Why I'll be protesting tomorrow

On Monday the medics will be demonstrating. The proposed changes to junior doctors’ contracts place patient safety at risk. In short, pay will be slashed and ‘sociable hours’ will be extended to 7am through to 10pm Monday to Saturday, normalising fifteen hour working days. Changes to pay progression will disadvantage part time trainees – women taking maternity leave, amongst others. I must make myself very clear here, this is not about money. This is about patient safety and doctors’ safety, but the two are inextricably linked. No one wants to be treated by an exhausted, demoralised, overworked doctor.

The proposed changes to junior doctors’ contracts place patient safety at risk.

Our profession is already dogged by burnout, plus increased rates of depression and suicide. Doctors regularly work well beyond their contractual obligations and are picked up and dropped to wherever they are needed in the country. Never once have they made a fuss; they get on with the job in hand, and do whatever it takes to ensure patients receive quality treatment.

As students we take a kicking, racking up huge debts and expected to live on very little funding. As discussed here, the vast majority of senior medical students cannot afford basic living costs, forcing many to take extreme measures simply to stay in medical school. We knew when we chose medicine that we would make sacrifices, but I never thought so many would be forced to put physical and mental wellbeing on the line.

My other half is a junior doctor, soon I will be too. We rarely see each other, he lost 5kg in his first month because he can rarely eat at work and I have never seen him so tired. Next summer he will be moved to a hospital in Brighton. We will have to make it work. What will become of us when the new contracts come into place? Just like our patients, we have a right to a decent home life and a family. It’s starting to feel like I will be forced to choose between career and family. If that isn’t a step backwards, what is?

ICSM final year Laura Wynn-Lawrence told me, “I never thought I'd be disenchanted with the job before I'd even got there. I didn't go into medicine for the money, but I feel that this pay cut shows how under valued and ill-appreciated junior doctors are. It's ridiculous that I have worked so hard for 6 years, with thousands of pounds of student debt to earn just over the living wage. It isn't sustainable. This move is likely to push the best and the brightest out of the NHS and into countries they feel their skills will be better appreciated.”

Medics moving abroad is a major threat under the proposed contracts. Early this week reports circulated of an unprecedented spike in applications to work abroad. Trent Allen, a fourth year, wrote to me saying, “in light of this news, I immediately went and researched working in Canada and New Zealand”. I too have considered it, but can’t bring myself to leave. It presents an economical conundrum too, as pointed out by another of my colleagues, Clay Robinson. “If even one in 10 extra junior docs trained in the UK leave to work elsewhere because of the new contracts, that’s £150k of government subsidised medical education down the drain, escaped from the UK economy.”

In the end, everything comes down the patients – the reason we choose medicine. Imagine someone close to you requires surgery. Would you like the person who opens them up to be on their 10th or 11th day of 12+ hour shifts? Would you like them to be underfed having not had time for lunch? Only running on instant coffee and a few hours of restless sleep? Would you place your life, your children’s lives, or your parents’ lives in the hands of this person, or would you rather place your trust in a doctor who is happy and healthy?

We know from the years before the European Working Time Directive, designed to prevent healthcare professionals working excessive hours that exhaustion leads to mistakes. I do not want to put my future patients at risk, but I may not have a choice if the powers that be force these changes.

We are demonstrating for the first time in 40 years to save lives. Who will defend patients if we don’t?

The protest is tomorrow evening in Westminster. Find out more here.