Into the abyss - NHS Consultants have voted for strike action

Aveline

I know the NHS is sacred and I feel sorry for the junior doctors but I'm less sympathetic to consultants. If they would agree to increase the training places and thus the stranglehold on expansion there could be many more doctors.

It was the govt that refused to fund extra training places not the consultants.
www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jan/14/ministers-refuse-fund-medical-school-uk-doctor-shortage

Casdon

ronib

Casdon lots of people are paid peanuts in this country not just doctors in training. If a student wants a highly paid profession maybe the time to work it out is before the start of university and not at the end. No one is forcing people to choose medicine.

As I said ronib, it will be like Logan’s Run. Why not close the medical schools altogether, let all the highly intelligent previously would be doctors take the jobs from the financial and legal professionals, and send everybody off to oblivion at the age of 30. Who needs healthcare after all.

Precisely, Casdon

Who needs highly trained medical professionals to take care of their health needs...

I'm not sure what the consultants are requesting for themselves, but they are not demanding a 35% pay rise. My understanding is that they are pointing out that their salaries have effectively fallen compared with inflation/ cost of living by 35% and as a result they are loosing doctors at all levels to other countries.

That's my understanding too Margiknot. They are asking for an increase equivalent to current inflation plus an agreement on a system which will ensure that future pay rises are inline with inflation.

I have a much better idea - we could outsource all our medical training to Cuba. I understand Cuba is able to provide doctors to other countries and medics are paid meagre salaries.
Alternatively courses in financial budgeting might need to be part of medical training too.
Let’s go fully socialist and not hang around.

ronib

Grantanow do you know how much Germans pay out monthly for healthcare? It would be useful to compare. It’s a more complicated system than here.

I think Growstuff has answered your question.

Sorry to pre-empt you Grantanow. It's something I know quite a bit about for a number of reasons.

My sympathy has long gone , they should be ashamed of themselves.

No one has answered my question. My friend is required to pay 250 euros per month as a pensioner living in Germany for health care and her partner has an enhanced payment of 420 euros a month.
I was asking about the funding model that is how much the end user has to pay for a good/adequate health care system as opposed to the failing model we have here.

Indeed. Whereas we cease to pay NI when the state pension arrives. I don’t see how we can compare funding of the NHS with funding of healthcare in other countries when the contributions of the end users differ so much.

GSM not only does the Uk funding model need to be reassessed but my friend in Germany was surprised by the difference in quality of care. No waiting times of any note plus an interested gp who spent time getting to know a new patient. My friend was astonished.
Given that the Uk is fast sliding down the medical outcomes list with ever increasing waiting times, I fail to understand how paying consultants a penny more will result in treatment anywhere near the German model.

Shelflife

My sympathy has long gone , they should be ashamed of themselves.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I don’t think it will. The consultants are preventing the training of new doctors in sufficient numbers. Bringing more doctors through the system would take years, but it would lessen the burden on the insufficient number of existing doctors for which the government is being blamed. The government promised more doctors - the consultants said No.

foxie48

I can't help thinking that this vote is representative of the poor morale of doctors working in the NHS. fwiw consultants on ft contracts working for the NHS cannot exceed private earnings in excess of 10% of their NHS salary, so a consultant on £100K p.a. would earn £110K max. This salary pales into insignificance when compared with many professions, especially when also compared with the years of training required. There are also many specialisms that have few opportunities for private work, paediatrics, obstetrics, geriatrics, spring to mind. Surely doctors have as much right to be properly paid as anyone else? They should also have good working conditions and feel valued so they stay working in the NHS. We are increasingly becoming a country with a two tier health service, poorer people get poor NHS treatment and richer people can go private and get really good treatment. It's beginning to feel like the US!

I think that best represents how I feel.

We need to get more hot under the collar about our struggling NHS then heap opprobrium on a group whom I know (sis and BiL recently retired consultants and not lefties) are as concerned about the NHS as a whole as keeping pace with inflation (and quite rightly looking across at the private sector where the years of training and responsibility are clearly equivalent).

But yes, have more, and remaining, sympathy for junior doctors. They are being treated very eery shabbily and we need them and we are not training enough for the future. FGS, give them a decent deal.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t think it will. The consultants are preventing the training of new doctors in sufficient numbers. Bringing more doctors through the system would take years, but it would lessen the burden on the insufficient number of existing doctors for which the government is being blamed. The government promised more doctors - the consultants said No.

GSM, now that's a view I've certainly never heard from sis and BiL. Totally and utterly the contrary, its 100% train more doctors!

What is a decent deal? The 35% they demand ?

I’m afraid the BMA says No.

Chocolatelovinggran

Bella, every time that I am in the centre of Cardiff I touch the statue of Nye Bevan and send a thank you up for all the lives touched by the NHS from safe births to managed deaths and every stage in between. This service needs staffing.People with skills we need must be paid. We apply this logic to bankers, I understand.

I've been to the hospital in the slate mines in Snowdonia to see how their care system worked. The men all played into a self-help club and helped each other when injured. Nye Bevin was meant to base his set-up of the NHS on that example. My great-grandfather helped set up something similar in the mining area where he lived.
If I'm honest I'm just glad DH does not have to make the decision whether to strike. Which of us would like to make it? unfortunately, the days of people like Bevan who had everyone's health matters at heart are long gone.

Germanshepherdsmum

I don’t think it will. The consultants are preventing the training of new doctors in sufficient numbers. Bringing more doctors through the system would take years, but it would lessen the burden on the insufficient number of existing doctors for which the government is being blamed. The government promised more doctors - the consultants said No.

Sorry but that is not true, the govt refused to fund more training places. i posted a link to the Guardian article from 2017 earlier in this thread and have posted it before.

foxie48 the Guardian is wrong again. Just google - Bma has voted against increasing medical places!

Indeed ronib, 2017 was six years ago foxie.

I do wonder how people training to be lawyers, accountants, bankers etc would react if they were told that by the time they were well trained and shouldering a lot of responsibility they would be paid 35% less than the salary level when they made their career choice. Bright professionals can change their employer if they think they are being underpaid, this is not true of junior doctors, their training can only come via the NHS (unless they move to another country that recognises UK training, most do). This is why it is important for anyone who wants a functioning NHS to support them. They are not being greedy, they are not asking for the huge salaries that are paid in the private sector, they just want to be paid a salary on a par with what they expected to be paid. It's not as though they are taking advantage of the current chronic shortage of doctors but they do recognise that every doctor who leaves places more work and responsibility on them and undermines the level of care that they want to give to their patients.

Germanshepherdsmum

Indeed ronib, 2017 was six years ago foxie.

Yes and if those training places had been funded we would have many more doctors in current training rather than those new training places training people from overseas.

Grantanow

The Tories spend some 39% less on the NHS than the Germans spend on their health service and we are consequentially short of doctors who are leaving for Australia and elsewhere for a less-stressful and better paid life.. Bear in mind that government Ministers can earn £84,000 as MPs plus up to about £101,000 (depending on the post) as well as being eligible for significant expenses and allowances. Few of them have worked and studied as hard as hospital consultants for whom it takes about 15 years to achieve the grade and they incur considerable education and training costs and student debt.

Australian healthcare is also having problems. Medicare is underfunded and most people pay into private healthcare schemes.

www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-20/the-history-of-medicare/102232344

There is a huge shortage of medical staff in Australia, that is why they often try to recruit staff from other countries.

For clarity, the govt may be prepared to fund more places now but they need clinical placements to support that training. That puts additional work and responsibility on existing staff who are already completely over stretched, they can't just put med students on wards inadequately supervised.