What is the Subject of 150% Increase in Doctor's Salary?

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Secretary General Prof. Dr. Vedat Bulut said, "Purchasing power has decreased tremendously. Healthcare workers can no longer make a living. The current hikes are far below the inflation rate, the wage increases that have been given have reduced our purchasing power to one third. Therefore, we want a salary improvement of at least 150 percent. Our working conditions are extremely "It is bad, especially due to the pandemic. We have lost more than 500 healthcare workers to date. Pandemic conditions, violence in healthcare, all these are factors that negatively affect our working conditions. We want them to be eliminated." He demanded a raise for health workers.

This is the fact of the case, which is brought to the agenda as "doctors want a 150% raise" on sites like Ekşisözlük. While all healthcare professionals are meant in the statement, it is of course deliberate that doctors appear to only want a raise in Eksorözlük. The doctor's hatred shown in the sequel is only pathetic.
In Turkey, with the current exchange rate, the salary of a specialist doctor is $ 845, and the salary of a general practitioner is around $ 727. In our country, where the minimum wage is 250 dollars, these salaries, which may be seen as high by some, are lower than the minimum wage of many countries in the real world. Especially today, when rental prices and transportation costs are increasing, the doctor's salary of 10,075 in October 2021 is well below the poverty line for a family of four. Looking at it from this perspective will explain the situation more clearly, even a specialist doctor's salary, whose spouse does not work and who has two children, is at the poverty line.

On the other hand, practices such as watch and performance-based supplementary payment system do not work except to increase income inequality among doctors. First of all, no one can compare the work intensity of different branches equally. For example, calculating how many lung cancer diagnoses a gallbladder surgery performed by a general surgeon is equivalent to is discouraging for both branches. It destroys motivation. In addition, health workers, who cannot keep watch due to illness and similar situations, experience grievances in terms of income in terms of salary payment. In no way should the shift and supplementary payment system be made a significant percentage of the salary.

The contracted personnel practice, on the other hand, may have been logically initiated, but it has paved the way for the emergence of the problem of doctor employees working in the same country, under the same ministry, in the same hospital and in the same branch, but receiving different salaries. The implementation of Service Groups, which was organized depending on the level of development in 2004, is both outdated and insufficient to meet the contracted personnel staff.

Doctors' salaries are reduced in the case of "not keeping watch for 36 hours", either on leave or as part of the media coverage. In this case, the prohibition of 36-hour working hours by taking a popular approach will naturally have a negative impact on doctors in terms of salary. If a doctor finds it necessary to work 36 hours despite all his fatigue and the length of the time, you should know that he has financial problems and he puts up with it to meet the needs of himself and his family. If not, it is not easy to provide uninterrupted patient service in the corridors of a hospital for 36 hours without any rest breaks. First of all, this is not even a human condition. Why is there a need for this obligation, to overwork our doctors in order to earn a few cents more, and to cause the quality of the service provided to our patients to decrease inevitably within this framework?

In order to prevent the loss of doctors in our country and to get maximum efficiency from doctors in the health system, doctor's salaries should be increased to levels that will allow our doctors to live humanely and practice their profession without delay. We are talking about a new regulation that will prevent our doctors from competing with their colleagues for the sake of earning more money and/or holding grudges against their colleagues working in other branches, who naturally benefit from unbalanced performance payments according to performance criteria that are no longer valid.

In line with this understanding and approach, as stated by the TTB, the salary increase that doctors deserve and expect is not a matter to be postponed or ignored. We invite our State Administrators, who are in the authorized and responsible authority, to do what is necessary. Ultimately, our Doctors should not be busy thinking about how to pay the rent of the house or the natural gas bill, while making decisions about the life of the patient in the outpatient clinic.