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Jeeves, a 27-year-old trainee GP, agrees. "They are taking out every safeguard. We're all used to working more hours, but not to the point that it is unsafe for people and has a detrimental impact on our own health."Faced with extended working hours and no cash incentive to work them, it's no surprise that figures from the General Medical Council show that this year alone 7,727 doctors have applied for licenses to work abroad (that's an increase of 2,802 on last year). How many of these are genuine and how many have been made in protest is difficult to tell. However, if there were to be a mass exodus of junior doctors—whether they were planning to work abroad (Australia appears to be the current favorite destination) or to leave the profession altogether—that would present a desperately urgent problem for an already-stretched NHS."As a junior doctor, I love my job. I love treating patients, and 5 o'clock rolls around, and if things need doing there are very few days I don't stay behind to make sure that they're done," says Jeeves. "But this is already a profession which heavily depends on the goodwill of the people doing it, and if you demoralize and devastate them and destroy their lives and their health, then they're going to leave. "They're human beings, too. If they can't make a living they're going to leave. That's the tragedy of the whole thing.
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But it's not just the juniors who are despondent about the future. David*, a leading cardiology consultant with almost 30 years of experience, tells me it's a "tragedy.""They're human beings, too. If they can't make a living they're going to leave. That's the tragedy of the whole thing," he says. David won't be directly affected by the contract, but believes its impact will be devastating. "We're already short staffed, and we're going to have no one left. It's going to be chaos," he continues.Student, junior doctor or consultant: it's clear that there's a unified front against Hunt's proposals. Many, too, seem to be of the belief that if Hunt imposes the contract it will spell the end of the NHS and a move towards privatization."Maybe not straight away, but it's the beginning of the end," says Imogen. "What will happen [if the proposals go through] is that we'll walk away and the government will be in a position to say the NHS is too costly, which is why we'll have to move towards privatization on the health insurance model," adds Alastair."The Tories have always wanted to privatize the NHS," says David. "I don't know if Jeremy Hunt is just a total idiot, or if this is a plan to destroy the NHS. But I'm pessimistic about it all. In two years I'm going to emigrate to Costa Rica and live in a beach house. I'm off. People don't know what they've got until they've lost it."*Some names have been changed