Doctors

Loma Linda University Medical Residents Vote Yes On Union

June 29, 2023 Alex Aamodt, Portside. Organize! Doctors, Health Care, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

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.”

Resident Physicians At Elmhurst Hospital Begin Five-Day Strike

May 22, 2023 ABC7 New York. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, New York City (NYC), Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Elmhurst, Queens -- Resident physicians at Elmhurst Hospital hit the picket line Monday for a five-day strike, marking the first doctor strike in the city in more than 30 years. The physicians, who are part of a training program run by Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine, are demanding better pay and benefits such as safe rides home from work at night. The hospital is part of the Mount Sinai system, but resident physicians at Elmhurst say they make up to $7,000 less than their counterparts at Mount Sinai in Manhattan. Striking doctors are also pointing out that two years ago, they were in the thick of the COVID pandemic. Elmhurst, a city run hospital, was the early epicenter of coronavirus cases during spring 2020.

Doctors Win Benefits At Two Queens Hospitals After Near Strike

May 20, 2023 Amir Khafagy, Documented NY. Resist! Doctors, New York City (NYC), Strike, Unions

During the first wave of Covid-19, Queens hospitals were on the frontlines of the pandemic. Although they were celebrated as essential workers, some first-year physician residents were only making between $15 and $17 an hour while they routinely worked 80-hour weeks. Nearly three years later, about 300 resident physicians and fellows at Jamaica and Flushing Hospitals have won a new contract after threatening to walk off the job if their demands for better wages and improved working conditions were not met.

Penn Medicine Doctors In Philadelphia Vote Overwhelmingly To Unionize

May 11, 2023 Committee of Interns and Residents, Portside. Organize! Doctors, Health Care, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - After a months-long organizing campaign, the resident and fellow physicians at the University of Pennsylvania overwhelmingly voted to unionize with the Committee of Interns and Residents. With 88% of participants voting in favor, the frontline Penn Medicine doctors are the first statewide to gain union representation. Working at one of the region’s largest healthcare providers, Penn’s frontline physicians look forward to advocating for the conditions they need to provide top-quality care without compromising their mental, physical, or financial wellbeing. Despite working at one of the wealthiest university systems in the country, residents often struggle to make ends meet.

Health Workers’ Actions In UK Escalate As Junior Doctors Announce Strike

February 22, 2023 People's Health Dispatch. Resist! Doctors, Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights

Junior doctors in England will be the next to join the wave of health workers’ industrial action in March. On Monday, February 20, the British Medical Association (BMA) announced the results of a strike ballot vote conducted among their junior doctor members, in which 98% of those who took part voted in favor of the strike. Striking remains the last resort for health workers, but they have said that the cost of living crisis and lack of investment in salaries has led them to take this step. According to the BMA, since 2008, junior doctors have experienced a 25% cut to their income.

Junior Doctors Are Preparing For The Fight Of Their Lives

January 10, 2023 Dan Zahedi, Tribune Magazine. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, Labor Movement, NHS, Worker Rights and Jobs

Over 130,000 NHS staff vacancies. 65% of junior doctors actively looking to quit, with 4 in 10 already having plans to do so. Record numbers waiting over 12 hours to be seen in A&E. Hundreds of avoidable deaths every week. The health service as we know it has arguably already collapsed. Anti-trade union legalisation is being quickly drawn up by rattled ministers in a desperate attempt to stifle our movement. This may be our final chance to turn the tide on this increasingly authoritarian government. But our workforce isn’t going down without a fight. Today marks the first day of balloting junior doctors for industrial action. Our demands are simple and modest: we are asking the government to reverse the pay cuts our profession has endured over the last decade and a half. We are not asking for a rise—just for pay to be restored to 2008 levels.

ER Doctors Call Private Equity Staffing Practices Illegal, Seek To Ban Them

December 23, 2022 Bernard Wolfson, Wisconsin Examiner. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, Private Equity, Worker Rights

A group of emergency physicians and consumer advocates in multiple states are pushing for stiffer enforcement of decades-old statutes that prohibit the ownership of medical practices by corporations not owned by licensed doctors. Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have rules on their books against the so-called corporate practice of medicine. But over the years, critics say, companies have successfully sidestepped bans on owning medical practices by buying or establishing local staffing groups that are nominally owned by doctors and restricting the physicians’ authority so they have no direct control. These laws and regulations, which started appearing nearly a century ago, were meant to fight the commercialization of medicine, maintain the independence and authority of physicians, and prioritize the doctor-patient relationship over the interests of investors and shareholders.

