PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A wave of physician residents and fellows at hospitals across the city are unionizing. Residents at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital became the fourth group to join a union late Monday night, and more election results are expected this week.
The region-wide organizing effort to join the Committee of Interns and Residents began last November, a couple months after a groundbreaking contract for 1,500 University of Pennsylvania doctors. Then, residents at ChristianaCare in Delaware. Last week, residents at Einstein Medical Center and Temple University Hospital joined them.
Now, CIR-SEIU is welcoming nearly 900 residents at Jefferson, and more than 2,000 residents in the city in the last week.
“What a historic moment. I just feel incredibly proud,” said second-year Jefferson internal medicine resident Dr. Trishya Srinivasan. “There’s a lot of sacrifices that we make as trainees that take a toll on our minds and our bodies. And we should have a safety net to fall back on when it comes to our own health.”
Srinivasan is on the organizing committee and was in the vote-counting room Monday.
“People feel emboldened to be able to stand for what they believe in when it comes to the future of medical training for residents and fellows and also just better patient care,” Srinivasan said.
Srinivasan said the push to unionize wasn’t just for them, but for previous trainees who started the fight and the current medical students looking for residency.
“They’re saying the fact that all of these programs have unionized is making me strongly consider staying in Philly for my training.”
Third-year psychiatry resident Dr. Sarah Qadir said she and her colleagues will do their jobs better now that they have the union’s safety net.
“When residents are able to pay their bills, feel less burnt out, have fewer worries in terms of meeting their basic living expenses, they’re able to better focus on patient care,” Qadir said.
And the work is not finished, she said.
“We will do a needs assessment and go to each department and select representatives who will tell us what are the values most important to them,” Qadir said.
Qadir and the other Jefferson residents reached a landslide 552-73 vote, despite getting pushback from their employers.
“You know, saying things like, ‘You should not negotiate with a third party rather than negotiate directly one-on-one with us,’ failing to mention that the union is actually comprised of residents,” Qadir said.
At the time of publication, Jefferson has not responded to KYW Newsradio’s requests for comment.