Margaret McCartney: Evidence based protest for the NHS.

England’s junior doctors are planning more strikes. I hope that, in the High Court in September, the Justice for Health campaign succeeds in finding that the health secretary has no power to impose a contract. If not, the dispute will smoulder. Much public sympathy is still likely, but parts of the media will be predictably hostile. The new contract is unfair. It relies on misinterpreted statistics surrounding the so called weekend effect. But this is only a part of the current mess in medicine. Staff are stressed. Services are being cut. The joy of medicine is still there but in scarce supply. Failing to find enough pleasure in work leads to staff cutting their hours or retiring early, leaving more gaps in the system. The government is not spending enough on the NHS. Much of what is spent is wasted on short term, non-evidenced, political policies that drain resources in the longer term, such as health checks. The founding principle of the NHS—that it is free at the point of use, according to need—is being challenged because of political weakness and repeated non-evidence based policy making, which harms us all.