The next doctors’ strike

Not gods of course, but very highly trained clinicians, and by the time they reach the end of residency, experienced ones too. They deserve to be paid and have terms and conditions to reflect that. I still disagree with them striking at this particular moment in time though, because we are at a very vulnerable stage due to the flu outbreak.

Casdon

It is an odd comparison. Doctors accumulate medical knowledge through years of learning, and clinical experience, which they use to treat and prolong lives. Ambulance staff also save lives, they are hugely important, but they don’t have the skills doctors do. Firemen and lifeboat crews, and all the other people who risk their lives to save others are amazing, but they aren’t the same.

I think the public has realised that doctors are not gods any more.

They are humans, doing a difficult, often stressful, job, not always getting it right, and, as they progress up the ladder, earn more than the majority of people.

IOMGran
The coastguards do get paid.

Skyancer said lifeboat crew.

You don't seem to understand the difference between coastguards and lifeboat crew.

As for the comment Firemen spend most of their time drinking tea that is quite a shocking thing to allege.
Some firemen are in fact volunteers too and have other, full-time jobs.

No-one is suggesting the NHS should be run by volunteers but are just pointing out that other people do exceptional jobs too, some as volunteers as well as holding down a career.

You may be thinking of acute specialties , but it’s still hugely varied foxie48, here’s the 2024 info.
www.bmj.com/careers/article/which-are-the-most-competitive-medical-specialties-for-nhs-training-posts-

I don’t understand how they say their post has decreased in real terms, if thst is due to the cost of living it is the same with every worker , so why should the doctors strike ?

Actually Casdon although that used to be true, it's not now. I understand that all of the specialist areas are heavily oversubscribed.

It’s not that straightforward. UK doctors often don’t want to work in less popular specialties, and vacancies don’t attract home grown applicants. Popular specialties can attract lots of home grown applicants.

Mamie

GrannyGravy13

How about limiting the number of foreign doctors in the NHS, thereby freeing up positions for UK trained staff 🤷‍♀️

UK trained doctors need to be prioritised as they are in every other country. To spend all that money on training doctors, then fail to provide the places for them to become specialists, is just bonkers. Such a waste.

Just so:

If are taking doctors from abroad because of our failure to provide that crucial training for our very own home grown doctors

the training means moving up to key responsible positions and eventually consultants,

if we cut doctors coming from abroad and fail too provide those senior training opportunities then cutting the numbers of doctors from aboard will just mean even less doctors overall.

when I worked, i had to deal with the BMA. Compromise was not something that the union understood. It was the BMA view or no view. I would like to see the representative of the BMA deal with Trump as both think their view is the only view

Casdon

It is an odd comparison. Doctors accumulate medical knowledge through years of learning, and clinical experience, which they use to treat and prolong lives. Ambulance staff also save lives, they are hugely important, but they don’t have the skills doctors do. Firemen and lifeboat crews, and all the other people who risk their lives to save others are amazing, but they aren’t the same.

I agree, but where I live I’m more likely to get rapid response from an unpaid lifeboat crew than I am to get a hospital appointment. Skill is not much use if you can’t access it.

GrannyGravy13

How about limiting the number of foreign doctors in the NHS, thereby freeing up positions for UK trained staff 🤷‍♀️

UK trained doctors need to be prioritised as they are in every other country. To spend all that money on training doctors, then fail to provide the places for them to become specialists, is just bonkers. Such a waste.

It is an odd comparison. Doctors accumulate medical knowledge through years of learning, and clinical experience, which they use to treat and prolong lives. Ambulance staff also save lives, they are hugely important, but they don’t have the skills doctors do. Firemen and lifeboat crews, and all the other people who risk their lives to save others are amazing, but they aren’t the same.

How about limiting the number of foreign doctors in the NHS, thereby freeing up positions for UK trained staff 🤷‍♀️

I think we should offer the same as the Welsh doctors.

But in the longer term, if we don't sort out the training posts that is the next stage for resident doctors that we have after all paid a great deal to train in the UK, given that we already don't have enough doctors overall, where will that leave us?

this is genuinely part of their demands, and quite right too. We all need this to be sorted, not just for the resident doctors' future careers, to keep them in the UK!

What to do otherwise? Take yet more fully trained doctors as immigrants from needy countries?

IOMGran
This thread gets more and more bonkers, I despair of peoples grasp on reality.

Oreo
You mean of course that some GNers don’t agree with your take on things I expect.

That’s a good point Oreo, though I doubt it will be accepted as such.

IOMGran I must pass on the knowledge that I have about lifeboat crews.
I can’t do that anymore, but I can assure you we didn’t get paid. We could claim expenses for certain things and sometimes if our work was disrupted, but lifeboat crews risk their lives on a voluntary basis.

They are not on strike just for money. It is about not enough doctors being trained or offered jobs. Please don’t judge until you personally understand the facts. By the way, you won’t learn the facts from the Daily Mail.

IOMGran
You have no idea about the dangers of being a fireman, none at all.

IOMGran

This thread gets more and more bonkers, I despair of peoples grasp on reality.

You mean of course that some GNers don’t agree with your take on things I expect.

JenniferEccles

It wasn’t that long ago that striking doctors tried to make out it wasn’t about pay at all, more about ‘patient safety’

There is no pretence now though. They are openly demanding yet more money despite being awarded a very generous increase earlier this year.
I believe they got just under 30% for three years.

