PATIENT CARE COMES FIRST

Once again senior doctors in the nation’s public health institutions will today withhold overtime services to protest the breakdown in negotiations for a new collective agreement. It will be a case of the economic interests of the doctors — registrars and consultants — versus that of patient care. As an industrial relations tactic their proposed action will clearly be in conflict with the oath they would have taken at the outset of their medical careers, when they had duly and faithfully recited their obligations.

In the end both patients, who may require critically needed medical care, and the image of the doctors will suffer. Meanwhile, it would be in the interests of both, should the senior doctors reflect on and indeed reconsider their planned action. The senior doctors’ dollars and cents interest apart, what of the interests of the patients? Many taxpayers, incidentally the ultimate employers of the senior doctors, who are planning to withhold from them overtime medical attention, are unable, financially, to pay the high costs of medical care at private health institutions. So once again it is the poor who will suffer.

We give an example of private medical costs. Sometime ago, inquiries had been made of a private hospital in North Trinidad with respect to someone in need of urgent medical attention. The patient’s close relative who had contacted the hospital was told in a matter of fact manner that the sum of $25,000 would have to be paid down before the individual could be even admitted. Luckily, for the patient there was room at a public hospital and he and his family were spared the financial burden of the initial $25,000 and heaven knows what more!
Should there be a greater than usual demand for emergency health care, including major operations at the public hospitals, would low income patients, understandably seeking medical care at these health institutions, be required to wait several hours, weeks, months to access professional attention?

We wish to stress that we are not saying that the senior doctors do not have a case for increased remuneration. Instead, we believe that with the uncomfortable high level of imported inflation, that the senior doctors, not unlike all other sectors of the community need to be adequately compensated. Nonetheless, the claims by the senior doctors must be weighed in relation to the demands of other salaried persons and wage earners, many of whom are not without skills and all of whom have needs, admittedly varying. But should the registrars and consultants be allowed to pressure the Joint Negotiating Team of the Regional Health Authorities into acceding to their demands this will have a domino effect on negotiations throughout the country.

Other workers, can advance the argument articulated by the late Calypso great, Cypher: If the priest could play, who is me? The resulting cost push effect may cause a discomfort that the doctors may not envisage. We ask for good sense to prevail with respect to the negotiations. Above all, doctors who have taken an oath to help and heal the sick, must remember that oath.