The NHS has long been understaffed. Public consultation for the 2000 NHS Plan revealed that the public wanted “more and better paid staff using new ways of working” and “improvements in local hospitals and surgeries”.1 The resulting plan included:
• 7,500 more consultants and 2,000 more GPs
• 20,000 extra nurses and 6,500 extra therapists
- 1,000 more medical school places1
At the time staff nurses and house officer’s were paid about £14,400 (equivalent to £22,320 today) and about £16,710 (equivalent to £25,900 today) respectively.2,3 My local general hospital had just been closed despite public protests and its A&E department where my life was saved a couple of times, has never been replaced. A nurse’s starting salary is now about £21,478 while a house officer’s basic salary is £22,636.4,5 So what happened to the “better paid staff” demanded by the public in response to the NHS Plan consultation?
Junior doctor strikes have been planned for 1/12/2015, 8/12/2015 and 16/12/2015 because the government expects junior doctors to work more anti-social hours without financial compensation in an organisation where they already voluntarily work extra unpaid hours to plug holes due to dangerous understaffing.6 What does this mean to me as a patient whose life has already been saved by the NHS on more than one occasion?
I do not want to be a patient during the junior doctors’ strikes, but who plans to be a patient? When I travel on motorways I have faith that should there be a motor-vehicle pile-up that I survive, I will be evacuated by (overworked underpaid) paramedics to the nearest A&E department or trauma centre. When I cross a road, I look both ways first, but if a speeding driver or motorcyclist comes around a corner I have some faith that the NHS will provide for me. The same applies when I go out at night at the risk of being mugged, or go to pubs or clubs where drunken violence is a real risk. We never really know when we are going to get ill, and though consultants will be providing medical care the quality of care with reduced staffing levels will obviously be worse. I am not going to take the same risks I have been doing on a weekly basis my whole adult life, because though the probability of things going wrong is very small, the potential consequences are going to be a lot worse. If I had elective surgery between now and 17/12/2015 I would cancel it, because I would not want to risk still being in hospital during the junior doctors’ strikes in the event of unexpected complications of surgery.
Hopefully though, the strike action will lead to a wake-up call for the government regarding underfunding of the NHS. I hope other NHS staff organise strikes too, until they all get a fair deal and a future, publicly owned NHS has been secured.
1. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130107105354/http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_118523.pdf
4. https://www.rcn.org.uk/support/pay_and_conditions/pay_rates_2014-15
5. https://twitter.com/VenthanMailoo/status/660727815717961728
6. http://bjgp.org/content/64/623/295
