Resident (Junior) Doctors vote to strike

ftm420 How much debt did you have when you started work and how many times did you have to move to gain the training you needed to progress? Also, how many employers could you have moved to if you were unhappy with your pay and working conditions? If others want a pay increase, perhaps it's because they are also underpaid?

FGT I don't support the strike but that doesn't mean I don't think the resident doctors have a justified case. I don't think it's fair to denigrate all doctors because some choose to strike. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about how doctors are trained, what is a fair expectation of them and how working in the NHS has changed over the past 10 or so years.

Posted on another thread, but more relevant to this one?

I spoke to my uncle last night, who is a retired hospital administrator. He has been in the nhs all his working life and despairs at the junior doctors. They earn a lot of money already. You can't say they want 22%+ in order to make up for previous years. No-one (& I include myself, having worked for a local council for nearly 10 years) in the public sector has had anywhere near that kind of pay rise for years. If the government caves in, then everyone else will want the same.

Selfish and unwarranted.

I don’t think that nurse found it onerous. She didn’t agree with the strike though. 🤷‍♀️
Many staff didn’t.

Nurses do help newly qualified doctors to do things that an experienced nurse would find easy eg inserting cannulas in sick or elderly patients can be quite tricky and students will have had little experience of doing that (if any). An experienced nurse will often help a young doctor gain experience, it is what happens in medicine. See one, do one, teach one but sometimes you have to see something several times and be helped several times in order to gain confidence and expertise. Most nurses rather enjoy helping the young doctors and wouldn't consider it onerous.

The nurse may well have been unprofessional discussing locum doctor pay scales during the strike. However it certainly shines a light doesn’t it? Locum rates for doctors are really high. Some doctors choose less contacted hours per week (nice pensions though in time 70% of their salary in annual pension) and then pick up very well paid locum rates on an ad hoc basis with an agency to suit them.

eazybee

If a locum is being paid £150 an hour he should be capable of performing all procedures.
In my opinion it is extremely unprofessional of a doctor to go on strike.

There is no doctor anywhere in the world who can perform all procedures, that is a really uninformed thing to say. Cancer treatment is a specialist area, as are other services, and they all involve a large number of procedures, often unique to that specialty.

If a locum is being paid £150 an hour he should be capable of performing all procedures.
In my opinion it is extremely unprofessional of a doctor to go on strike.

Christie is a specialist cancer hospital though, a locum won't be necessarily trained to do certain procedures that the specialist nurses do as a routine. However, there are a lot of things that a qualified doctor can do that the nurses can't, eg prescribe. I think that nurse was very unprofessional discussing pay etc with a patient's relative. The level of pay for locum work reflects the market value of doctors, just like in any other job or profession.

The doctors always without fail make provision for emergency cover.

Not surprising if they get paid £150 ph for locum work.

DGD2 has told me that the day to avoid a trip to hospital is the first Wednesday in August when all the newly qualified F1 doctors take up their posts.

They call it Black Wednesday! 😮😂

Often an experienced nurse will be guiding a newly qualified doctor through procedures; I have witnessed this several times as a patient

Exactly this Allira.

Himself was on a ward at the Christie hospital for 2 weeks and 4 of those days coincided with the doctors strike. One of the nurses was talking to us about it all as she was resetting one of his iv drips. “We’ve a locum doctor on the ward today. He’s earning £150 an hour to cover for his shift and has asked me twice already in a certain situation what to do.”

Correction strike not stroke in opening sentence

Am all for the right to stroke but just an example of one way in which the strike does affect sick people’s lives. My husband has to date had a stroke and three bleeds on the brain, so a very sick person, he had a small bleed just over two weeks ago that neuro surgeons believed would stop so he was placed under observation on a ward for two days then sent home expecting a CT on 25th July. Of course that CT didn’t happen due to the strike and is now happening today, several days later. We have also been told there will probably be a delay in reading the scan due to a backlog so it might not be read for another couple of days. With a bleed on the brain the clock can be ticking and early detection of a large bleed can be life saving. My husband is confused and can lose his balance or feel really sleepy due to the stroke so is hard to tell if he has a large bleed until he is scanned.
Many others I am sure are facing similar situations.

ronib

I don’t think so Rosie51 armed services personnel start at even lower pay than the police. Let’s not forget them.

????? Armed service personnel weren't named as one of the three in Wyllow's post. I also didn't mention prison officers who are banned by law from striking because Wyllow didn't name them either. My point was Wyllow thinks it's draconian to deny the right to strike....except if it's a category of worker she thinks should have that right denied, when presumably it ceases to be a draconian measure, and becomes an entirely reasonable one.
For what it's worth I can agree with certain sectors having that right withdrawn but only in exchange for not having to fight for just pay and conditions. Pity it's only the first part of that sentence that's honoured. It's surely not a coincidence that the sections we legally ban from striking also suffer poor pay and conditions?

Wyllow3 but emergency cover is but one aspect of the NHS. A lot of patients won’t be accessing emergency cover because they will have dropped off their perch waiting for treatment. The disruption caused by 11 strikes by doctors is incalculable. Not forgetting 5 more between now and January.

Rosie51

Wyllow3 There are even those who believe in the draconian measures of denying the right to strike.

Are you unaware that the lowest starting salary you quote in your post belongs to the group that are forbidden by law to strike....the police?

Of course I am.

I agree with that, because it concerns our nations security against terrorism.

The doctors always without fail make provision for emergency cover.

Bands
Autocorrect!

Nurses start at a lower salary band, around £31,049

I don't know where you found that information, Wyllow3 but it's not correct.

Starting salary for a qualified nurse is £24,907.
They hope to move up through the Bonds and an average salary is around £33,000 - £35,000.

Often an experienced nurse will be guiding a newly qualified doctor through procedures; I have witnessed this several times as a patient.

ronib

I don’t think so Rosie51 armed services personnel start at even lower pay than the police. Let’s not forget them.

Nor can they strike.

It would be termed mutiny. I don't think it's punishable by death any more.

I don’t think so Rosie51 armed services personnel start at even lower pay than the police. Let’s not forget them.

Wyllow3 There are even those who believe in the draconian measures of denying the right to strike.

Are you unaware that the lowest starting salary you quote in your post belongs to the group that are forbidden by law to strike....the police?

I would be interested to see pay scales and the rate and time at which doctors' pay increases; starting salaries are meaningless unless the rate of progression up the scale is revealed.

There are even those who believe in the draconian measures of denying the right to strike.
Wes Streeting is taking a tough line, which I believe has some validity, I'd like know more details, but would never deny the right of the workforce to take action if they believe they are in extremis.

They often work in A and E or Mental Health, in the most acute circumstances , as do the police.

Resident doctors’ current salary of between £38,831
Nurses start at a lower salary band, around £31,049
Police start at £29,907 a year

BUT

Doctors must complete several years of medical school before qualifying.

This saddles many doctors with debt before entering the workforce - something which is not a requirement for other emergency services, including firefighters and police, and they spend year on next to nothing student grants or parents pay