Article
I spent five thoroughly enjoyable years as a Senior Registrar at the Royal London Hospital, during an extremely exciting time in orthodontics. The straight wire technique, while frowned upon by the more ‘traditionalist’ orthodontic training establishments, was being championed by Bob Lee, Bob Kirschen, Maurice Berman, and David DiBiase and was taught to all the RLH registrars from the ‘get go’. Philip Turton was the hospital manager, assisted by one secretary and one assistant, and everything worked absolutely fine. The consultants organised everything efficiently and effectively, ably assisted by senior nursing staff. The general feeling was that the clinicians were happy and proud to work for the NHS.
Over the past decades, we have witnessed an exponential rise in the numbers of managers, assistant managers, accountants and procurement ‘specialists’, which in my opinion has drained the money that has been generously allocated to the NHS over the last 30 years. These are changes for which I cannot identify any discernible clinical benefit… and they have certainly done nothing to reduce the 7.7 million patients currently on NHS waiting lists.
For the many of you who have dealt with commissioning in primary care, you will have your own stories and experiences, and I am sure you will have the same frustrations and feelings that perhaps the wrong people are running the asylum!
As I type this, I am on strike, as is almost every junior doctor and hopefully every senior doctor in the land, all demanding pay restoration to 2008 levels, which would equate to a 35% pay rise. My wife Alison is on the picket lines for a second day running. Meanwhile, the Health Secretary stated on Radio 4 last week that consultants get a tax-free pension of £73K per year (if only) and this morning, again on Radio 4, it was stated that the average consultant salary is £134K per year, which from my research is a grossly inflated figure and therefore blatantly untrue. But how can they get away with these statements?
Junior doctors, using social media (particularly Reddit) and DoctorsVote, can thankfully now anonymously discuss how the system is currently failing them, and can come up with actionable solutions, without their career progression being threatened. They have secured a 98% vote for further strike action. This group of revolutionary young people have gained a powerful voice at the British Medical Association and are determined to see change, as things certainly cannot continue as they are.
Hospital managers, together with politicians, have had 30 years to try and make things work in the NHS and in my view, they have failed miserably. Let's see if this mobilised group of young hospital doctors can do any better to change working conditions for all the clinicians working for the NHS, which was, in the past, quite rightly considered to be the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of this once proud country.
Declaration of interest: While close to retirement ourselves, directly, we will be largely unaffected by the outcome of this industrial action. Although, indirectly, I hope there is an NHS to look after us and others in our dotage. Our three children have just started out on their careers as Junior Hospital clinicians in the NHS and I wish them all the luck in the world!