Junior doctors strike

Musky17

Well said! Pay is secondary.

This every time. The trouble is, to the Tories everything is about money. They just can't compute that working conditions are frequently the sticking point. As with teachers. Pay is ok. Having to work a 70 hour week is not.

You have misinterpreted my post MaizieD

No, I thought your thinking was muddled. This reply seems to confirm it.

I posted that junior doctors need better working conditions, as in fact do all clinicians in the NHS.

I appreciate that but NHS staff are not responsible for their current working pay and conditions. In a free labour market they are perfectly entitled to take their skills and expertise to a country where they are better treated.

I am all for their salaries increasing, but not an immediate 35%, get round the table and negotiate a sliding scale.

You surely don't think that they seriously expect to get a 35% pay increase (though, in view of a decade of underpayment which has eroded the value of their pay by a quarter, plus the effect of current inflation, I think their claim is completely justified). 35% is their opening figure for negotiation. I'm sure that you, and most other posters understand how 'negotiation' works?

It is also their prerogative to work wherever they want. I just find it ironic that the union representatives constantly go on about we do not want a private healthcare system in the UK but many of their members are defecting to work in private healthcare systems elsewhere.

I don't find it ironic. I find it extremely sad that their members are being forced into abandoning the NHS because our government refuse to give them decent pay and conditions. 'Vocation' and claps don't put food on the table.

Which is a bit like saying that private systems are good enough for those countries but not the U.K.

I don't think it's saying that at all. Once again, you seem to be implying that 'vocation' and 'principles' trumps earning a decent living.

I am not for a USA type model, but would happily welcome a discussion on a mainland European model which can be a mixture of both if it would improve the current NHS model here.

There are certainly different ways that the NHS could be organised, but as far as the financing model is concerned there is no compelling economic argument for privatisation , or even semi privatisation, unless you believe the the nation's finances are the same as a households. The state finance model is as beneficial to the economy as the private finance model in that every £1 of state financing generates about £4 worth of economic activity. It's economists who have studied this field who are saying this, not me.

State financing is more equable than a privatised model in that it cuts out those dividends to shareholders in private healthcare companies so all the money the state invests goes directly to employees and the companies that supply the public sector. It also means that quality care is available to all citizens, regardless of their financial status. That was, after all, the whole point of setting up the NHS in the first place.

The entitlement thing is plain weird Maddy…..

I know Sue but I guess it is what it is.

The complaints about doctors on this thread make me ashamed. Some of the entitlement is visible here. The comments that doctors shouldn’t strike, are paid enough, should be made to work in the NHS for two years (they do already) a lack of understanding/ignorance about training and service and qualifications and working conditions etc. Too many people who don’t actually give a toss so long as the doctors are there when they want them to be. Total disinterest in the reasons these strikes have arisen. It’s all here on Gransnet.

Thank you to those who do understand and thankfully there are many of these too. Maizie, Wyllow, SueDonim, Foxie, Iam64, and others too many to name, just thank you for understanding the situation in all it’s complexity.

ronib

Casdon thanks for your clear response. Next question is how working conditions on the night shifts in hospitals could be improved ? More junior doctors? More senior doctors? Etc

The problem is that most nights, days and weekends in most hospitals there are fewer than the required number of doctors and nurses because there is a shortage of doctors and nurses generally. The other thing to appreciate is doctors and nurses have different skills according to the speciality that they are following and the level of training they have. As all doctors up to consultant level are effectively still in training you can't just replace a specialist training year 4 (ST4) doctor with one that is a ST1 and expect them to do the same job. My daughter is a ST4 anaesthetic doctor, she does regular nights in obstetrics, giving epidurals, in theatre with patients having emergency CS's or she might be covering an intensive care unit doing tracheotomies etc or is available for emergency operations that come via A&E. She can't just be replaced with another doctor with different skills or length of training and she is the product of 7 years training post graduation with another 5 years ahead of her before becoming a consultant. She is a junior doctor.

