Fed up with a government he said does not seem to care, Poh Wang plans to go on strike with tens of thousands of other British junior doctors next week, saying he is overworked, underpaid and burdened with a student loan he cannot imagine ever paying off.
The 28-year-old said he and his colleagues have been pushed to the brink after below-inflation pay rises collided with the surging cost of living, leaving him questioning how he can pay off more than ￡85,000 (US$101,450) of student debt.
On top of that, Wang remains incensed at his treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he felt powerless to cope with an onslaught of patients and unable to pay his bills.
Photo: Reuters
He joins junior doctors across England who are set to go on a three-day strike on Monday, protesting low pay and burnout that risks driving staff out from the health service as it tackles record-high patient waiting lists.
“We’ve reached a boiling point where we have had enough,” said Wang, a council member of the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents doctors and medical students.
“The anger is palpable that we have been used and abused and devalued to this extent,” he said.
The son of Chinese immigrants who ran a takeaway restaurant in northern England, Wang became a doctor because he enjoyed helping people. Having attended medical school for six years, he has worked for five, two in specialty training in psychiatry.
Junior doctors are qualified physicians, often with several years of experience, who work under the guidance of senior doctors and represent a large part of the country’s medical community.
He is paid about ￡40,000 a year for his base 40 hours a week, and works additional hours that can add up to 48 hours. He rents a room in a shared apartment in west London, for which he pays about ￡1,000 a month.
Early in the pandemic, Wang worked as an emergency medicine doctor in south London where he and colleagues had to make difficult decisions, and comfort those patients who could not be admitted into intensive care units because they were full.
“We went above and beyond to do everything that we could,” he said.
Struggling to get by financially, as food inflation hits 17 percent in Britain, Wang said that he and his colleagues are increasingly bitter about the past few years.
The BMA said that junior doctors’ take-home pay has been cut by more than a quarter over the past 15 years.
It said its members voted overwhelmingly to strike.
The walkouts by junior doctors is likely to put additional pressure on the state-funded National Health Service, which is experiencing waves of strike action by nurses, ambulance workers and other staff.
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