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Champion the Truth

If you don’t live in the UK, you may have missed the junior doctor contract row that has been brewing for a few years but has escalated over the last couple of months. If you live in the UK and rely on major media outlets to keep you informed, you may think the dispute is about junior doctors asking for more money. I would suggest you turn to social media for more accurate information from doctors, other NHS staff and more importantly their families. Long and short of it is that the dispute is about our Government deciding we junior doctors need to work longer hours whilst our pay is cut and refusing to do the simple arithmetic that would show that if you want more junior doctors working around the clock, you need to recruit more of them because we are already working long hours and we absolutely will not do me as it would put our lives and the lives of patients that we hold so importantly at risk. I mean, how is it fair that the Government has voted to pay its MPs more and they can still claim vast amounts on expenses yet the very same Government says we have no money in the coffers to pay for more junior doctors? Isn’t that ridiculous???

I digress, please read up on Facebook, twitter and blogs writing on the issue. Plenty of truth out there is you care. The baseline is that at least half of the junior doctors who have voiced their opinions have stated either that they have made up their minds to quit the NHS or are at the very least, looking into alternate careers or going abroad. The simple truth is we as a group of junior doctors think the bottom line is that the Tories have vested interest to tear down the NHS and privatise our healthcare and hence line their pockets. There is also strong evidence out there that the current fool we call our Health Secretary has been a champion of NHS privatisation for many years and probably owns share in private health insurance conglomerates like Virgin Health.

This blog is actually about the one good thing that has come from this attack on junior doctors. We now have an online Facebook forum called Junior Doctors Forum which is by invitation only. It has 63,000 members and counting. Not all of them are junior doctors. We have consultants, medical students, nurses, midwives, paramedics and other allied healthcare professionals plus a few lawyers, journalists and even politicians about the forum. What I want to do is big up the passion of those on the forum and champion them sticking to their guns and being honest about how they feel and what this is doing to us as a group. Never has there been so much unity within the profession. Medicine is a very hierarchical and competitive profession and although we all start as one, we generally sub-divide as we become more senior and choose specialisation programmes. Our world then shrinks even further so all we know is related to the one field eventually. Our only contact with the outside specialities is if they are part of the multi-disciplinary team that we need to make sure each patient’s care is optimal with the inclusion of all relevant expertise.

So it is all good news though? No. Unfortunately when you get 63,000 opinionated voices with the top 1% in terms of IQ and ability to rationalise, debate and analyse, you get varying opinions. I am all for freedom of speech and embracing our differences. However, as with all other aspects of life, some are excessively worried about how other people interpret our opinions. An article was published based around a discussion we had on the forum and people are getting all uppity about all coming across professional and un-emotional. Why? If this was about professionalism only, we would all continue our stony silence whilst we get attacked as we give our all for the greater good. This time, we have stood up and shouted NO because not only have they attacked us (we have thick skin because of the nature of being medics who take enormous responsibilities day in, day out) but they are threatening the very fabric of the health of our nation. Their proposals are not only ensuring that many of us want to leave because we choose life and living than putting ourselves in danger from physical and mental exhaustion, they are also meaning that we are now less willing to carry on doing extra unpaid hours for no thanks.

The NHS has been running on the goodwill of its junior doctors for a very long time and things have been in a steady decline for the past decade yet this is the first year that doctors have threatened to strike. We love the NHS and have been carrying its weight to the detriment of our mental, physical and psychosocial health for far too long. This is the straw that will break the camel’s veritable back. It is because we are passionate that we are fighting the proposed changes which may start with junior doctors but we all know will extend to the rest of the hardworking staff the NHS is lucky to have as its employees. How then can anyone ask that we lie about how angry and betrayed we feel? How upset we are that we are being made to reconsider our futures? Whether we can afford to have children and continue to be there for our patients? How the lies of Hunt et al are demoralising us? How we don’t feel it is worth it anymore to carry on in the NHS when all we get for breaking our backs for a pittance (£11/hr 6 years after graduating for me compared to a plumber who can earn up to £50/hr) is abuse and an Etonian ignoramus vilifying us for caring.

Well, I am here to say that no. I will not be unemotional. If I didn’t care for the NHS, I would have quit after my first foundation year when I became a fully licenced medical practitioner. If all I care for was the money, I would be abroad today with a private clinic, dictating my hours and pay. If I didn’t care, I would not be attending protests and spending what little I have left over after my living expenses and medicolegal expenses on supportive merchandise. I care and I am not afraid to show it.

Hunt is only the face of the Tory campaign to break the NHS and leave privatisation as its only viable option. The Tory Government is libellous, dishonest, spineless and un-democratic. If the general public continues to buy the bullshit the Government is peddling, it will be the British public who will pay the price in the next few years. So unless you are all dying with something that will kill you with certainty in the next couple of years, wake up and realise facts. Fact is the NHS as we know it will be no more unless the whole of the British public fights this. Just google how much it’d cost you to pay for your health insurance in the US and imagine the UK going the same. Doctors are in hot demand the world over. We can and will be forced to leave the UK and the NHS is this horror continues and we will be fine. I assure you. So the fact that I am getting emotional is not because I am a greedy lazy overpaid privileged posh kid as Hunt and co would have you believe. It is because I care and I am not afraid to show it. Fact!