I read a very interesting article in the Daily Mail yesterday by Theodore Dalrymple, which is well worth taking a few minutes to read for an alternative view to the majority of opinions on GN.

Well done to your daughter foxie. She is a credit to you. Thank you for explaining the complexity of junior doctors.

Many of these junior doctors will leave the UK and go where they are respected and paid better... its already happening. The UK has trained them and other counties will benefit. We will be left with fewer doctors.

I don't blame the doctors at all.

maddyone

Well done to your daughter foxie. She is a credit to you. Thank you for explaining the complexity of ^junior doctors.^

Nah, she's a credit to herself! However, I wonder how many people on here might have a heart attack and need a stent in their heart as a matter of emergency. I think they would expect to be treated by properly trained doctors and nurses in a clean theatre with an intensive care bed available to them for their recovery with suitably trained nurses and doctors to manage their recovery. As it is ATM in many hospitals none of this is guaranteed. We must find a way of retaining trained nurses and doctors, currently too many are voting with their feet. 25% of consultant anaesthetists are planning to retire in the next 5 years and there is already a shortage which affects the ability to train more junior anaesthetists. In 2020 over 500 junior anaesthetists failed to find a part 2 training post so marked time. It's crazy and the general public actually have little idea what it's like being a junior doctor and tbh wouldn't survive a week if they had to do the job.

mayisay

I read a very interesting article in the Daily Mail yesterday by Theodore Dalrymple, which is well worth taking a few minutes to read for an alternative view to the majority of opinions on GN.

If you'd like to give us a link to it, or it's title (so that it's easily searchable) I'm happy to read it.

Foxie48 thought to mention stents do not always work.. not that simple.

They have revealed greed and irresponsibility:as the Nhs is hit by a 96 hour strike by junior doctors.
Theodore D
Daily Mail 11/April

Theodore Dalrymple is a pseudonym of a retired prison doctor and psychiatrist

I'm saying nothing.

It’s actually misleading to call them junior doctors. It makes them sound like wet behind the ears 16 year olds whereas they are actually the people that we depend upon to save our lives. I haven’t looked into it but it wouldn’t surprise me if lorry drivers aren’t allowed to work the long hours that doctors have to.

The Mail at its very best.

Quoting a person who isn't real.

Never giving another POV. Like a genuine interview with a Junior doctor one strike as the to the why's.

Like not taking into account the quite long term dire shortage of doctors and nurses etc that affects us all.

MayBee70

It’s actually misleading to call them junior doctors. It makes them sound like wet behind the ears 16 year olds whereas they are actually the people that we depend upon to save our lives. I haven’t looked into it but it wouldn’t surprise me if lorry drivers aren’t allowed to work the long hours that doctors have to.

Your wish is my command

wiki

"To summarise if you have a 17 week reference period a HGV driver must not exceed an average working week of 48 hours over this time. A driver, however can work up to 60 hours in a single week as long as it all averages out to 48 hours or less over the 17 week period.

Oh, apparently he is real...

In his writing, Daniels frequently argues that the leftist views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimise the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within prosperous countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.

Well, I think we know where his politics lies. He has more pseudonyms that Grant Shapps.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple

ruthiek

My doctor had give part time 3 morning work only , because he told everyone he wanted a family life, but what he failed to say was the other days he was actually working in his private acupuncture clinic . Wouldn’t everyone like to have 32% pay increase ? I am saddened that it’s not a vocation anymore Just a job

Same here ruthiek

Our GP practice has about 12 doctors most of whom have gone part time. Two of them have set up a private clinic in the town doing minor cosmetic surgery. They have the cheek to leave their brochures in the reception area of our NHS surgery. Another one does private acupuncture clinic.

You ring our surgery and you can’t get an appt for at least 2 weeks because they are either “on annual leave” or fully booked, well they would be since they are only doing half a week. That doesn’t help patients at all.

Yes foxie she is a credit to herself, but also to you.

