I was on-call today. At the end of the day, I stopped to talk to Dr. R. Now, I love Dr. R. She is funny, kind, helpful – and above all, an amazing doc with endless compassion for older patients.
She tells me she is leaving Ireland in 2 weeks.
I hate June and July. July is Changeover, properly.
But June is bad.
June is the month, every year, when we say goodbye to too many of our colleagues as they leave for UK, US, NZ, Australia, Canada – or even back home to farther afield. One specialist unit in a major hospital in the city put out a memo this week advising that they are simply not adequately staffed until July.
Why would Dr. R. leave? Is it the racism? Barely-concealed misogyny? Poor pay and working conditions? The fact that she has been a doctor for 10 YEARS and the current system recognises none of her experience and classifies a qualified, adult professional as a “junior” – nor allows her on a recognised training scheme (doing the EXACT same job for more money) because she is “non-EU”.
Even if it it wasn’t racism or misogyny or complete lack of career options – maybe she would be rethinking the working conditions.? I’d say so because I rang another specialist service this week to make a routine, non-urgent referral. Hospital switchboard put me through to a doctor – 3300 km away on their annual leave. Who still felt obligated to start taking details and apologised that they couldn’t see the xray….they felt they still needed to field calls for their consultant (the consultant was in Dublin.) If you are wondering – I promptly rang the consultant directly.
Dr. R. is actually lucky. At least she won’t be scrambling for accommodation and childcare/changing schools as she is forced to pick up her spouse and children to move across country every 6-12 months.
Our loss in NHS’ gain.
The sad part here is Dr. R. may not even recognise herself in this post. I titled her Dr. R. here mostly because no one has called her “Dr.” in at least 5 years. Calling her by her first name does have benefits and is actively promoted in the HSE but unlike older Irish males, but the untitling of a young woman of colour, has led to her often being mistaken for everything from a student to a nurse to a trainee doc with far less senior clinical responsibility than she carries daily.
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