How much private sector workers have been that lucky?

Exactly! So many said at the time of the last strike that it def wasn’t about money.
Yeah right.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Skydancer

Greedy. They save lives but so do firemen whilst at the same time often putting their own lives at risk. Same with lifeboat crew who don’t get paid anything!

Greedy you say? Firemen spend most of their time drinking tea. Are you suggesting that we staff the NHS with volunteers? The coastguards do get paid. How do you pay your bills and mortgage with no money? Or are you some trustafarian who has an income from mummy and daddy?

Greedy. They save lives but so do firemen whilst at the same time often putting their own lives at risk. Same with lifeboat crew who don’t get paid anything!

icanhandthemback we have been through all of that too. All this do no harm nonsense, surely the biggest long term harm is to lose our young doctors. 2020 taught me a lot about who a society really needs, the key workers had a brief moment in the sun but now it's back to exploitation.

IOMGran

alisonsmith4

Whatever happened to “Do no harm?” It is a privilege to heal the sick. If the doctors are that interested in money then go and be an accountant. (Speaking as the mother of an NHS doctor.)

Speaking as the mother of an NHS doctor I completely disagree. She has the right to a decent life too.

So enjoy our doctors emigrating to Australia in greater numbers and the NHS limping on by poaching doctors from far poorer countries.

Quite right, IOMGran. Too often we take advantage of people who have a vocation rather than a job. Imagine doing all those years in training and finding you have no chance of staying in the area if you are lucky enough to even get a job. My future DIL has had to move over 200 miles away from home because of the lottery system to get a placement, started the job and then found out the funding for the research module had been withdrawn and has no guarantee of a job anywhere in the medical profession once she has worked for in the NHS for 2 years. She is one of the lucky ones. A third of her cohorts lost out on places to foreign graduates. They now have the choice to leave the profession or leave the country.

This is why.

The Welsh offer gives junior (resident) doctors a bigger, faster-restored pay rise than England did, plus a redesigned contract with higher starting basic pay and simpler progression. England’s deal is sizable over two years but more back‑loaded and keeps the existing 2016 contract structure.[1][2][3][4][5]

## Headline differences

- *Scale of pay uplift (recent deals)*
- *Wales (2023/24–2024/25)**: Extra 7.4% uplift on top of the earlier 5% for 2023/24, giving a **total 12.4% increase in‑year* for junior doctors, with back pay from 1 April 2023.[2][1]
- *England (2023/24–2024/25)**: Package worth **about 22.3% on average over two years**: an 8.8% average uplift for 2023/24, plus a further 3.7–5.05% backdated adjustment, then a **6% rise plus £1,000 consolidated* in 2024/25.[3][4]

- *Starting/basic pay levels*
- Under the Welsh 12.4% deal, an FY1 minimum basic salary moved from £28,471 to about *£30,477*, with higher points above that; FY2 minimum rose from £35,315 to about *£37,803*.[2]
- Under the English 2024/25 scales, the FY1 nodal point (N1) is around *£36,616*, and nodal points rise to £70,425 at N5, but these figures reflect the cumulative two‑year English deal rather than a single‑year jump.[4]

- *Contract structure and reform*
- Wales has agreed a *new resident doctor contract* with a reformed basic scale roughly *£40,000–£78,000*, with explicit pay points for F1, F2 and then a combined ST1/CT1+ ladder, aiming to front‑load pay, increase pensionable basic pay, and reduce pay gaps and rota‑based variation.[5]
- England keeps the *2016 junior doctor contract*, using 5 nodal points linked to training stage plus banding for unsocial hours; the recent deal is primarily about pay uplifts, not structural reform.[6][4]

- *Non‑pay elements*
- The Welsh offer explicitly includes commitments on *DDRB reform and ongoing negotiation*, and was consciously benchmarked against the more generous Scottish settlement to end strikes.[7][8][1]
- In England, the deal’s main non‑pay element is effectively industrial peace: junior doctors accepted it in a BMA referendum, ending the longest dispute, but with fewer explicit structural concessions than the Welsh contract rewrite.[9][3][4]

In practice, both nations have improved junior doctor pay, but Wales has combined a Scotland‑style catch‑up uplift and new contract design, while England has offered a larger two‑year percentage increase overall within the existing contract framework.

[1](https://www.nhsconfed.org/system/files/2024-07/JD%20final%20offer.pdf)
[2](https://www.bma.org.uk/our-campaigns/resident-doctor-campaigns/pay-in-wales/pay-offer-for-resident-doctors-working-in-wales)
[3](https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q2038)
[4](https://www.bma.org.uk/our-campaigns/resident-doctor-campaigns/pay-in-england/2024-pay-deal-for-resident-doctors-working-in-england)
[5](https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/a-new-resident-doctor-contract-in-wales-what-s-on-offer)
[6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N02U-7_sH8)
[7](https://www.gov.wales/first-minister-announces-public-sector-pay-rises)
[8](https://www.nationalhealthexecutive.com/articles/rcn-bma-set-way-forward-after-nhs-wales-pay-award)
[9](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5yy13ng33o)
[10](https://www.nhs.wales/files/pc-resources/md-w-01-25-pay-award-pdf-2-pdf/)