You’re right, most complainers wouldn’t last a week if they had to do the job of any junior doctor. I take comfort from the fact they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

Primrose53

ruthiek

My doctor had give part time 3 morning work only , because he told everyone he wanted a family life, but what he failed to say was the other days he was actually working in his private acupuncture clinic . Wouldn’t everyone like to have 32% pay increase ? I am saddened that it’s not a vocation anymore Just a job

Same here ruthiek

Our GP practice has about 12 doctors most of whom have gone part time. Two of them have set up a private clinic in the town doing minor cosmetic surgery. They have the cheek to leave their brochures in the reception area of our NHS surgery. Another one does private acupuncture clinic.

You ring our surgery and you can’t get an appt for at least 2 weeks because they are either “on annual leave” or fully booked, well they would be since they are only doing half a week. That doesn’t help patients at all.

Has it occurred to you why GPs are working part time in general practice and doing other work too Primrose53?

volver3

Oh, apparently he is real...

In his writing, Daniels frequently argues that the leftist views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimise the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within prosperous countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse.

Well, I think we know where his politics lies. He has more pseudonyms that Grant Shapps.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple

I don't need to read it, then...

ronib

Sue Donim any idea how many nurses were working alongside your daughter and one other medic on the night shift covering 250 patients?

Thank you for answering this question, Casdon. Yes, two nursing staff. It also needs to be remembered that these may well be agency staff who have never worked on a particular ward before so don’t know their patients or where things are kept or paperwork procedures. There is a registrar-level doctor somewhere in the building and consultants are available on the phone but a doctor would be near death themselves before daring to call a consultant at 3am.

The shifts for junior doctors are a constant succession of bleeps and in a large hospital, patients can be scattered over many wards and floors, so there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. You may have a patient with severe pain, a crash call, a patient who keeps pulling their line out, someone trying to discharge themselves, someone is developing sepsis, deaths to be certified and much, much more.

My dd took her own food in for her break but mostly only got to eat it when she arrived home after 13 hours. She avoided drinks as much as possible because there wasn’t time to go to the toilet. She lost 20lbs in a few months - and there wasn’t much of her to begin with so she’s now a size 6.

This BBC article also highlights some of the problems. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-65167520

maddyone

^The entitlement thing is plain weird Maddy…..^

I know Sue but I guess it is what it is.

The complaints about doctors on this thread make me ashamed. Some of the entitlement is visible here. The comments that doctors shouldn’t strike, are paid enough, should be made to work in the NHS for two years (they do already) a lack of understanding/ignorance about training and service and qualifications and working conditions etc. Too many people who don’t actually give a toss so long as the doctors are there when they want them to be. Total disinterest in the reasons these strikes have arisen. It’s all here on Gransnet.

Thank you to those who do understand and thankfully there are many of these too. Maizie, Wyllow, SueDonim, Foxie, Iam64, and others too many to name, just thank you for understanding the situation in all it’s complexity.

I understand Maddyone my husband is a retired medic and empathises with them as do I.
Last night we were doing our family finances and realised our repair man charges £80 per hour to service the central heating boiler and AGA. Maybe we are paying over the odds. I bet he started his apprenticeship at 16 on a poor salary yes.
Not at 24 after 5 + years at uni plus two in hospital until they still only gain a BA,BSC and have to study at night and weekends to get their M.D. To be truly a DR. Until you live with them you have no understanding.
My only grumble would be they could be a bit more decorous in their protesting they are not helping themselves by being displayed on TV> as a rowdy rabble, not the professionals they are.

Yammy

maddyone

The entitlement thing is plain weird Maddy…..

I know Sue but I guess it is what it is.

The complaints about doctors on this thread make me ashamed. Some of the entitlement is visible here. The comments that doctors shouldn’t strike, are paid enough, should be made to work in the NHS for two years (they do already) a lack of understanding/ignorance about training and service and qualifications and working conditions etc. Too many people who don’t actually give a toss so long as the doctors are there when they want them to be. Total disinterest in the reasons these strikes have arisen. It’s all here on Gransnet.

