Low wages force younger medics to vote with feet
IT’S a Monday night, 8pm, the first of my four night shifts. I’m a junior doctor, but as a registrar I will be the most senior doctor in my department tonight.
I take a handover from the doctors ending their day shift. It has been as busy as ever. One doctor is only just eating their lunch and there are still patients waiting to be seen. A four-hour wait in the Emergency Department was the exception a few short years ago; a wait of 12 hours or more is now the norm.
My first patient is a child who has broken their arm in a fall at school. I try to reassure worried parents.
What I didn’t say is the operating list is already full to bursting and whilst it’s right to prioritise their child, I need to tell someone else they’ll have to wait at least another day.
On the shift with me is a doctor in their second year of practice. It’s their first night with us and they’re nervous. I reassure them, but don’t mention I’m worried too.
There are a lot of patients to see on the ward and still waiting in A&E and we head there first to put a plaster cast on a broken wrist.
Halfway through the 12-hour shift and I feel we are making some headway.
There has been a steady stream of patients but we agree after the next one we will have a quick break. That was tempting fate, an emergency alert goes off and we scramble to receive a seriously injured patient who has been in a car crash. He has a bad head injury as well as broken bones and whilst we dress his wounds, put on plaster cast and arrange for a scan, he needs more specialised treatment at another hospital.
I call ahead to my counterpart to describe the injuries and ask them how things are on their end. I already know the answer – it’s as bad there as anywhere, in fact everywhere.
As I head to the ward I stop in my tracks. There are patients lined up along the corridor here too, almost reaching the hospital’s coffee shop. This I have never seen before, even at the height of Covid. With about an hour to go we finally sit down with a cup of tea and start to check through blood test results ready to hand over to the day team.
As we work, I ask my colleague what they plan to do at the end of their second year of practice.
They laugh. What they really want is a break. They now plan to travel to Australia to work as a doctor there.
I’ve heard this so many times before and I can’t really blame them.
I’m striking because enough is enough, without addressing the pay of junior doctors they will continue to vote with their feet and leave our NHS, at a time where we need all the doctors we can get.
I’m going on strike because enough is enough
MIKE GREENHALGH REGISTRAR