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Good morning, everyone.

You don't usually think of doctors as being in a union, right, or going on strike.

But doctors at New York City's public hospitals are in a union, and they are threatening a strike for next Monday at four major hospitals.

Jacobi Hospital on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, North Central Bronx Hospital near Montefiore

in the Botanical Gardens and around there, the Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica,

and South Brooklyn Health in Coney Island.

Top issues include pay and staffing levels. Mayor Adams is calling for mediation

and a 60-day cooling off period. We will hear now from a leader in the union known as the

Doctors Council, which represents physicians in the city's public hospitals. We'll talk about

their demands, the conditions they describe, and what would happen to

patients in the hospitals if doctors do walk out. Our guest is Dr. Gray Ballinger, a primary care

physician at the Queens Hospital Center. Dr. Ballinger, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Friled to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Would you first tell our listeners

a little about yourself? What's your job at Queens Hospital Center? And who in general

are the patients who you treat? So I am a primary care physician in adult medicine. I finished my

residency at Lenox Hill in Manhattan in 2021, and this was my first job

at Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica. I love this job. Essentially, my only complaint about

practicing medicine in an affluent area in Manhattan was that I sometimes felt like my patients really didn't need me that much.

I would get on a case as a younger physician. There'd be six specialists who'd been there,

you know, for the last 15 years and knew the patient well and were managing all their conditions.

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