Junior doctors strike

My local hospital A&E Dept (Cheltenham General Hospital) will temporarily shut at various points during the coming weeks, we have been told.

My OH has had a few falls recently - the last was in the shower where he was prone across the shower rim for almost 6 hours (broken ribs).

I've warned him not to fall - he may not even get to A&E at all this time.

The term junior Dr is misleading. In the main the doctors running the show in hospitals are junior doctors they are not asking for a pay increase, they are asking for pay restoration. Approx 40% of UK doctors are seeking posts in Australia. The government absolutely needs to find the money to reward and retain our doctors. They should be treated as a scare resource to be protected at all cost. I don't begrudge them their pensions either, they absolutely deserve them. What I do resent is the never ending list of cronies promoted to the Lords at £300 a day, the severance payments to ministers and the ridiculous ongoing payment to the likes of Liz Truss for her hard work as Prime Minister. There is plenty if government spending to get worked up about but doctors pay is not one of them.

Germanshepherdsmum

Judges are the equivalent of senior consultants, not junior doctors.

But people don’t retire as junior doctors. They retire as consultants or GPs.

The following are entirely down to the current doctors strike

My sympathy has run out, a poor little baby is in hospital, needs immediate treatment, but having to wait…

A close friend has just been phoned and told her operation tomorrow is now not going ahead…

My medic dd tells me that she knows a number of medics who are out of work unless they can pick up locum/bank jobs. The permanent and training posts are just not there, despite the govt saying there are so many vacancies. One single post in her Trust recently attracted over one thousand applications, two thirds of which were from abroad.

My dd has applied for a training post next year but who knows whether she’ll get one? Locum/bank work is precarious because you don’t know when work will be available plus banks/loans/mortgage people are very antsy about an irregular income.

GPs and anyone not employed by and working solely for the NHS has to buy their own insurance. I have already said that the NHS pension scheme for doctors is very generous. Pay packages have to be considered as a whole. The doctors have had a reasonable offer. Whether anyone chooses to become a doctor, in full knowledge of the pay package, is entirely up to them.

Ilovecheese

The Conservatives are supposed to trust the markets. Market forces are telling them that they need to pay more to attract and retain doctors.

It's another Tory dodge to explain their failure with the NHS, It's all the fault of greedy doctors going on strike! What happened when the greedy bankers nearly bankrupted the country, they got bailed out and are once again getting huge bonuses for betting against our economy . Who made loads of money because of Truss and Kwarteng, the banks and all who sail in them. Who made money out of Covid? The likes of Mone. Pay doctors a decent wage, no we can't afford it, you need to go private. Totally sickening.

The Conservatives are supposed to trust the markets. Market forces are telling them that they need to pay more to attract and retain doctors.

Germanshepherdsmum

I’m surprised your son pays for his indemnity insurance - if he works solely for the NHS they arrange cover, even if he works as a locum. He only has to arrange his own cover if he is working other than solely for the NHS.

Doctors pay their own as Maddyone says it's a condition of being registered to practice. My daughter does some expedition medicine in her own time, working for a charity, she doesn't get paid but they do pay all her expenses including the extra insurance she needs because of the nature of the work. She loves her job as an anaesthetist but it can be very stressful, she says her "expedition work" which is often gruelling, helps her cope with the stress as when she's not working she's keeping herself super fit for the next trip! She is underpaid for the job she does, fortunately she didn't go into it for the money but fgs if we want a working NHS we need to pay people properly.

Do you not think junior doctors should be well paid?
Because that’s what this is about. Not whether or not consultants earn a lot of money (they don’t of course compared with other professions that are equivalent, and indeed many that are nowhere near equivalent) or whether consultants do private work.
Simple question, should we pay our doctors better?
Answer is yes, with none of the excuses being trotted out here.

I guess it’s the big carrot.

When the NHS was set up the aim was that consultants would work solely for the NHS and not undertake private work. Consultants said they would not join the NHS unless they could do private work as well, so this was permitted or else there would have been no NHS. ( I studied this as part of my IHSA exams) I guess th

My daughter has always paid for insurance, it’s taken as a condition of being in the BMA, and it’s a lot of money. She has always paid for courses and to sit exams. It costs a lot of money, often in the thousands, as GE correctly says. Although she’s currently living and practicing in New Zealand, she still has those costs, and after starting her training at eighteen, and starting practicing medicine at twenty four, at nearly forty one she is still doing courses, and paying for them. She currently works full time as a GP, she works extra shifts in ED (equivalent to our A+E) and she works from home for a private menopause clinic, which of course is paid much better than the public work she does. She is also currently taking an advanced course on managing the menopause. She is still studying. It never stops because all doctors must remain informed about all advances in medicine in their specialties.

