GP issues stark warning over pay to junior doctors
A DOCTOR has hit out at health service pay and warned a brain drain could lead to a ‘two-tier NHS’.
Dr Lizzie Toberty, a GP in Jesmond, Newcastle, is leading calls to ensure that junior doctors receive a pay package reflecting how rates have stagnated over the past decade.
While a junior doctor, Dr Toberty went out on strike in 2016, and said a repeat was a real possibility. This comes after the Government came in for heavy criticism for the pay awards announced for NHS workers in July.
Junior doctors are actually excluded from that – as they are on three-year deal – but the British Medical Association (BMA) has called for health bosses to address a 22% decline in real-terms pay for junior doctors compared to 2008-2009.
A week ago, the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee said health and social care services in England face “the greatest workforce crisis in their history” and the Government had no credible strategy to make the situation better.
In their report, research by the Nuffield Trust shows the NHS in England is short of 12,000 doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives.
Dr Toberty – a committee member for the Doctors’ Association UK organisation – said without “pay restoration” for juniors which would reverse that 22% decline, strike action would follow and many doctors could leave the NHS.
She told The Chronicle: “I’m a GP rather than a junior doctor. But of course I have been a junior doctor and went out on strike in 2016. Here, essentially what has happened over time is pay has remained static over the last ten to 12 years.
“I started as a junior doctor back in 2010, and when I look at what my takehome pay was back then – well some junior doctors are ending up with even less compared to what I got in 2010.”
She said that the traumas of working as junior doctors during a pandemic had taken their toll on many.
“They’ve literally been putting their lives at risk. Many junior doctors have started working in the NHS in terrible circumstances.
“And we need to remember that they are living with worry about having paid a minimum of £45,000 for their degrees.
“That’s not including living costs, some will have graduated with £80,000plus of debt.
“We need our brightest and best to become doctors, but there are plenty of other countries who would love to employ our junior doctors. And it’s not as simple as we are not training enough people, it’s that we are not retaining them – we are not looking after our people properly. You have to pay staff enough to encourage them to stay.”
Dr Toberty added that there was a risk the health service could turn into a “two-tier system” without action.
“Nobody wants to strike,” she said. “Nobody wants to take that action at a time when were are trying to bring waiting lists down. But we need to think about the longer term. I think the BMA have said quite clearly that without pay restoration there’s likely to be action.”