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Doctors

EveryDoctor Is Running Its Most Important Campaign Yet

September 30, 2024 Hannah Sharland, The Canary. , , , , ,
Canary columnist Dr Julia Grace-Patterson’s campaign group EveryDoctor is building a manifesto to fix the NHS. With the input of hundreds of doctors, it’s creating a blueprint of the urgent actions the new government should be taking after fourteen years of Tory destruction. That is, this is the plan Labour should be putting forward – but has so far offered only more of the same privatisation that got the NHS into this mess. It aims to host a meeting with MPs on 10 October to kick off a series of parliamentary briefings spelling out the manifesto’s demands. So now, EveryDoctor is asking members of the public to join it in calling on MPs to attend this vital session.

Dr. Khalil Khalidy, Orthopedic Doctor in Deir al Balah, Gaza

September 26, 2024 Eleanor Goldfield, Project Censored. , , , , ,
The voices of Palestinians in Gaza are some of the most censored in the world. If they are not killed outright, they are silenced by purposeful omission in order to support Israel’s narrative. It is therefore vital that alternative media work to find and platform these voices, and that people who are not fooled by pro-Israel propaganda engage with it, share it, and allow it to inform our actions. This week we sit down with Dr. Khalil Khalidy, an orthopedic doctor in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. His testimony is necessary and powerful and understandably distressing. We are therefore here including a content warning for this week’s show as Dr. Khalidy does not sugarcoat his lived experiences.

Buffalo Medical Residents Strike For Fair Pay And Better Conditions

September 9, 2024 Derek Seidman, Truthout. , , , , ,
Around 100 picketers stood in front of Buffalo General Hospital on September 4, chanting and talking to reporters under the midday sun. They gripped signs with slogans like “Fair Contract Now” and “United For Our Patients.” Cars honked in support as they passed by, with some drivers thrusting fists into the warm air through their open windows. It was the second day of a four-day strike by University at Buffalo (UB) medical residents over pay, benefits and working conditions. The strike was authorized by a resounding 93 percent vote after more than a year of bargaining attempts. The striking medical residents in Buffalo are part of a rising wave of unionization among medical workers stretching from California to Vermont and spurred by demands for better compensation and working conditions.

Why More Doctors Are Joining Unions

September 8, 2024 Lambeth Hochwald, Medscape. , , , , ,
With huge shifts over the past decade in the way doctors are employed — half of all doctors now work for a health system or large medical group — the idea of unionizing is not only being explored but gaining traction within the profession. In fact, 8% of the physician workforce (or 70,000 physicians) belong to a union, according to statistics gathered in 2022. Exact numbers are hard to come by, and, interestingly, although the American Medical Association (AMA) " supports the right of physicians to engage in collective bargaining," the organization doesn't track union membership among physicians, according to an AMA spokesperson.

Medical Staff Refusing To Evacuate Central Gaza’s Last Functioning Hospital

August 29, 2024 Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
On August 21, the Israeli army ordered different areas in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, to evacuate their homes and newly-erected tents. This was the first step in the army’s invasion and campaign of destruction in Deir al-Balah, the last town that has not been completely leveled throughout the war. One of the blocks ordered to evacuate included the last fully operational hospital in central and southern Gaza, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, the governmental hospital has been working at four times its capacity, hosting over 700 patients.

Open Letter From US Physicians And Nurses After Visit To Gaza

July 25, 2024 Open Letter, Popular Resistance. , , , , , ,
We are forty-five American physicians, surgeons, and nurses who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. We worked with various nongovernmental organizations and the World Health Organization in hospitals throughout the Strip. In addition to our medical and surgical expertise, many of us have a public health background, as well as experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones, including Ukraine during the brutal Russian invasion. Some of us are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. We are a multifaith and multiethnic group. None of us support the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups and individuals in Israel.

Doctors Against Genocide Is Bringing Medicine Back To The Side Of Humanity

May 30, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , ,
At the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Peoples Dispatch spoke to two doctors with Doctors Against Genocide (DAG), which organizes those in the medical community in the US to form a powerful voice of opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Since its founding less than one year ago, DAG has engaged in a variety of organizing work, including marching in mass mobilizations, disrupting powerful healthcare officials, and testifying before the United Nations. The goals of DAG have always been all-encompassing, with a hope that as “our resources and numbers grow we hope to combat genocides and injustices all around the world.”

Over 400 Physicians From Delaware’s Christiana Care Move To Unionize

May 29, 2024 Jennifer Henderson, MedPage Today. , , , ,
More than 400 physicians from Delaware's Christiana Hospital, Wilmington Hospital, and Middletown Free-standing Emergency Department -- all part of the ChristianaCare health system -- filed to unionize with Doctors Council SEIU Local 10MD. "If successful, this will be the first physician union in Delaware and the first union of any kind at ChristianaCare," Doctors Council SEIU said in an announcement of the filing, which pointed to the ongoing corporatization of medicine as driving the physicians' efforts. Some of the specific concerns that physicians detailed in regard to their filing included understaffing and inadequate resources, corporate influence on medical decision making, limited input in matters affecting patient care and physician safety and autonomy, and moral injury caused by pressure to place profit over patients.