Bumface

I am rapidly approaching my mid 70s and for the very first time ever I have been 'asked to leave' ie. bounced from a party. (I was not drunk)
I was at a Christmas drinks do with neighbours and had put up with over half an hour, it seemed longer, of 'greedy junior doctor' talk. I had maintained a vacant but not unpleasant look on my face and not said anything. Finally, I snapped when a retired local estate agent piped up with "Its about time they started thinking about the welfare of their patients and not about lining their pockets". This from a man who made his, not inconsiderable, fortune during various property booms. Let's just say I will not be invited next year and will be ignored by most of my neighbours from now on. I am seriously thinking of moving next year; I shall try and avoid using an estate agent if I do.

Impressive..so courageous You hold your head high...

I’m surprised your son pays for his indemnity insurance - if he works solely for the NHS they arrange cover, even if he works as a locum. He only has to arrange his own cover if he is working other than solely for the NHS.

My son is a junior doctor just completed his F2 year and taking a year out to decide if he really wants to carry on with this, picking up temporary contract here and there. He is 25 years old, has £95k of student debt and lives in a grotty HMO room in a ( frankly) grotty town in the Midlands. He had to take the train to work in the next county for the last 2 years as he couldn't find affordable HMOs that would allow him to have a short contract and move every 4 months. He pays so much in training costs, indemnities and insurance, he can't afford driving lessons so he is often walking back from 12/13 hour days through unsafe areas at midnight. He was once so tired he walked into a lamppost. My heart is breaking for him as this is what he always wanted to do, he has done exceptionally well on his rotations and is a fine doctor. He actually wanted to specialise in Geriatrics but I'm not sure that will ever happen now.

Welsh Junior doctors have just voted to strike. 65% turnout and 98% for a strike.

I have no idea why no idea why the govt offered a better deal to consultants in England, unless they thought they could use the bread today but jam tomorrow argument against the junior doctors. Interesting to see it's already been used on here! Problem is the consultants of now did not have massive debts when they came out of university, they didn't have the housing costs of junior doctors as they could live on site and the job was much less stressful as wards were properly staffed.
I think dr daughter pays 8% pension contribution, 9% student loan, medical insurance + costs of exams and extra training costs. Her last lots of exams were nearly £2,000? Not sure of exact amount but I remember being horrified. Market forces do reign even in medicine, one of her friends an A&E reg has trained to do botox and finds it more lucrative to work part time in the NHS and work 2 days a week in a clinic! she has a mortgage to pay!

I agree with maddyone. I have doctors in my family and one has already left the NHS and the other is seriously thinking of leaving too.
We can't afford to keep losing doctors from the NHS so they need to be paid better.

Wear your ostracism with pride Bumface.

paddyann54

No strikes here our NHS settlement was made in July I believe and was@ '17.5% over 2 years for doctors and dentists.Get yourselves a goverment that will TALK and sort things out.

paddyann you and I rarely agree, but on this, I agree with you entirely.

Perhaps I ought to tell you Avalon that doctors don’t swear the Hippocratic Oath any longer. That hasn’t been required nor practiced for years.

GSM I don’t disagree with what you say. However, the fact remains that the earnings of most junior barristers far, far, outstrip the earnings of junior doctors. When my son went to Bar School he was given a grant towards the costs from his Inn of Court. When he did his pupillage, he was given an award from the chambers he later worked at, which generous and tax free.
When my daughter trained as a doctor, she got nothing.
In fact, it cost us, her parents, about £60,000 to put her through her six years of medical school in London.

No strikes here our NHS settlement was made in July I believe and was@ '17.5% over 2 years for doctors and dentists.Get yourselves a goverment that will TALK and sort things out.

Not all barristers and solicitors who go on to become judges earn huge amounts of money. It very much depends on the field in which they specialise. As you will know, those who do a lot of criminal legal aid work, an essential public service, are very poorly paid. And they all have to fund their own pensions, being self-employed, as I did. No employer to contribute until you are elevated to the bench.

I don’t agree with doctors striking. As far as I’m concerned it’s against their Hippocratic Oath. I also don’t agree with all the money we see wasted in the NHS on such things as equality and diversity officers - not only do they get paid large amounts but no doubt have a palatial office and staff and are busy writing out the word women. Meanwhile back at the coal face doctors and nurses are beavering away. Junior doctors will, of course, have huge houses and big posh cars once they become consultants which nurses won’t get.

Germanshepherdsmum

Judges are the equivalent of senior consultants, not junior doctors.

Agreed.
But on their way to becoming a judge, barristers, including junior barristers, earn huge amounts of money. In fact, far more than a judge gets paid. But doctors don’t remain junior doctors forever and when they retire, their pension benefits have been seriously reduced. We were talking about pensions, if we want to compare a junior doctor, who may well be training for upwards of 15 years, to a junior barrister, then the barrister is laughing all the way to the bank compared with doctor.