A resident doctor
Resident doctors will strike again from 15 to 19 June. The strike comes after meetings with Labour’s new health secretary James Murray ended with the government just re-presenting the previous offer. It shows how the government fails to take seriously the issues facing resident doctors – and the NHS as a whole.
This wave of strike action is not just about pay restoration. Resident doctors are asking to be paid equivalently – after inflation – to resident doctors in 2008. A letter by a consultant to the Guardian newspaper tried to justify this real-terms pay cut by pointing out that resident doctors in 2008 worked longer weeks (56 hours instead of 48). However, they failed to take into account that hospitals are significantly busier – in both outpatients and emergency departments – as well as the exponential rise in the cost of living, and that resident doctors now owe tens of thousands more in student debt.
The other issue facing resident doctors, especially at the start of our careers, is the bottlenecks in career progression. There has been an increase in the number of medical student places as well as an increase in doctors migrating from abroad, but no proportional increase in training jobs for them to have meaningful job security or progression. With the NHS under more pressure than ever and an aging population, we will need more resident doctors and consultants to care for them. Keeping these doctors in the NHS will require paying them competitively. Unfortunately, at the moment, only resident doctors seem aware of these looming threats.
It should be noted some resident doctors have reservations regarding the approach of our union the British Medical Association (BMA). It is also important to point out that BMA staff are themselves striking for better pay and have not yet reached a resolution. This does not negate the need to address the very real crisis we face, and our determination to fight to resolve it.
