A York Hospital consultant says he fears for the future of the NHS as he went on strike for the first time today (Thursday).
Dr Kim Last is a consultant in cancer medicine at York Hospital. He is in his 17th year as a consultant, and today was the first time he felt compelled to strike.
He joined thousands of consultants striking for 48 hours from today until 7am on Saturday.
The government has told consultants they will receive a 6% pay rise but the BMA has called this “derisory” and said doctors have seen real-term take-home pay fall by more than a third over the last 14 years.
Dr Last, a BMA rep, told YorkMix: “Our working conditions are getting worse and worse. That’s because we can’t recruit doctors, and we can’t retain doctors.
“And we’ve seen that our pay has just been eroded. It’s really come home to roost with the cost of living crisis. We’re now paid 40% less than we were in 2008.”
A lack of healthcare staff means “we’re simply run into the ground.
“We’ve always given our all and we were on our knees through Covid. And things have just come to a head.”
Record waiting lists are “extremely stressful for us all”, Dr Last said.
“I feel really very hopeless, if I’m honest. What will the future be? How can it carry on when it’s at an unsustainable level of crisis management?”
‘Bursting at the seams’
How does he see the future of the NHS if things don’t change?
“I think it’s finished. It was bursting at the seams – I think it’s burst. That’s how it feels to me, in terms of the relentless pressure on it, the lack of investment and retention of people and the increasing cost and complexity of health care.”
He said 10,000 doctors left the NHS in 2021, half to work abroad and the other half simply left medicine.
“It’s not that we don’t have a plug in the bath anymore. The plug’s taken out and someone’s kicked in the bottom, that’s how it feels.”
Meanwhile, too few new doctors are in training. “We’re not only not training enough, we can’t retain them. Junior doctors are leaving in the first few years.
“Two thirds don’t go on to a further training programme.”
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He said the NHS relied on attracting doctors from abroad. Now the flow is going the other way.
“The salary in the Republic of Ireland, you start on £185,000. Can you imagine being paid that much? I’m nowhere near that after 17 years a consultant.”
By contrast, in England “you graduate now on about £104,000 debt as a medical student. On 9% interest, after five years your loan has actually gone up.
“If you’re going to end up paying back £200,000 – you won’t pay it off before you retire. That’s unimaginable.”
He said the offer of a six per cent pay rise “is another pay cut” – and “no group has lost more pay than doctors since 2008”.
“I’m not settling for that.
“I came into medicine, not for the money. I knew I’d be relatively well paid, but that’s gone.
“I’m not relatively well paid compared to a lawyer, a pilot, a financier, an MP. And it’s not right.”
Thousands of operations and procedures have been cancelled by the strike action, lengthening waiting lists still further.
Dr Last, 55, had this message for patients: “Please realise we don’t do this lightly.
“Think of the fact that in the last year we’ve had two extra bank holidays, for very good reasons. These two days are just like that. It’s s small impact on a massive waiting list already, and it’s to say look – enough’s enough.
“We want to be able to do more. We want to have more colleagues. We want to be able to keep working. But we need some proper recognition and help.”
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