Why can’t the NHS value junior staff the way top companies do?

The frustration and disillusion experienced by a generation of doctors have featured prominently in media coverage of the dispute between junior doctors and the government over the new contract. Bruce Keogh, NHS England’s national medical director, says that the NHS’s failure to value its juniors is one cause of these doctors’ unhappiness.

“Successful companies and successful organisations really spend a lot of time in harnessing the energy, the creativity, the enthusiasm, and the commitment of people in their 20s and 30s—the young professionals who have the energy and the vision,” he says. “I genuinely think that we don’t make the best use of the junior doctors in our NHS.”

He adds, “I think that’s become clear in some of the discontent …