Owen Yang
When you are a hospital staff you have to pay to park if you drive to work.
This is not unique in the UK or elsewhere, and you would not say it is unfair if you want to discourage people driving. For me obviously you would reimburse those who take public transport instead if your intention is good. So you are not fooling anyone.
Driving may not be avoidable for many doctors undergoing specialty training in most parts of the UK. This is because the training programme typically involves rotations at different places that can be 1-2 driving hours apart, with each places 4-6 months of durations. You just cannot move every 4-6 months for the sake of it. Wherever you live, therefore, you will eventually work somewhere else that is not public transport feasible. This is especially true if you work unsocial hours for around 50% of your working time.
Of note, none of the fuel cost is reimbursed because travelling towards work is on the worker’s expenses. It is not easy to claim any travel cost between working places, but this is another topic not for today.
This is contrast to in many other parts of the world, the training programme is typically fixed in one or two teaching hospitals.
No. There is no hospital accommodations. You would be lucky if you have a locker and a place to eat your lunch on the ward. Welcome to the NHS.
The traffic in and out of a hospital is typically very bad across the country, but interesting this is only true if you work social hours from 0800-0900ish to 1600-1800ish. So one of the ‘perks’ working as a junior doctor is that you can normally avoid the traffic. Yey.
Where I worked last year, a new car park (that is parking lot for Americans) was just built and did look sufficient for everyone. It was behind the hospital. Although it was called car park 11, I was not allowed to park from car park 1 to car park 10. Parking at car park 11, it could take 15 minutes to walk to your car and during rush hours it could add at least 30 minutes stuck in traffic just trying to get out of the hospital.
I have not got fined, though. There were a few times when the electronic gate did not work and all the cars were stuck queuing. Being nearly late I decided to park in car park 10 on the way. I was not fined. I heard many incidences in other hospitals (and on the news) where surgeons had to travel between two sites, and when they got to site B there was no parking space left and park illegitimately and was fined. Being surgeons, they tend to be furious. I would probably be too tired to argue.
The car park 11 was at risk of flood when it rained. But I knew car park 10 was worse because it always flooded with deep water. You learnt to use the first gear and try not to stop in the middle of the flooded area (yes, we do manual car here).
Most of these car parks are outsourced to private companies to run, accessing through bare-minimum websites. The benefit of it, at least from my perspective, is free of moral duties. If a hospital runs the car park, then anything related to staff welfare is more likely the hospital’s responsibility. Because it is commissioned to another company, most of the time when something happens the hospital pretty much can get away with it. This includes car park charge rises, or when someone appeals for parking fines.
Parking as a patient is probably a worse experience, but this is beyond the topic here.
