What I got wrong about junior doctors

I recently wrote a column elsewhere about the junior doctors strike. As if often the way with this topic, it resulted in some strong and sometimes vituperative reactions. 

It also led to many conversations with people in and around medicine.  Some of them thought I’d got things wrong. That’s a reasonable position to take, and it’s often useful to take criticism seriously. So I had a think about the column again, and concluded that there were indeed a few things I could have done better at.  

Retention

Of the various ‘you’ve got your facts wrong’ critiques of my column, the one I think that has most weight is that I overlook the importance of retention – rather than recruitment – in medicine. In sum, I argued that junior doctors are in a weak bargaining position because the supply of would-be doctors exceeds demand, something that should, in the long run, allow the state to buy more medical labour more cheaply.