Vulture Capitalists To Flood Health Care System With Cheap Medical Labor

May 23, 2022 Maureen Tkacik, Jacobin. Educate! Capitalism, Doctors, Health Care

A private equity–owned emergency room staffing firm cofounded by a wealthy Republican congressman has been openly hailing a coming “oversupply” of doctors, promising prospective investors that a surplus of emergency physicians — soon projected to reach nearly ten thousand — will drive doctors’ wages low enough to offset the haircut that health care reforms have imposed upon its profit margins. The physician glut was highlighted in a recent pitch deck prepared by the cash-strapped Nashville ER staffing firm American Physician Partners (APP). The company, which operates ERs in 155 hospitals, has been trying — and failing — for months to raise $580 million to pay off creditors, including Representative Mark Green (R-TN), who holds somewhere between $5 million and $25 million of the company’s debt.

Doctors Who Care For Trans Kids Are Being Targeted, Protested, Harassed

March 29, 2022 Carter Sherman, Vice. Educate! Doctors, Health Care, State legislature, Transgender Rights

Protests are pretty common at the Little Rock, Arkansas, clinic where Dr. Janet Cathey works. After all, she works for Planned Parenthood. Controversy is practically part of the job description. But at one recent protest, Cathey noticed an unusual sign. It was homemade, and it wasn’t condemning abortion. Instead, its message was: “Boys are born boys, girls are born girls.” “Oh, so they’re picking on us for the transgender care, too,” Cathey, director of gender education for Planned Parenthood of Great Plains, recalled thinking. Arkansas is the only state whose governor has signed into law a bill to restrict healthcare for trans kids, and although that law has been halted by a court challenge, it hasn’t dissuaded a flurry of other states from trying to enact similar laws this year.

Sudan’s Doctors March To Protest Violence Against Hospitals

January 11, 2022 Mohammed Amin, Middle East Eye. Resist! Doctors, Health Care, State Violence, Sudan

Khartoum - Hundreds of Sudanese doctors and medics marched in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan on Sunday to protest against violence by security forces against the medical staff, healthcare facilities, and patients. Slogans against the military and its October coup were raised and a petition was handed to the United Nations representative in Sudan, calling on the international community to document the violations against the Sudanese people. The doctors’ march comes as neighborhood-based resistance committees, political parties, and other pro-democracy groups carry out an ongoing campaign of protests under a "no negotiation" slogan.

Cuba Has Trained 200 US Doctors

September 7, 2020 By Hedelberto López Blanch, Resumen English. Create! Cuba, Doctors, Medical school, United States

Cuba’s friendship with the people of the US has been longstanding and despite the fact that Washington has maintained a strong economic-financial blockade against that nation for 60 years, the government and its health institutions opened the doors of the prestigious Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) to forge North American doctors to serve back home where they are needed most. As Cuba’s alternate representative to the UN, Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, explained, “the students and graduates belong mainly to marginalized minorities and low-income families, most of whom when they return decide to work in their most vulnerable communities”.

Cuban Spies Disguised As Doctors

July 4, 2020 Roger Stoll, Popular Resistance. Educate! COVID-19, Cuba, Doctors, Socialism

The European Union now excludes travelers from the COVID-ridden U.S. but welcomes those from the virtually COVID-free Cuba. Cuba, the country that sends doctors and infectious disease specialists around the world to fight the pandemic, the country the U.S. has held in contempt for 60 years, villified with every epithet and sanctioned and embargoed and blockaded to within an inch of its life. In a catharsis of propaganda, the U.S. tries to convince the world that Cuban doctors are victims of human trafficking, or else they are all spies, or perhaps both. Rosa Miriam Elizalde likened it to a vision of Cuba as the Red Planet, sending spies to take over the Earth, like the invasion in H. G. Welles' War of the Worlds as told by Orson Welles in his (in)famous radio play.

On The Front Lines Of The Coronavirus Pandemic: A Doctor’s View

March 18, 2020 By Mike Pappas, Leftvoice.org Educate! Coronavirus COVID-19, Doctors, Health Care

The coronavirus pandemic is sweeping the globe. There seems to be no way of containing it at this point, and health systems are struggling to keep up. The virus is exposing inadequacies in health systems all over the world, especially the U.S.’s abysmal health infrastructure. Health workers on the ground continue to provide care during the pandemic despite the severe lack of resources and dangers to their personal health.

Doctors Say They Face ‘Moral Injury’ Because Of A Business Model That Interferes With Patient Care

March 5, 2020 Melissa Bailey, Portside.org Educate! Doctors, Health Care, Medicine

Physician Keith Corl was working in a Las Vegas emergency room when a patient arrived with chest pain. The patient, wearing his street clothes, had a two-minute exam in the triage area with a doctor, who ordered an X-ray and several other tests. But later, in the treatment area, when Corl met the man and lifted his shirt, it was clear the patient had shingles. Corl didn’t need any tests to diagnose the viral infection that causes a rash and searing pain.

In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group In US Has New Prescription: It’s Medicare for All

January 22, 2020 By Jon Queally, Commondreams.org Educate! Doctors, Health Care, Medicare, Physicians

"Major changes are needed," declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, "to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little." The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a "seachange for the medical professions"—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation's healthcare woes.

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