Green Party Candidate Visits Hospital Picket Line.

13 March 2023

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Junior doctors are working in an intolerable situation and felt the only action they could take was to remove their labour. In Southampton members of the BMA are picketing outside University Hospital Southampton (UHS).  

At night a junior doctor is often responsible for 150 seriously ill patients across the hospital and spends the night running from bleep to bleep of people having heart attacks and other serious issues.

The salary they receive as an F1 equates to £14 per hour. With the additional hours they have to work to get their portfolio and CPD(continued professional development) in place to allow the transition to become a consultant they might work as much as an extra 20 hours per week.

The BMA and the Doctors Association both came out in favour of strike action, calling for an increase in salary of 35%. This will address the cuts that have occurred over the past 10 years.

Katherine Barbour a Green Party candidate in the May elections recounted some of the issues bogging down the efficient running of our hospital,

'"A doctor told me about her first day at UHS, she asked where she could put her bag, she was told she had to pay £30 per week for a locker. She said in Turkey doctors are treated differently, there are good facilities for the staff, hot food is freshly prepared for them and they have a staffroom to relax in during the shift."

Sometimes UHS offers wellness sessions to staff but these are at some distance from the hospital and involve travelling to the venue for this session during the day, there is normally no time to get away from work for such a session.

Doctors also told Katherine that colleagues are leaving in droves which leaves the remaining staff trying to cover shifts. Staff are going to work in other countries where salary scales are 3 times higher than in UK. UHS has an overall 10% vacancy rate.

 

 

 Notes:

1/ Tens of thousands of outpatient appointments have been cancelled during the three day action.

2/ Consultants covering junior doctor's shifts could be earning over £200 p/h putting the NHS under further financial worry.

3/ Rishi Sunak continues to betray his father's profession by ignoring the claims by medical staff in the NHS.

 

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