Sarah Nicmanis, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate and Green Party City Council Candidate for Coleridge, Naomi Bennett, Green Party City Councillor in Abbey, and Jacqueline Whitmore, Green Party City Council Candidate for Queen Edith’s ward, met with Junior Doctors striking at Addenbrookes on Friday morning.
Junior doctors who currently make up about half of the medical workforce [1] have seen a fall in their pay since 2008, which simply does not match up to the intensified demands of the job today. Greens understand that, like with our teachers and our nurses, life has become increasingly more difficult for the junior doctor which has led to them striking with heavy hearts. However, the brave commitment to see this change through is necessary to prevent further damage to our precious NHS by our government.
The Greens talked to the junior doctors at the picket line who said they are striking for the following reasons: due to staff shortages, it’s difficult for them to have annual leave approved; often during a 12 hour shift of constant firefighting, junior doctors do not even get a single break; many shifts run well over the contracted 12 hours; and many have over £250,000 of debt from the student loans incurred during the six years of training and lost earnings which the current pay starting at £14 an hour does not do anything to address if you take the expensive cost of living and the exorbitant rents in Cambridge into account.
Tanmay Anand, a key member from the local British Medical Association membership and a Junior Doctor, pointed to what this lapse in investment means for patients: “What I worry about as a junior doctor in training is that the quality of healthcare that you provide to society is impacted on how good that system of healthcare is. When it comes to those complex cases, the opportunity to train up consultants to be completely competent and capable in handling those worse case scenarios is slipping. One of my biggest fears is that after all of these years, this immense investment in time, in money, in higher education, in debt, in how we live our life – at the end of it, we won’t have the main thing we want to show for it which is that expertise and that competence as fully qualified consultants to deal with whatever comes through the door in the hospital and deal with it in a way that we can feel proud of.”
Sarah Nicmanis, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Cambridge Green Party said:
“The junior doctors are doing a humanely wise thing by striking and bringing the British people’s attention to an NHS in crisis. Junior doctors must be valued so that this caring profession can continue to function. Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party stands firmly with our junior doctors to prevent further decimation of our beloved NHS.”
The Green Party is committed to properly funding our NHS and would raise funding by £6bn a year until 2030, with a further £1bn per year for nursing higher education.
