If anyone had approached me to write an online blog a few months ago I’d have probably answered with something unprintable. In fact today I can already feel a level of embarrassment that I’m going to have to do my best to control over the next few days.
The thing about being a doctor is that you generally get to ask all the questions and hardly ever have to reveal anything of yourself at all, and you get pretty comfortable with that. With everything that has been going on around me in recent months I have had to learn a new set of rules.
This involves being pushy and thrusting our pressure group Remedy UK forward at every opportunity to try to raise its profile and achieve its goal. It involves writing press releases, calling up journalists, organizing marches, speaking at conferences, going on TV, talking to politicians, mediating heated meetings and now… writing blogs.
I mostly just want to quietly carry on with my training in Orthopaedic Surgery. And yet here I am shamelessly exposing myself to all and sundry on the internet to gain some publicity for the junior doctors crisis. It was never the plan.
Monday is always an interesting day. At the moment I am doing a clinical research post at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore (RNOH) and we have an academic meeting on Monday mornings.
Today I’m going with my boss down to Guys hospital in London to deliver a lecture on a special type of knee operation for early-onset arthritis. He’s been doing this at our hospital and is teaching some of the other doctors the technique. London teaching hospitals can be quite territorial, so you can occasionally get a frosty reception from other surgeons. I used to work at Guys so wont take any stick from that lot.
Then it’s off to clinic in the central London RNOH centre to see patients for follow-up from previous operations, or new patients who may need an operation. It’s a lovely old building just off Regents Park that really feels like you’re back in the fifties. I always feel like I should be smoking a pipe as I am examining and treating patients there.
Finally it’s back to my flat for our regular 7.30 Monday meeting for Remedy UK to continue the struggle to save the careers of about 14,000 junior doctors in the UK who are facing career termination in August. This reality is what propelled me into the bizarre world of political campaigning. If the new government initiative called "Modernising Medical Careers" goes through our country is going to lose a massive amount of some of the most brilliant doctors, and I for one am not going to let that happen without a fight.
I won’t bore you with the detail right now, but it seems like political engineering gone mad, and all rationality has been thrown out the window.
If you do want the detail it is all at our website called www.remedyuk.org
Carry on Doctor!
Posted by: Khalid 30 Apr 2007 19:10:46
I am full of admiration for you and Remedy for making a stand against this outrageous selection system to select junior doctors. Our son is an SHO, currently working a 91 hour week of night duty (that is if he leaves on time) - and after 8 years of training has the chance of one interview and if unsuccessful then that is the end of his career - the NHS is a monopoly employer and there is no where else where he could continue his training in this country. He, like all the others, are worried to death about their future, worried as to whether they will have to emigrate to New Zealand or Australia or else change careers. Worried about how to pay their mortgages in August. What an absolute waste of tax payers money (it costs £250,000 to train each one of them) not to mention the loss to our health service of the very best and brightest of the young people of our country who chose to pursue a career in medicine because they wanted to help the sick, instead of heading for the city for huge salaries. As parents we have watched them endlessly studying, working weekends, Christmas, Bank holidays, watch as they pay out of their own money for training courses that can no longer be paid for by the Health Trusts as their training budgets have been raided to bring the NHS out of deficit and now watch as they despair at this unbelievable unfolding catastrophe. And now, to add further insult the website has been declared insecure and personal information of junior doctors has been accessible on line - names, addresses, telephone numbers, religion, sexual orientation
- the saga just goes on and on but meanwhile, under all this stress, the junior doctors continue to care for their patients. How much longer can this farce continue?
Posted by: Elizabeth Pitt 30 Apr 2007 12:15:24