Tufton under doctors’ knife

“Enough is enough!”

That is the warning of president of the Jamaica Medical Doctors' Association (JMDA), Dr Mindi Fitz-Henley, as she prepares to meet today with Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton and technocrats over a smouldering dispute concerning the short-term contracts of 143 doctors who could be in limbo come July 1.

As their tenure comes to an end amid the easing of Jamaica's COVID-19 crisis, some of the doctors have been offered six-month contracts, which Fitz-Henley said is a breach of heads of agreement between the JMDA and the Government.

The majority of doctors are engaged within the South East Regional Health Authority.

An emergency-room doctor who has finished her specialist training is among the affected health personnel.

She has been working on the front line of COVID-19 care and put her exams on the back burner as she sought to deal with the health crisis.

“Now that she has finally sat her exams and passed them successfully, they are saying that they are going to give her a six-month contract,” Fitz-Henley told The Gleaner on Monday.

Prepared to take action

The JMDA president said she is expecting that the doctors will be offered two- to three-year contracts.

“Also, if we can get something in writing about them committing to pay all of the money that is owed, which includes gratuity, COVID hazard pay, special pay, interns who have not been paid to work on the weekends, and the Southern Region not wanting to pay the persons when they didn't take their vacation leave,” said Fitz-Henley.

“There are just so many things at this point that they have just been dragging on and taking us for granted. At this point, we have to put an end to it.”

Fitz-Henley added that the JMDA is prepared to take “any and all action necessary” if the matters are not resolved.

Calls to Tufton went unanswered on Monday, but the health minister has said in the past that hospital hiring has often breached establishment numbers.

He has also suggested that the public health sector could not accommodate annually increasing numbers of recruits.

Donovan Stanberry, registrar of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, said on Monday that there has been “no marked increase” in graduate numbers, adding that the out-take has been “fairly stable for the past three years”.

Data from The UWI show that Mona graduated 300 doctors in 2018 and 2020, with 75 per cent and 68 per cent, respectively, of the cohorts being Jamaicans.

There were 264 graduates in 2019, with 77 per cent of them Jamaicans.

Fitz-Henley has described the establishment framework as archaic.

Following complaints last year that scores of doctors were unable to secure jobs in the public sector, the health ministry recruited 120 personnel.

“That was the first time they had created any posts in decades. These lists are woefully outdated. Back then, we didn't have separate psychiatric clinics in every health centre, we didn't have specialist clinics running, so now that these things are being done, they need to update the list,” the JMDA president lamented.

Not enough doctors

Weighing in on the dispute, Dr Andrew Manning, president of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ), is hopeful that the row will be resolved today.

Manning argued that the need for more doctors was not tied absolutely to the COVID-19 crisis.

“We have a high rate of non-communicable diseases, a tremendous burden of trauma cases, especially at KPH (Kingston Public Hospital), and so we really need the hands on deck to deal with these issues,” he said.

Manning said that long wait times at clinics, for surgeries, and for completion of pathology reports are indicators that the public health system does not have sufficient doctors.

He said another issue affecting the health system is that enough training posts are not being made available.

“You can be given a spot at UWI to do your training but there is no hospital post for you to be employed, so you can get the experience as you learn,” Manning said.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com