I’m more resident than the juniors

Copperfield‘s take on the decision to replace the term ‘junior doctors’ with ‘resident doctors’

So the junior doctor strikes are over (hooray). And, despite what the sabre-rattlers say, there won’t be any more junior doctor strikes either. I know this for a fact because junior doctors no longer exist – the title’s been replaced with ‘resident doctor’.

Apparently, being a ‘junior’ is repeatedly misinterpreted by the public as being ‘unqualified’. And admittedly, it is difficult to get your head round the fact that a medical student is a student at medical school – whereas a junior doctor is a doctor who just isn’t senior. Presumably this is because the public thinks ‘medical student’ makes you sound like a medic (qualified), and ‘junior’ makes you sound like someone at junior school (unqualified), which just goes to show they’re more stupid than we thought.

But it doesn’t matter what the public think, because the BMA has its own view, specifically that the term ‘junior’ is ‘infantilising and demeaning’. Not sure what the issue is here. After all, juniors, sorry, residents, do still empty their nappy over my head every time they discharge a patient.

Also, sorry to point out the obvious flaw, but while juniors are junior, they’re not residents. In fact if any doctor is resident then it’s us GPs. I certainly seem to spend most of my bloody life in the surgery, and even when I’m not, I’m logged on at home. So perhaps we deserve a shiny new name badge, too. ‘General’ suggests we’re not special (we are) and ‘practitioner’ implies we’re just one of those random frontliners given a formal title to con the public (we’re not).

I haven’t got any clever suggestions, and previous re-boot attempts (‘consultants in family medicine’ or ‘specialist in person-based medicine’ etc.) just make us sound like arses. I could live with ‘genius professionals’, which is accurate and would at least keep us as GPs. But then some would say the same about ‘grumbling prick’.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter. Because unlike with ‘junior doctors’, the well informed public I referred to earlier understand and appreciate that our role, whatever we’re called, is to single-handedly prop up the NHS. And we’ll carry on doing that, nobly, maturely and professionally, which is why no one infantilises us. So long as we get a 22% pay rise, too. Otherwise I’m throwing my teddies out of the pram.

Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex. Read more of his blogs here