While their nurse counterparts may have the ability to join unions when they get into their field, doctors in Minnesota don’t. But now, one group is calling on physicians to make the jump and unionize.
One of the doctors in the group that’s making the push is Dr. Jessica Boland, who joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Jordana Green to discuss why she thinks doctors need to be in unions.
Boland shared there are several reasons why she and her fellow doctors are discussing the possibility of unionizing.
“The stuff that really motivates me is having a tool to preserve physician autonomy,” Boland said. “There’s this stereotype that doctors are these sort of loan wolves, in a sense. That’s not a strategy that’s working great as medicine changes.”
Another point she touched on included “wellness for everybody,” something she said came to the forefront of many people’s minds during the pandemic.
However, she says that many employers, even those for doctors, don’t understand what workers actually need when it comes to “wellness.”
“When I look at the things that I need from my work to be okay, I need support. I need to be able to do my job effectively. I need to look around and see the people I’m working with, and working on behalf of, have what they need,” Boland said. “I don’t need a sort of work-sponsored mindfulness exercise.”
Boland has been in her field for almost 10 years, working at several types of hospitals, and she says that it has been “eye-opening year after year” seeing how “finances shape the experience of patients and the people trying to take care of them.”
When it comes to working for corporate health care, Boland says part of the reason why they are looking to unionize comes from the sense that they feel physicians are being asked to focus on corporate financial priorities almost as much as they focus on patients.
“That, to me, speaks all the more to, ‘Now is the time to unionize,’” Boland says.
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