The changes include overall increases in pay, and for working weekends and late shifts; improvements to junior doctors and dentists’ wellbeing and safety; and the ability to formally raise concerns when they miss out on training because of rostering problems.
The contract will see an investment of £90 million over the next four years plus an average two per cent pay uplift each year for four years.
The chair of the BDA’s Central Committee for Hospital Dental Services, Peter Dyer, said, “These votes indicate that junior doctors and dentists have shown a willingness to engage in a constructive negotiation process and that the government, by compromising, has won them over. The dispute over the 2016 contract was always about patient safety and working conditions and the government has begun to address this.
“There is, of course, a great deal more that needs to be done to improve the working lives of junior doctors and dentists in hospitals, but the reformed contract is a step in the right direction.”
Once ratified at the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee Meeting on July 2, the long running dispute between employers and government and the BMA/BDA will end, and collective bargaining will resume.