“It’s normal for people to have to wait eight hours to see a doctor – that’s not how it used to be ten or fifteen years ago”
By Josh Mellor, Local Democracy Reporter
Striking junior doctors demonstrated outside Whipps Cross Hospital yesterday in a national dispute over pay and “extreme work stress”.
At 7am on 13th March, junior doctors began a 72-hour walkout of hospitals across the country, affecting both emergency and planned care.
Yesterday, a picket line of about twenty people on the main road outside the Leytonstone hospital, run by Barts Health NHS Trust, for the second day in a row. Cars, buses and ambulances repeatedly answered the “honk 4 doctors” signs with beeps of support as they passed.
Respiratory registrar Aarash Saleh, 37, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he is “constantly apologising” to patients about “how long they are waiting” due to a lack of staff and fears even more doctors will leave the NHS if things fail to improve.
He said: “Pay is the biggest priority but it all comes down to staffing. We want to give great care, not have to cover gaps and work under extreme stress due to the fear of making mistakes and dealing with people who have to wait too long to see us.
“You can stand that for a short time but, when your pay is being eroded and the job is getting harder, you will seek employment elsewhere and that exacerbates the problem.”
To help stem the tide of doctors leaving the NHS, trade union British Medical Association, which organised the strike, is asking for a 35% pay rise. Health Secretary Steve Barclay has previously responded by saying he wants to find a settlement but that it must recognise the country’s wider economic pressures.
Emergency medicine doctor Jahangir Alom said two thirds of the friends he studied with at medical school have since “gone abroad or are not working in the NHS as doctors”.
He added: “As an emergency worker, it’s normal for people to have to wait eight hours to see a doctor – that’s not how it used to be ten or fifteen years ago… it’s the government that is not doing any workforce planning.”
Anaesthetist registrar Nilesh Sonawane, who has a young family, said it is no longer “worth” working day and night shifts for £14 per hour, saying: “They’re asking us for goodwill without anything else – I finished my medical degree fourteen years ago.”
Junior doctors make up around half of the medical workforce at Barts hospitals including Whipps, as the category includes doctors with up to 10 years of experience.
According to recent statements on the trust’s website, Barts has adjusted its services to make sure patient safety is not put at risk by the strike action, enlisting consultants to cover duties normally carried out by their more junior colleagues.
Local Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) campaigner Nancy Taaffe, who also attended to support the picket line, called for a general strike to push “private interests out of healthcare”.
Other strikes to affect this borough this week include the Tube strikes on 15th March and a teachers’ strikes from the 15th until the 16th.
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