U.S. AFRICOM Airstrikes Feared To Have Killed Two Cuban Doctors

February 28, 2024 Netfa Freeman, The Black Alliance for Peace. , , , ,
The National Network on Cuba, The Black Alliance for Peace, and Lowcountry Action Committee strongly condemn the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) airstrikes in Somalia reported to have killed 2 Cuban doctors. We demand the U.S. release all information about the bombing to Cuba and the victims’ families. Cuba has deployed more than 600,000 health workers to 165 nations over the last six decades on medical missions. Two Cubans serving in Kenya, Dr. Assel Herrera Correa, a specialist in general medicine, and Dr. Landy Rodriguez Hernandez, a surgeon, were kidnapped there in 2019 and held in Jilib, southern Somalia.

United Kingdom: New NHS Strikes May Be In The Cards

August 20, 2023 Steve Topple, The Canary. , , ,
Following on from junior doctors and consultants, a third group of NHS professionals is now floating the idea of strike action. The union involved is once again the British Medical Association (BMA), and the doctors are known as SAS ones, who work mostly in hospitals. While the profession may be slightly different, the reasons for the potential industrial action are the same: pay and working conditions. You might not have heard of them, and their role is quite opaque – but as HEE noted, there are a lot of SASs. The difference with the role is that the person has chosen not to take a career-led pathway. That is, they stop ongoing post-graduate training to become a consultant or GP.

My Life In Corporate Medicine

August 16, 2023 Stephanie Arnold and Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. , , ,
I started medical school in 2011, full of idealism and optimism over the promise of Obamacare. But the health care system has gotten progressively worse every year that I’ve worked in it, probably because private equity firms keep acquiring new corners. The urgent care was an exception, it was part of a family business, founded by an emergency physician who actually cares about employees. When COVID came, they didn’t lay off a single full-timer even when volume fell off a cliff, probably in part because he was a big Trumper and was convinced the pandemic would “blow over” by the summer of 2020.

Top Medical Journals Publish Unprecedented Joint Call

August 3, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , ,
Leading medical journals published a joint editorial late Tuesday calling on world leaders to take urgent steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war—and eliminate atomic weapons altogether—as the threat of a potentially civilization-ending conflict continues to grow. The call was first issued in The Lancet, The BMJ, JAMA, International Nursing Review, and other top journals. Dozens of other journals are expected to publish the editorial in the coming days ahead of the 78th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The editorial begins by noting that the hands of the Doomsday Clock are closer to midnight than ever before, reflecting mounting nuclear tensions amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Doctors Emerge As Political Force In Battle Over Abortion Laws

August 1, 2023 Cassandra Jaramillo, Pro Publica. , , ,
In her eight years as a pediatrician, Dr. Lauren Beene had always stayed out of politics. What happened at the Statehouse had little to do with the children she treated in her Cleveland practice. But after the Supreme Court struck down abortion protections, that all changed. The first Monday after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was emotional. Beene fielded a call from the mother of a 13-year-old patient. The mother was worried her child might need birth control in case she was the victim of a sexual assault. Beene also talked to a 16-year-old patient unsure about whether to continue her pregnancy. Time wasn’t on her side, Beene told the girl.

Shock Treatment In The Emergency Room

July 30, 2023 Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect. , , ,
One of the nation’s biggest employers of emergency physicians is liquidating, in one of the more unruly sagas American medicine has experienced since the first wave of the pandemic. The collapsing entity is American Physician Partners, a private equity–owned operator of about 135 hospital emergency rooms and hospital-owned “freestanding” ERs in 18 states, which was co-founded by a sitting Republican congressman. Until two weeks ago, the company was by all appearances relatively indistinguishable from the other deeply indebted, private equity–backed mega-practices that staff ERs with round-the-clock physicians and “midlevels” (physician assistants and nurse practitioners).

Loma Linda University Medical Residents Vote Yes On Union

June 29, 2023 Alex Aamodt, Portside. , , ,
In the culmination of a months-long organizing effort, resident physicians at Loma Linda University Health voted to unionize on June 22. The historic vote is the latest chapter in the most prominent recent showdown between a Seventh-day Adventist health care institution and organized labor. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which held the election, the final margin was 361 in favor of joining the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, 144 against. Approximately two-thirds of the 805 eligible resident physicians submitted a ballot. “We won,” the resident organizing committee wrote on Instagram. “After years of hard work we finally did it.”
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