“We’re understaffed and underpaid, and why would you want to stay in that situation?”
Dan Veness, 23, started working as a junior doctor this year, but already he can see the huge problems the NHS is facing. Standing on the picket line at Manchester Royal Infirmary, he is taking part in the first joint strike between junior doctors and consultants ever to happen in England.
Like every doctor here, Veness says the hospital where he works, in Trafford, is routinely understaffed.
“I have seen days where we have had, I would say, dangerous [levels of] staffing. We haven’t had a registrar on call, we haven’t been able to find a locum, so it’s just been the most junior members of staff, including myself, looking after an entire hospital, without a consultant or a registrar, which is terrifying, not only for myself, but for patients.”
As a child, Veness relied on the NHS. He had septicaemia and chronic asthma attacks, and vowed that he would “give back” by joining the healthcare profession. But the long hours and relatively low starting wages – Veness is paid about £29,000 and routinely works more than 50 hours a week – are taking their toll.
“It’s been difficult to actually have your own life outside medicine, and yes, I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t really realise how bad it would be,” he says.
He says he understands why many doctors are leaving England for better pay abroad. “I believe strongly in the NHS and its values, but there’s also only so much I can take.”
Beside him, Kiloran Metcalfe, a paediatric surgery trainee, is angry that the pay deal for junior doctors in England, a 6% rise, is so much lower than the cumulative 17.5% pay increase agreed for junior doctors in her native Scotland.
“My friends in Scotland never went on strike because grown-up talks were had and decisions were made, and they’ve reached a deal that everyone’s happy with. I feel we should be able to do the same.”
The 31-year-old says that staffing shortages and government cuts have made her job of caring for children and babies in sometimes life-threatening situations very difficult.
“This weekend, I was working full night shifts. We cover all of the north-west, so we were getting calls from all over the place with sick children, plus the ones in our local area coming in.
“We’re a really small team, and we want to help these sick children and their families, to give them the time and the dedicated care that they deserve, and you’re just run ragged.”
More senior medics on the picket line say they are concerned that working in the NHS is becoming undesirable to young people and that, after they retire, there will not be enough new recruits to replace them.
“I’m a very experienced clinician, and without people like us you can’t train the doctors,” says Charles Sherrington, a consultant neurologist at Salford Royal hospital.
Sherrington has worked in the NHS for 40 years and is paid about £110,000, a sum he acknowledges is high compared with the average UK wage. But he says that, for the level of expertise and long working hours, consultants should expect more – and would get it in the private sector.
“The responsibilities I carry, I set up the stroke service in Manchester, saving lives every day. The responsibility of dealing with death and difficulty like that is huge, and I could get paid twice as much going somewhere else.
“It makes me feel sad. I do not want to be here. I would rather be having the joy of looking after our patients in clinics. I understand how people feel about cancellations but the fact is the NHS will not survive.”
