The Last Word: Striking Doctors
As I am sure most South Africans are aware, many doctors working in the public sector have decided to strike. I am a striking doctor. Is this a moral and ethical dilemma? Yes! It most certainly is! Should we be striking? No!!! We most certainly should not be striking. We should be treating our patients in well staffed, well equipped hospitals. We should be working humane hours. We should be valued and respected employees in public service. Instead we have been demeaned and reduced to working the streets with loud speakers and cardboard posters and vuvuzelas. After years of studying and sacrificing, this is what it has come to.
I most certainly do not enjoy striking. To the contrary I have mentioned numerous times this year that I am loving my job. I am also in the process of studying to write my diploma exam in less than two months’ time, so standing on the street corner is not helping me get there!!!
So why am I striking?
Well, in June 2008, there was an agreement in parliament that doctors would be granted occupation specific dispensation as a means of increasing our packages and making jobs in the public sector look more attractive to doctors, who are leaving in droves for greener pastures all around the world, most popularly Canada, Ireland and England at present. To date, not one doctor in the public sector has seen even a cent of this money which was supposedly budgeted for. Instead there are new cabinet positions being created…Inauguration parties are thrown… Employees of the government with the right contacts and the right businesses are awarded million rand contracts…
When I check the classifieds in the newspaper I see that a parliamentary clerk earns around R700 000 per annum plus benefits. I wonder how many years he had to study in order to be qualified for that position.
I then see that a chief specialist in the field of surgery is paid around R450 000 per annum. I know how long it takes to become a chief specialist. The buzz is that doctors study for 7 years. What hogwash!!!
My seven years are up a long time ago and I’m still studying. All good doctors are constantly striving towards excellence and so need to keep up with an ever developing field. Good doctors never stop studying, even if they’ve been in their field for 12 years or 20 years. A specialist will have completed medical school and internship, will have studied to specialise while working full time (plus overtime) and possibly having to deal with a family as well. Specialisation takes a minimum of 4 years, during this time you write 3 major exams: Primary exams, Intermediate exams and Secondary or Final exams. I know for anaesthetics, the primary exam consists of 3 papers: Physics, Pharmacology and Physiology. These are huge subjects. You are expected to pass these exams while studying after hours and if you’re lucky you may have lectures once a week. We also pay thousands of rands to write these exams, there is no subsidy or reimbursement from the employer. And even after these 12 years, you are still not qualified enough to be a chief specialist, you may be a junior specialist. One of the surgery specialists in our hospital is being paid the salary of a principal medical officer. There are people who completed their community service at the end of last year who earn the same amount of money! It’s preposterous!!! He was promised a specialist position, but now he is told there is not enough money and he doesn’t have enough experience! After 12 years of working towards it!
I could go on about how an ex teacher was the MEC for health in KZN. She was in charge of provincial health even though she had never worked a day in a clinic or hospital in her life. She had no idea what it meant if there were no syringes in stock at a hospital. She would say something like “We need to use our resources more carefully” meanwhile the yearly calenders, handed out at hospitals and clinics, are covered in photos of her from different angles and in different outfits and she travels by helicopter when visiting hospitals.
With no idea of the implications of ARVs in pregnancy, she condemned doctors in a little rural hospital for taking the initiative to comply with WHO recommendations and rapped them over the knuckles for “insubordination”. Insubordination to whom may I ask? Does this not imply a figure of authority? Excuse me if I do not regard an ex teacher as an authority in medicine!!
So why are we striking?
We’re striking because we’re fed up. We are burnt out. We work 32 hour shifts and are thrown peanuts for which we are expected to be grateful. We are expected to work withouth the proper equipment. When patients wait in line for 6 hours, it’s not the politicians they get angry with, it’s the health care workers. When medication runs out because there is no money to buy more, the doctors have to explain it to the patients. When there is no transport for a patient to be referred to the next level of health care, when there is no intravenous fluid, when there is no electricity, no politician has ever come and apologised to patients for the poor level of service they received, it’s the health care workers who have to deal with this and be blamed for it and have to work around it.
We see death everyday. We deal with the reality of HIV and AIDS and we stand and cry when children die and we have to tell the parents that all our efforts were futile.
So I am striking. I am saying that I am worth more. I deserve more. I work damn hard, in fact I work 3 jobs to be able to survive. I deserve more!
