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As newly posted job adverts for administrative roles within the Health service come under fire for their large salaries of up to £74,000, a local junior doctor has opened up about the "demanding, wearying and gruelling" reality of their work, which her colleagues believe demands a "fair" salary reflecting their "life or death" responsibility.
Two Health admin roles – a 'Rota Change Manager' and a 'Freedom to Speak Up Guardian' – were recently advertised on the Government's website for an annual salary of up to £67,874 and £74,599 respectively.
Consultant Cardiologist Dr Andrew Mitchell took to social media to slam the Rota Change Manager salary as "another example of where pay structures are so wrong for medical staff morale, retention and recruitment".
Dr Mitchell criticised the renumeration for being over one-and-a-half times the salary of junior doctors, who he said "have more responsibility and risk", while Dr Moyra Journeaux, a registered nurse and postgraduate programme manager, branded the advert as "atrocious".
Another example of where pay structures are so wrong for medical staff morale, retention and recruitment. A rota change manager being offered over 1.5 times the salary of the Junior Doctors who have more responsibility and risk https://t.co/JyPI3n79R2 #payrestoration pic.twitter.com/p2JFYU9uai
— Dr Andrew Mitchell (@mitcharj) December 6, 2023
"How is this allowed to happen? People do not realise that junior doctors with 5+ years at university and 2 years foundation programme are among the lowest paid healthcare workers," she said.
The Health Department said that the Rota Change role – which is no longer live on the Government's jobs page – had been "appropriately evaluated", and that junior doctor pay was in line with the NHS, with a Jersey supplement.
However, a local junior doctor has described the pay of admin staff compared to junior doctors as "very unfair and disheartening".
Ella – whose name has been changed to protect her anonymity – described the work of a junior doctor as "long and complex, mentally taxing and often emotional". She opened up to Express about the demands of the role, and morale among her colleagues...
"I feel it is worthwhile pointing out that the title junior doctor doesn’t refer to a student or being ‘nearly a doctor’. The majority of doctors are junior doctors, who make up the bulk of the workforce. You can remain a junior doctor for your entire career."
Pictured: The 'Freedom to Speak Up Guardian' role is being advertised for between £67,874 and £74,599 per year.
She continued: "Our standard days are long and complex, mentally taxing and often emotional.
"Our night shifts – particularly weekends – are well known to be demanding, wearying and gruelling due to the sheer stress. We simply brace ourselves to go through the 13-hour on-call shifts with no breaks and often failing to get a single opportunity to properly eat."
She added: "Seeing these administrative pay offers makes you question why you go through so many years of unremitting (and expensive) study only to find yourself on a salary that cannot even allow you to rent a property here with enough left over to save."
Ella provided a breakdown of a day in her life – outlining an on-call shift that she completed last weekend.
She explained: "My day began at 8am by doing ward rounds on Saturday and Sunday, seeing the sickest patients with senior doctors.
"I had a huge list of jobs to complete for these patients, varying from chasing blood results to vetting and checking scan reports which could have results so serious that I would immediately have to organise transport to Southampton for urgent treatments for those patients.
"On top of this I am constantly being bleeped by the ward nurses to perform various jobs: assessing seriously unwell patients with dropping blood pressure, irregular heart rates, decreasing consciousness, catheters that aren’t draining, spiking temperatures as well as prescription changes.
"In between trying to ensure my patients are safely followed up from the ward round of the morning, I am also firefighting a myriad of health problems. I am now alone on the ward, as my registrar is now clerking new patients coming in the doors of A&E – which is always busiest on the weekends.
"This means the responsibility to recognise and treat deteriorating patients is solely on me – a junior doctor."
Ella continued: "Later in the day, my cardiac arrest bleep goes off and I run to take my part in a team trying to revive a patient who ultimately dies. The family come in as we stop compressions and understandably, they sob and scream and beg us to continue, desperate not to lose their loved one so early. It falls to me as the only doctor present to document the time of death and I have to run into a side room to cry at what I have just witnessed and experienced as a junior doctor.
"It sinks in that this will become my reality at work. I ask myself if it will ever get easier to be part of the team that actively make these decisions, to always see families destroyed by grief. However, I only have a few minutes to pull myself together, because I have to return to the sick patients on the ward and continue working through my jobs and relentless bleeps to ensure they all remain safe."
She explained that this is "just a weekend on call shift for a junior doctor".
"A young adult, newly qualified and possessing nothing but a daunting amount of debt to my name from all my years as a medical student. All that hard work and study to get me here for this moment, to be stressed and pressured; tested emotionally, physically and intellectually.
"While I am well aware that I chose this profession, it was not forced onto me. It happened only after many years of hard work and determination and I am so proud I got here. Being a doctor is far more than your average 9-5 and deserves to have a salary that reflects the skill set, the responsibility demanded by the work and how crucial the role is."
She went on to emphasise that – unlike administrative roles – "the stress and responsibility on our shifts is literally life or death".
"If we miss something, the repercussions are huge and the stakes are high. While other jobs may also have similar consequences, the role of an administrator certainly does not," she continued.
Ella also queried why it had been decided that Jersey has "to fall in line with the NHS pay scales".
"While a £75,000 admin role might be justified in the NHS where the salary of one jobholder can be averaged across ten or twenty hospitals, surely such a role can’t be justified in an environment the size of Jersey?" she said.
The island is already struggling with what's been termed as a 'Bean drain' – an exodus of skilled islanders. The pain of this has been acute in the health service, which has been struggling to recruit permanent staff. In recent years, Health has racked up bills for locum and agency staff in the tens of millions.
Pictured: "Jersey's hospital cannot function without the junior doctors."
"Imagine the tragedy If I end up leaving my career for an easier one (such as this advertised admin role), because I would be paid more doing that then I would as a doctor. Who then is going to look after your parents, your children, and yourself when you are sick? What happens when enough junior doctors feel that way?
"The answer? The system will fall apart. Jersey's hospital cannot function without the junior doctors."
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