Thank you to those who do understand and thankfully there are many of these too. Maizie, Wyllow, SueDonim, Foxie, Iam64, and others too many to name, just thank you for understanding the situation in all it’s complexity.

I understand Maddyone my husband is a retired medic and empathises with them as do I.
Last night we were doing our family finances and realised our repair man charges £80 per hour to service the central heating boiler and AGA. Maybe we are paying over the odds. I bet he started his apprenticeship at 16 on a poor salary yes.
Not at 24 after 5 + years at uni plus two in hospital until they still only gain a BA,BSC and have to study at night and weekends to get their M.D. To be truly a DR. Until you live with them you have no understanding.
My only grumble would be they could be a bit more decorous in their protesting they are not helping themselves by being displayed on TV> as a rowdy rabble, not the professionals they are.

Yammy your boilerman may have done a short (6 months I think) course to register as a gas fitter. He can still charge that much. He'll be self employed so will have costs to take off, but he'll be earning more than a lot of doctors.

What do the people, who blame the professionals currently providing NHS health care think will happen if those professionals decide to withdraw their labour completely by going to work privately or move abroad where conditions and pay are better?

Please could one of those repeating the Daily Mail style "facts" while having no actual knowledge tell me what they will do when there is no NHS as we have known it?

Don't come out with the "fact" (no knowledge required) that we cannot afford it. We could "afford" the fraud at the height of the pandemic. To be reasonable, some of that was inevitable in an emergency, but much of it certainly was not.

This happened while our current "I'm the safe pair of hands" PM was directly in charge of our money. Billions of pounds of "our" money disappeared into tax havens. Millions of pounds went to "friends" of the government who had no idea how to provide PPI, etc. No one has looked back and learned from this. But we are still told we cannot afford our NHS.

If this government tried to recover the fraud, the Conservative bookkeeping mind might feel we could "afford" the NHS. Why haven't they done that? Is it because some people will be found to be closely connected with this government? Why do the government pay for the chasing of tiny benefit overpayments while letting these vastly bigger sums go on a whim?

What sort of money are we talking about. In the tax year 2020-2021, between £33.2 billion and £58.8 billion was defrauded from the public purse. If we take it as, say £44 billion (nicely in the middle), this is 7.5% of all the taxes raised, in that year, effectively going to rich criminals. You may ask if £44 billion is a lot. In the same Covid year, the only departments spending more were Health and Social Care (which must feel like a joke to some) and education (another of the governments underfunded "jokes").

Also, under Sunak as Chancellor, the government wasted £37 billion on the private system of Track and Trace. We needed a Track and Trace system, but the one put in place - not by the NHS - was found, by the parliamentary investigation, to have been entirely wasted. We were no better off than if we hadn't had the system at all.

So if you add these together, Rishi Sunak, as Chancellor, lost more money than Liz Truss did with her crazy budget. This is not the entire amount of waste, but surely people can see that we can afford the NHS.

What we can't afford is a Conservative Government.

To add to my last post, thank you also Yammy, Glorianny, and DaisyAnne for your support of our medics.
In a way, it’s too late for me. My doctor daughter upped and left for New Zealand nearly two years ago, of course taking our beloved grandchildren with her. We’re lucky in that we can afford to go to see her, but it’s a long, tedious, and very tiring journey. We spent two months out there over the winter, doing childcare whilst she worked and helping with other things. Being with the children almost every day was wonderful and heartbreaking when my little granddaughter clung to me and broke her little heart on the day we left. Her nine year old twin hid in our (rental) car and said he was a stowaway and returning to England with us. Their five year old brother cried and said he’s my grandad and I want to see him every day.
They might not have gone if her working conditions were better. It was her husband who wanted to go and was able to persuade her due to the strain they were working under in the NHS.
Thank you to the government for making their working conditions so poor.