Read the original article at the Sun
TODAY my colleagues are going out on strike.
It is unprecedented, threatens patients’ dignity and safety — and it is unnecessary.
For me, it’s also illegal. That’s why today, I’m calling — along with think tank the Bow Group — for the British Medical Association (BMA) to call off its strikes and return to negotiations to bag the settlement we all need.
Savvy tactics from Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt led to the Government going in too hard in talks none of us can walk away from.
That’s why a ballot was held.
But even back in November there was no reason why the BMA couldn’t have gone to mediators Acas first before upping the ante.
No one can honestly say that doctors, or the conditions on offer, are the same as what they were when the ballot was called. For me, the strike mandate ended when Acas talks started.
Just days before the current talks broke down we all saw BMA reps briefing the media about how badly the whole thing was going.
Union bigwigs close to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn turned up the heat and the talks, naturally, collapsed.
With little chance of Labour returning to power any time soon we are now seeing Corbyn’s “new kind of politics” — a return to direct action to undermine the Government come what may.
His friends inside my union are leveraging the trust and goodwill we’ve spent years building and are weaponising my colleagues and our patients.
There has been no attention given to the victims of recent floods, who have lost so much and had operations cancelled.
With these strikes going ahead it is nonsense to say we can diagnose and treat cancers on time or that we can continue to see those suffering with mental health problems.
And it is nonsense to say the whole profession is behind the strikes — so many grades weren’t even balloted.
There are many different voices saying how many patients may die from understaffing over weekends and over these strikes.
The research I’ve worked on with the Bow Group suggests that more than two hundred lives could be lost just over the three days of industrial action this month.
There is our human side to this debate too. Thousands of us have worked hard to get into medicine.
We see so many patients suffer from their illnesses and are privileged to be there to help them as best we can.
I’ve worked as a doctor since 2005. I see the devastation when an operation is delayed, the anguish when a cancer is picked up late.
Paying me any more or working me any less will never blunt what I see.
Fair wages are fair, and I support the BMA in arguing for them.
We all want fair pay through negotiation. But there are many aspects of safety the current talks haven’t even touched upon.
For example, changing our rotas so senior doctors can stay on two weeks more in August — when newly qualified doctors start — would help the new doctors begin their careers in a safer and more supportive environment.
I’m sick of hearing how my colleagues will leave the country if they don’t get all that they want, that they’ll somehow be forced on to a plane to the Great Barrier Reef.
No one is forcing anyone to do anything and we have a debt to repay.
Doctors are one in eight of all NHS staff but we get three-fifths of the training budget.
That’s great, of course, because we really do need the best training to treat you. But why can’t clawbacks be written into our contracts so that if we leave as consultants for warmer climes we must pay back our training?
It takes £400,000 to train a GP — and for surgeons and cardiologists it’s even more.
Two thousand senior doctors leaving the UK would cost us a billion. More than twice that number applied to work abroad just last year.
But with competition for training and for medical school so high, I have to admit we’ve been too easy on those wishing to walk off with the loot.
In fact, if we did close this loophole maybe Jeremy Hunt would have more money to spend on nurses, medicines and, yes, on increasing our pay too.
I have seen emails and briefings from BMA negotiators attacking the Government, calling Hunt a liar, calling for other unions and left-wing groups to join pickets.
I won’t breach confidentiality by publishing these documents, you’ll have to take my word for it.
These briefings are not in my name, and they don’t represent the views of most junior doctors I know.
They make it clear to me there are elements of the BMA that wanted a strike from the moment they got their ballot and have no intention of returning to talks.
Where does that leave the public?
Strikes, I fear, will increase in number and severity.
Maybe, in time for May’s local elections, Corbyn will ride to the rescue and save the day from the strikes he prompted. He may even reward some of his Labour friends inside the profession, but the end result will be a conspiracy against the public and the patients.
I support the BMA, I have been a member for ten years. It does vital work for doctors and, ultimately, serves all of our interests.
But it has allowed a few members with a radical left-wing agenda very different to the union’s own to hijack it.
I will lose friends in calling out this failure to avoid strikes where possible.
I remember my early days of training at Sheffield Medical School and its motto shines through: “The art is long and life is short.”
The standing, trust and legacy of the medical profession is bigger than this showdown — and it has to be. There is a difference between being a professional and an employee. This is an employee dispute, but we are professionals crucial to the life of the nation.
We need to start acting like it.
— Dr Jonathan Stanley is a contributor to the Bow Group’s Health Research Team