We’re burnt out, claim junior doctors on Midland picket line
Medics say strike is not just about pay as some look abroad
ON a blustery Monday outside Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital, doughnuts and coffees are being handed out to junior doctors at the forefront of a significant escalation in their dispute with the government over working conditions.
Around 100 people – junior doctors, trade unionists, and students – stand outside the doors of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital demanding a 35% pay rise and an end to burnout and stress.
Naomi Collier, a junior doctor with four years of experience, explained she had had enough and was moving to Australia on Wednesday, March 15. She said many doctors were choosing to work elsewhere for better pay, and ultimately, a better work-life balance.
“I’ve always wanted to visit Australia, but because we have a structured training programme in the NHS, I’m at a point where it’s the only natural break I can really see, before going onto train for eight years to become a consultant.
“I think I would be speaking for quite a few people if I say the last few years have been full of burnout. We’ve come to work in conditions we weren’t expecting.
“If you get to work and the staffing level is meant to be ten and there are six or seven junior doctors on, you know it’s going to be a very hard day. That’s partly why I want a break in my career.”
Ms Collier said she plans to come back to the UK to continue her career, but she said there were “big discrepancies” in the NHS. “To go abroad now makes it quite attractive for a better work-life balance.”
The British Medical Association (BMA) and Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) – both doctors’ unions – were seeking a 35% increase in junior doctors’ salaries as “full pay restoration” for the real-terms loss in their income they say has occurred since 2008/09.
Junior doctors are all trainee medics
To go abroad now makes it quite attractive for a better work-life balance Junior doctor Naomi Collier
and range from the newly qualified to those who are very experienced and are at just below the level of a consultant.
Newly qualified doctors start their careers in the NHS earning just £14 an hour, a junior doctors committee told Rishi Sunak in a letter last week.
They voted last month overwhelming in favour of industrial action, with 98 per cent of voters opting to strike.
A 72-hour strike to refuse work in areas offering life-or-death care, including A&E, critical care, and maternity services, are now on the cards.
NHS England reported the strikes would have a “bigger impact” than any of those held since December by nurses, ambulance staff and physiotherapists. The government claims pay demands from junior doctors
cost around £2 billion – marked as “simply unaffordable”.
Callum Postoyalko, who has been training as a junior doctor for five years, said the cost to pay for mandatory exams after graduation were another frustration.
“We have to pay for our exams. My first two MRCP exams cost me £420 and the last one is around £600. The pass rate for each is 50% and you have to pass the exams to work.
“Every year I have to do a portfolio of my clinical assessments. It’s how you continue every year. That cost me £507. You can get tax relief on it, but if you don’t pay it, you can’t work.”
Steve Barclay, the health secretary, said he would offer to enter formal pay negotiations on the condition the strikes were paused. The BMA, however, said the offer came with “unacceptable preconditions”,
including a non-consolidated lump sum payment for last year.
The BMA agreed junior doctors could leave the picket line in the event of a mass casualty event, such as a terror attack, but said an NHS trust declaring a critical incident due to staffing pressures was not enough.
Rebecca Taylor, who has been working as a junior doctor for six years, said staff shortages and bed waits were a “daily occurrence”.
“It’s every shift. Some days I get 20 rota gap emails a day.
“It means sometimes I have had to step into a role I am not comfortable in because that is not my speciality, but that’s in addition to what I usually cover.
“I’ve had shifts where I’m holding two crash bleeps – a team of doctors ready to assist in a cardiac arrest – and we plan for it, but it’s not optimum.”
The last time junior doctors went on strike, in April 2016, was over a new working contract.
At the time, around 125,000 operations were predicted to be cancelled while 21,608 junior doctors – 78% of those due to work – participated in the industrial action.
Natalie Green, an orthopaedic surgeon, said she and her colleagues are on the picket line to help future doctors.
“We are a bit further on in our training, and I appreciate we have pay jumps and different pay-scales, but it’s about the doctors coming through really.
“We want to make this an attractive job.
“Finishing your degree with £55,000 in debt, paying barely any back to start with, is a terrifying prospect for potential doctors who are not from wealthy backgrounds.”