Into the abyss - NHS Consultants have voted for strike action

Their salaries may pale into insignificance when compared with other professions foxie, but it was ever thus and they would have known that when choosing medicine as a career rather than, say, law or banking.

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!

You can’t compare people paid by the taxpayer with those in the private sector clg.

MaizieD well stay out of hospital end of July!

person's role ! sorry...

GSM - so is the importance/ value of a person's related exclusively to their paymaster?

It's a measure of the level of desperation that runs all through the NHS at the tories' ongoing demolition of the service that consultants have taken the unprecedented decision to strike.

I entirely support them and hope that this catastrophe will bring the government to its senses.

This is a government which is entirely comfortable with the idea of the UK sliding into a depression which could have devastating consequences for millions of UK citizens. Why should its services, which it has little regard for, be propping it up by soldiering on?

GrannyGravy13

This group of strikers I have absolutely no sympathy with, in fact I have nothing but contempt.

Their NHS salaries are over £100,000 add on their Private work and…

Is that pro rata because many do not work full-time for the NHS?

Indeed ronib.
Chocolatelovinggean, we the taxpayers don’t pay bankers.

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.

Bella23 surely it’s the consultants and junior doctors who are pushing us towards private insurance pre 1945? This group is making its case for salaries around £200k a year and know very well that the Nhs won’t stretch that far.
Not only that the consultants themselves have consistently voted against expanding medical training places.

As the wife of a retired medic whose speciality had no private practice [ not all have, if Insurance will not cover their field for private work as it is long term and costs too much],
I hear both sides of the story.
Are the government pushing us all towards private Insurance pre-1945. All I can say is come back an Atlee and Aneurin Bevan type and save the NHS which we all need.
I'm keeping quiet on here. I am the red in the bed at home.

I have no sympathy for junior doctors insisting on a 35% increase either. Thank goodness the nurses aren’t taking more strike action. Obviously many of them don’t have the stomach to continue the harm this is doing to sick people. Good for them.

I had sympathy for all these NHS strikes at first but it is now rapidly disappearing.
Many will suffer because of these strikes by well paid consultants.

I have no idea I’m afraid.

I read that the junior doctors are striking for 5 days in July closely followed by the consultants out for 2 days.
I think these people are in the wrong profession.

I don’t believe they swear any oath just advised to do no harm.

Excuse typos I am trying to do three things at once, whilst getting ready to go out.

Germanshepherdsmum

Indeed. I haven’t heard, though, whether they also want more money or are supporting the junior doctors’ demands.

Isn’t it against U.K. law for one group to come strike in support of others?

Wouldn’t it be what used to be called/classes as a wild cat strike

Indeed. I haven’t heard, though, whether they also want more money or are supporting the junior doctors’ demands.

This group of strikers I have absolutely no sympathy with, in fact I have nothing but contempt.

Their NHS salaries are over £100,000 add on their Private work and…

I sympathise nanadana Mr C was booked for major heart surgery. As he’s deteriorating surgeon wanted to operate by the end of this month at the latest. One admission date cancelled. The next is in the middle of the junior doctors strike. We’re expecting another cancellation. It’s hard, isn’t it?

Those same consultants can just do more of their private work to make up loss of strike pay. They earn shed loads of money.
Doctors swear an oath not to do any harm but seem to be forgoing that as patients will suffer.

NanaDana do you have the option of seeing a specialist privately to set your mind at rest? We have no shortage of private care near London.

Having had a Melanoma skin cancer (the nasty one) removed a year ago, plus 2 Basal Cell carcinomas, I'm on (or should be on) a 6 monthly check-up programme to pick up any recurrence. I should have been seen again in January of this year, and am still waiting. I know that there are people in much greater need than I am, many of whom are suffering from potentially fatal yet undiagnosed conditions. What a mess the NHS is in. So horrendously underfunded. I for one would happily pay more tax if I could be certain that it went into NHS coffers.