Day in the life of a junior doctor in London
STORY: This NHS junior doctor recorded what a 13-hour working day looks like
Time bug: 7:35 a.m.
(Poh Wang, 28-year-old junior doctor)
“Hey, team. So it's Saturday morning around 7.35 or so. I’m about to get up, prep, head to work, and I should head out of the house around 8 a.m."
Time bug: 8:10 a.m.
"I'm late to work. I’m going to be hurrying there because it's an hour and I don't want to be late for the morning hand over. I've got to relieve the night doc, and they'll have had a really rough night. So basically having breakfast. Got to rush, all I'm having is a banana, and then hopefully it'll be enough just to get me through to lunch.”
“I'm covering the mental health unit this weekend. It's Saturday. We've got six wards, approximately 16 to 18 patients. So it's around about 100 or so patients that I'm covering in terms of inpatients. I am the only doctor on site for this weekend."
Time bug: 4:00 p.m.
"Hey, guys. So I'm just in time for some lunch. It's 4:00 or so. Been really busy. I’ve had two admissions come in, as well as two seclusion reviews of a lady who's really sick, extremely dehydrated, extremely manic, and basically really violent. I'm going to head off to the hospital shop, get myself some kind of microwave ready meal.”
“Hey, guys. So I'm having some lunch at the moment. Got myself a bit of chicken and, yeah, basically, it's 5 o'clock because I had another admission come in and took the handover."
Time bug: 9:30 p.m.
“It’s 9.30 Saturday night, I've had an even busier day, basically had three admissions, had two seclusion reviews, I had to see someone on the 136 suite, which was really, really busy, quite stressy."
“So it's round about 11.30 Saturday night, just about to head back home. And I'm really knackered. Really, really tired, which is to be expected, a 13 hour shift. But I've still got the whole of Sunday to go as well.”
Wang is one of the thousands of junior doctors joining a three-day-strike in England
to demand better pay and working conditions
The British Medical Association trade union says starting pay for junior doctors
can be as low as 14.09 pounds ($17.04) per hour
“Junior doctors are staffing the very toughest shifts in terms of the late shifts, the night shifts, working the bank holidays, the Christmas days, the important weekends at £14 an hour. What we are looking for is for us to be paid £19 an hour instead of 14. That is not an arduous ask. There is the money in the kitty for that.”
