I didn’t have a great start to this rotation because I was told 10 days before I started that it was changing from a community to an hospital based post, but the upside was that I didn’t have to do on calls. I was also told that I could do outpatient clinics weekly if I wanted to, and I agreed to do one a week under supervision of a Consultant Psychiatrist.
3 days before these clinics were to start, I received an email informing me that I was now doing two clinics a week. No explanation or apology for the late notice; it was pretty much a ‘For Your Information’ thing. Ofcourse I was not having it, and refused to do the extra clinics because this wasn’t what I’d agreed to, it hadn’t been discussed with me, and it was unprofessional and just plain RUDE that this was being sprung on me like this.
I feel like this just sums up life as a junior doctor because you’re made to feel like a name on a spreadsheet being moved for service provision, without any consideration of the inconvenience or unfairness of it all. I have a life – being a doctor does not define it! It’s very unfair and I think I was absolutely justified in responding with emphasis on my disappointment in the poor communication and how badly it had all been handled. I am a doctor and deserve to be treated like a professional – the infantilisation and how junior doctors are treated in the NHS is really not okay.
So what was the resolution?
I decided to do the extra clinics because they’d already booked patients for them, and it would have been unfair on the patients to have their slots moved. If they hadn’t already booked these appointments, I would have definitely fought it more, but I chose to let it go.
Psychiatry 2 – 0 Tai
If they backtrack and say I have to do oncalls though, it is definitely NO and I’m ready to escalate to the BMA if necessary. Enough is enough!
Life As A Junior Doctor 