nearly went through a red light. Protect our safeguards #juniorcontract @IminworkJeremy @butNHS
Under the current contract, hospital trusts face penalties if they are found to be overworking doctors. Many are concerned that the removal of these safeguards by the new contract would have a huge impact on patient safety.
Another survey published by The Guardian this week found that 1 in 7 doctors would leave the NHS if the new junior contract goes ahead.
The poll of 4,129 junior doctors found that 2,949 would move to another country, become locum doctors, or give up medicine entirely if they were forced to work under the contract's new conditions.
Alan Robertson, a British doctor currently working in Australia, told BuzzFeed News that medical staff generally felt "better looked after" there. "At a junior level there is appropriate pay for overtime working, reasonable study leave, and continuing medical education budget," he said, "and in general the tax paid is lower than in the UK, given how work-related costs of training are all tax-deductible."
Royal medical colleges recently wrote to the Department of Health to express concerns that changes to the contract would have a huge impact on recruitment and retention of medical students. "If we are to strive to deliver innovative models of care, expand the delivery of care across seven days, increase NHS efficiency, and continue to lead the world in innovation and research, we must support and value the people who are going to deliver this," it read.
The Department of Health has accused the British Medical Association of misleading junior doctors over the proposed contract changes, insisting that it wants to reward doctors fairly while ensuring patients receive seven-day care, and has called junior doctors "the backbone of the NHS."
"What we want is exactly the same as what doctors want," Hunt told the BBC. "If you believe in the NHS and you want to offer the best possible care, then you want to be able to make the best promise to the patient that the standard of care you get at the weekend is the same as you'd get in the week."
BuzzFeed News has contacted the Department of Health for comment on both surveys, but is yet to receive a reply.