The historic medical staff strike has put British patients in difficult conditions.
In an article, the “Day Site” magazine discussed the difficult and difficult conditions of patients in England in the shadow of the longest strike of young doctors in this country in protest of wages and wrote: Young doctors in England have started the longest historical strike in this country since Wednesday. which has had severe consequences.
As he left Kingston Hospital, a hospital in the suburbs of London, an elderly man announced that he had been waiting for his prostate operation for about a year. He announced: This operation has now been canceled three times. According to him, sometimes there was a strike, sometimes the equipment was not needed or the employees were absent. He emphasized that his examinations had to be repeated every time. Of course, he, who came to the hospital with his wife, announced that none of them were angry about the strikes. The man’s wife said that the government is to blame for spending too little on the health system.
Young doctors make up about half of the total medical workforce in the UK. These are doctors who are training to become specialists. They want substantial wages. This work stoppage started on Wednesday and will continue until Tuesday of next week if these doctors do not agree with the Ministry of Health. It will be the longest strike in Britain’s healthcare system since the war.
According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday, the NHS has now begun to collect evidence of the damage caused by these strikes to patients. The NHS said that in London alone, 330,000 operations and examinations were canceled due to the strikes. Since junior doctors in the UK began their protests and strikes in December 2022, more than 1.2 million surgeries and medical appointments have been canceled across the country.
No wonder the waiting list for patients waiting for treatment has reached a record 7.7 million, according to the British Medical Association (BMA). This is embarrassing for Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, who wanted to reduce the waiting list until the election. Of course, the British government complained that the strikes were politically motivated.
However, the patience of young intern doctors in England has been lost. According to the BMA, their starting salary is £32,000 (€37,000) in the first year and that’s after five years at university, while tuition alone costs £10,000 or more a year. Physician assistants in the UK earn the equivalent of around €3,000 a month, while in Germany they earn around €5,000 in their first year at a hospital – and generally don’t have to pay for their training.
After approval, two years of initial training followed by four to eight years of specialist training in the UK. Salaries for doctors increase over time: three to eight years after being licensed to practice, most trainees earn around £63,000 (€73,000). But the large number of hours spent in hospitals is backbreaking for them. Many doctors complain that private life is hardly possible for them.
“I can’t even go on strike,” says a frustrated pediatrician at a London hospital who completed his residency last year. His wife is a physician assistant who is training in anesthesia. He said: I cannot work without the salary that I lose every day due to the strike. We have debt. We cannot live on low salaries: three children, high inflation, and expensive mortgages.
This young doctor, who does not want to give his name, is very upset. He supports strikes. He says: After ten years of education, we cannot have a normal life. He also does not like the media to complain that strikes harm the health system and patients. He says: The British government spends less on health care than any other country in Europe. This is why we are behind everywhere: in the fight against cancer, in the case of Corona. This is the problem.
The British Medical Association has said that salaries would need to rise by 35% to offset this real pay cut, but the government won’t do that. According to the government’s calculations, the real salary of young doctors “only” decreased by 16%. The government has proposed an 8.8 percent wage increase for this year and another three percent increase, which doctors reject. This dispute has lasted for months.