Should interns sickout?

WERE the interns at the San Fernando General Hospital, who called in sick last week and tacitly joined the current doctors’ sickout pressured to take action in an industrial issue in which they are not directly involved? And if so, by whom?

Interns, while they are graduate doctors are in the process of receiving practical training, and although they receive a stipend, cannot be regarded as a class of workers directly concerned in the ongoing industrial action taken by House Officers et cetera to force Government to grant them salary increases. No one, for example, should have attempted to coerce any of the interns into “withholding their services” from the health institutions in which, under a carefully structured programme, they receive practical, as opposed to the largely theoretical training afforded them at medical school. To have done so would have been immoral, particularly if it had been a case of the proverbial Sword of Damocles.

If the interns acted wholly on their own, independent of any outside pressures, but rather in a show of solidarity with the doctors who reported sick, and with the idea that whatever gains the House Officers won would one day be theirs also, this is still open to question. We wish to stress that the interns can not plead that they were seeking their economic interests. In turn, they cannot claim that they were and are entitled to give more than mere moral support to the industrial action, for this is like the graduate doctors “taking bush tea for another man’s fever”. Already, the Communications Director of the South West Regional Health Authority, Zenobia Nanan, has pointed out the grave concern of the San Fernando General Hospital’s Administration at this clearly unexpected, if not undesired turn of events. Admittedly, only a few of the hospital’s interns have been reported as calling in sick. But it is the principle of interns taking this action that concerns us.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health, Colm Imbert’s announcement on Thursday, that the first batch of Cuban medical personnel — 37 doctors and 45 nurses — would arrive within the next month must encourage a sense of relief in the general community. Inferred by the Minister’s statement is that there are yet more Cuban doctors and nurses to be contracted to take up duty in Trinidad and Tobago. Government’s action is not one of “strike breaking”, as put forward by some persons when the matter of bringing in Cuban doctors was first broached some time ago. The Cuban doctors and nurses have been recruited to fill existing vacancies, and persons seeking medical attention at the various public health institutions, who have been affected by the current doctors’ sickout, are certain to welcome the arrival of the Cubans.