Hundreds of Boston Medical Center residents gathered alongside the road exterior the hospital Thursday afternoon, demanding a residing wage and significant advantages of their new contract.
“We should not have to sacrifice ourselves to provide the great care that we do to our communities,” mentioned Dr. Taha Khan, a resident doctor in pediatric neurology. “We should be able to pour from a full cup. Our ask is very simple. Boston Medical Center needs to pay us enough and provide the benefits we need to live and work in one of the most expensive cities in this country.”
The Committee of Interns and Residents union representing the hospital’s 750 resident physicians has been in negotiations with the hospital since April, representatives mentioned, and returned to the bargaining desk with a proposal Thursday evening.
That proposal, Psychiatry resident and bargaining committee member Dr. Anisah Hashmi mentioned, features a wage enhance catching up with inflation and a residing stipend tailor-made to assist residents pay for lease, just like ones supplied at Tufts and Mass General Brigham.
The first-year resident wage at BMC is slightly below $67,000 as of July 2022, based on the hospital. This is lower than the listed first-year salaries at space hospitals Mass General Brigham, $78,540; Boston Children’s Hospital, $73,475; and Beth Isreal Deaconess Medical Center, $71,000.
Some residents, audio system on the rally mentioned, are on meals stamps, taking out loans to pay lease, driving for Uber or working different jobs on high of 80-hour work weeks, promoting bone marrow and unable to pay for childcare.
On common, Hashmi detailed, a one-bedroom condo in Boston is 50% to 60% of a resident’s wage.
“Even those who are not exactly broke are broken in other ways,” mentioned Brett Lewis, a third-year Family Medicine and Psychiatry resident at BMC. “Rates of burnout and moral injury are unprecedented.”
The union members didn’t communicate to the potential of a strike, specializing in the plans for negotiations.
Along with the principle pushes, Hashmi mentioned, the residents are in search of phrases like reasonably priced parking — some residents report paying round $280 a month for parking on the hospital — extra break day, and monetary assist to draw and retain medical doctors coming from marginalized and underrepresented teams.
City Councilor President Ed Flynn — joined on the rally by Councilors Ruthzee Louijeune and Liz Breadon — cited the merger of public space hospitals into BMC in 1996, telling rally attendees “I think we lost a little bit of our soul when that privatization took place.”
“We are here today, because we believe that health care can look different, at BMC and everywhere,” mentioned Hashmi. “We believe that through organizing, through fighting, one day our patients will have all of their human needs met and so will we.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”