Stories from the picket lines — Bristol

In the second instalment from the picket lines, junior doctors in Bristol explain why they are prepared to take the drastic measure of stopping work There was a festive spirit outside St Michael's Hospital in Bristol with doctors singing and cheering as passing traffic beeped in support. ‘It's not about the money,’ the trainees chorused in an adapted version of the Jessie J song Pricetag. ‘Could you save a life if you've been up all night?’ The words struck a chord with Catharine Brindley, a specialty trainee 3 in paediatrics, who did an 80-hour week in the run up to Christmas, including five hours of free overtime. ‘Obviously I wasn't at my best in the 80th hour,' she said. ‘I heard a radio interview with [health secretary Jeremy] Hunt the other morning and he said the issue was a difficult topic to discuss at 7.15am. 'I thought, "do you have to write up a neonatal drug infusion when a decimal point out would be fatal error?" Because that really is difficult.’ Normally, Dr Brindley would be spending today on the postnatal wards, checking on all the newborn babies and talking to parents. She said it was a great irony that doctors working so hard to support families would be denied their own decent family life under the proposed contract. ‘We spend so much time helping other people's families. But when it comes to our own families, they don't see the best of us,’ she said. ‘They see the exhausted person; they see ...
Source: BMA News - Category: UK Health Source Type: news