Was there ever a golden age for junior doctors?

Doctors who trained before 2000 remember being exhausted by working for days with almost no sleep. But they also remember feeling well supported in their “firm”—a team typically comprising a junior house officer, a senior house officer, registrar, and consultant, who always worked together and covered for each other. They describe the rewards of getting to know their patients and the camaraderie of the doctors’ mess. Then the “New Deal,” which was designed to improve working conditions for junior doctors, and the European working time directive, which was introduced to protect all kinds of workers from exploitation and tiredness, heralded a change in working patterns. With the exception of the most recent trainee, all the other doctors we have interviewed, by chance, seem to believe that, however tired they were, it was better to be a trainee doctor in the past than it is now. But many, including the BMA, would be horrified to go back to the exhaustion of the past.