Junior doctors have just voted to strike; earlier this week I posted my ballot. Only weekends ago many of my friends and colleagues were out protesting on the streets about the proposed new contracts. I was not at the protest and I feel very uneasy about striking.
The question of strike action is clear to me: doctors provide essential and emergency services and we should never strike – organised industrial action in other forms, possibly, but strike? No. I didn’t attend the protest because it was one of the few weekends I had off that month and could spend with my fellow junior doctor husband. But that is not the whole story: I also feel uneasy about the protests.
Sure, junior doctors work hard and often beyond their contracted and paid hours. I have worked nine to 10 days in a row and am currently working nights. But so do nurses and other healthcare professionals. Many of them stay beyond their hours and their pay has been frozen or has gone down over recent years. I actually think I get paid enough as things stand. I love every day I work as a junior doctor. I share my expenses with my husband and we can both save and treat ourselves now and then. Our base pay is only £22,000 per year, but does anyone need the £40-50,000 a banking grad scheme pays?
And why are we on the streets now, talking about the NHS becoming unsafe? Where were the outcries when regulations were introduced restricting access to healthcare for some of the most vulnerable groups of society? Where were the doctors when the Health and Social Care Act was pushed through parliament? When everyone else’s pay in the NHS was being cut? I do not believe the proposed changes to our contracts or the NHS will do us or our patients any good, but why are we so angry in such great numbers now?
I do not support Jeremy Hunt and this government’s proposals. The contract fails to address the number of junior doctors working out of hours and does nothing to improve weekend consultant cover. What makes me most angry is that the contract is particularly punitive for female doctors, who would like to take more time out to do research and also, typically, to have children. If we do nothing, the contract will be pushed through, targeting an already demoralised and deflated workforce.
To me this is the final straw after the outsourcing of NHS services to private companies, restrictions to services for vulnerable migrants, the Health and Social Care Act and year-upon-year of pay freezes and pay cuts for NHS staff. But there is apparently little public will to increase funding for our welfare state, even if that includes the health service.
Meanwhile, the NHS is teetering, with destructive compartmentalisation and illogical management structures. Health needs and behaviours have changed completely from when the NHS was conceived, which poses problems for healthcare provision not just in the UK but across the world. My instincts tell me something drastic will happen to the NHS within the next few years – good or bad.
But I am only a junior doctor, so what do I know? All I can say is this: I will not strike. Doctors should not strike.
I do not think there is anything junior doctors can do to prevent or reverse the slow dismantling of the NHS. But if I ever leave the organisation that I love it will not be because I am paid too little to do the job, but because the fabric of the institution is crumbling around me.
