WHAT NEXT DOCTORS?

WHAT next, we wonder, will our doctors come up with? At one time they were taking action to insist on recognition of their new association. Then we heard arguments about the salaries of Tobago doctors.

Now, when they appear to have been approaching a stage of full recovery from their recent “sickness,” a new reason for staying away from their jobs has surfaced. This time, while they have agreed to accept the terms offered by their employers, there is a condition attached to their return to work — the immediate cancellation of the order which directed the Medical Chief of Staff, Dr Austin Trinidade, to proceed on compensatory leave. To say that this is clearly unacceptable is to state the obvious.  The order concerning Dr Trinidade is not subject to negotiation by either the Public Services Association, the recognised bargaining unit for doctors employed by the Ministry of Health and/or the Regional Health Authorities, or the Medical Professionals Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MPATT). 

Dr Trinidade’s being directed to proceed on leave is not only the prerogative of his employer, but because of the Medical Chief of Staff’s managerial position he cannot be considered as part of the bargaining unit. So that the junior doctors have no locus standi with respect to the issue. In any case, Dr Trinidade appears to have the matter in hand and is talking about legal action which he is perfectly entitled to take if he considers that the Ministry has acted unlawfully. Despite this, what has emerged is that MPATT was seeking to use their ‘being prepared to return to work’ as a lever to force the cancellation of the order requiring Dr Trinidade to take his compensatory leave. But even had the order been negotiable, and Dr Trinidade been part of the bargaining unit, the representatives of the junior doctors (not the PSA) are not seeking to negotiate, but have instead issued, what is in effect, a do it or else demand. The “or else” being that Trinidade must first be allowed to return to work, before any resumption of duties by the doctors.

Should the authorities give in to this, is there any guarantee that new demands would not be made by the doctors before they could be persuaded, or worse, persuade themselves to return in full complement to the wards and clinics? Trinidad and Tobago has long grown tired of this off and on industrial action by junior doctors, which has left hospital wards unmanned or undermanned, and denied patients, many of them seriously ill, the right to quality medical care, paid for out of their personal income tax and health surcharge. It has represented an offhand dismissal of their health concerns, and in effect made them virtual pawns.

The junior doctors’ insistence that the order sending Trinidade on compensatory leave should be rescinded as a pre-condition for their return to work is, however unwittingly, an attempt by them to bargain with the Administration on behalf of the San Fernando General Hospital’s Medical Chief of Staff, vis a vis his being sent on leave. Would the same doctors be uncomfortable should Dr Trinidade find it necessary to discipline and/or report any of them to the Ministry of Health for the thinly veiled industrial action taken, or for an infraction committed subsequent to his and their return — Dr Trinidade from compensatory leave, and the junior doctors from “sick leave”? Perhaps even more ludicrous than the doctors’ demand on the Dr Trinidade compensatory leave issue, was their reported stand that the acting Medical Chief of Staff, Dr Anand Chatergoon, was unacceptable “in view of his villification of doctors, his intimidation and his abuse of authority while in office.” Unfortunately, the junior doctors have refrained from explaining to the nation what they meant by their charges of intimidation and ‘abuse of authority’. But then their failure to do this may have been better for all of the parties concerned!