NHS Strikes - We're Losing Patience
By Hayley Sigrist
I shouldn’t have worn heels.
I shouldn’t have worn heels.
I’ve been here for ten minutes, and it feels like I've signed up
to a triathlon.
The doctors here are used to it. They’re used to this consistent rush;
the bleeping from bleepers, the consultants consulting and that sickly,
stomach-turning feeling only full-blown exhaustion can give you. They’re used to
it, yet they still love doing it. The following day, for the following
week, possibly even, for the rest of their lives.
One of the junior doctors here at Princess Royal University
Hospital is keeping herself busy. By 2’oclock, she’s seen the best part of 30
patients admitted in the day before. She’s organised investigations, started
treatment plans for those well enough to leave, reported back to the one
consultant on the ward and, to top it all off, she’s got the flu.
She’s working on what would have been her day off. It’s a
Saturday, she could be watching Christmas movies with the other half, getting a
roast made by her mum, sniffling into a Kleenex and catching up on the latest
boxset, but instead she’s doing what she spent 4 years of medical school passionate
about. She’s taking lives in her hands, and she’s making them healthier.
‘I like to see the families as much as possible, updating them on
what’s been happening. There are a lot of families with members in A&E, so
it’s important they’re updated on what’s been occurring overnight, especially
as the majority of patients we get on this Acute ward are of an elder
population; they tend to rely on their families quite a lot.’
She’s getting paid for this, naturally, but if the government’s
new medical contract gets put in place, she’s preparing for 25% cuts on all
weekend and evening work, considered to be ‘unsocial hours.’ These arrangements
have been put in place to counteract the 11% pay rise for traditional working
hours.
‘It’s perverse to say you need more people working the weekend
when this contract rewards people who don’t work out of work time. By
increasing basic pay and cutting out of hours, we’re essentially losing out on
the benefits. The people that are actually benefiting from these pay rises are
those in say, Dermatology and Public health work, pretty much those who don’t
work out of hours anyway. If you want a contract that sensitises 7 day work,
this is not it. It’s making it cheaper to have people working on the weekend,
but not actually benefitting those working it.’
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has caused quite an uproar amongst
those affected by cuts and changes. Some of the largest concerns are centred on
the future of the NHS.
‘It will stop people from backgrounds where they can be supported by their
parents to go to medical school, as they won’t see it as a liable career.
They’re right. It’s not. If you’re capable of getting the grades, why would you
go into a career where you can’t pay off your student debt? The pays getting
worse and worse, pushing those interested in the medical profession to move
into something more lucrative.
‘As for the people already committed to studying, they’re likely
to see more attractive medical career prospects abroad. 40% go abroad anyway,
I’d be surprised if that number didn’t increase; and once they’re gone, they
definitely won’t want to come back.’
Recent official NHS figures outlining the arrival of the latest
new recruits in the junior doctor’s field show that acute medicine is still
dangerously short of the new doctors it so desperately needs, as is elderly
medicine, general practice, renal medicine and psychiatry. Its proof we are
driving away the much needed medical team, sending them to better opportunities
abroad, whilst far bigger bills accumulate here. Quite unnecessary and avoidable
bills, had we treated these doctors with more respect.
‘What does it say about the relationship between us? It shows a
massive lack of respect. They don’t value the work that we do and that’s
honestly how we all feel, we feel demoralised, we feel like the work we do
doesn’t get noticed.
That’s the way we feel.
Neglected.’
Find out more here at: http://bma.org.uk/