Junior Doctors strike

Yes, it’s awful Primrose53 and sorry to hear that your son is ill what a worry for you all.💐
I don’t think there’s much support if any this time round for the resident doctors, they’re hardly living up to their Hippocratic oaths are they?

Im so very sorry Primrose to hear that your son has Pancreatic cancer and even more so of the unnecessary wait he's has had in A&E because of Drs strike.
My mum had Pancreatic cancer and the pain is so bad.
I so agree with you that the Drs strike this time is just so disgusting. They need to get back to work and work with their colleagues to make sure ill patients get treated promptly.

Sweetpeasue

Im so very sorry Primrose to hear that your son has Pancreatic cancer and even more so of the unnecessary wait he's has had in A&E because of Drs strike.
My mum had Pancreatic cancer and the pain is so bad.
I so agree with you that the Drs strike this time is just so disgusting. They need to get back to work and work with their colleagues to make sure ill patients get treated promptly.

Thanks, I believe they go back to work today. Hopefully anyway. It’s not fair on patients and other NHS staff who get nowhere near the pay rises the junior doctors do and makes their working day much more difficult.

The doctors should be ashamed of themselves! Primrose so very sorry to read of your son's cancer - you must be so worried. 🌸💐

Primrose53 - I am so sorry to hear about your son's diagnosis and his awful experience.

The conditions under which resident doctors work do need addressing, but going on strike is not the way to do it.

I am not making a moral judgement about whether the junior doctors should strike or not but I would like to make the following points:-

A lot of people don't realise that there is a huge student loan debt that junior doctors have accrued by the time they qualify.

It is not unusual for a JD to be paying back £4,000 a month and some have debts of as much as £90,000 by the time the relentless interest is added.

Given that fact that their starting hourly rate is often as low as £14.00 an hour, this does not leave much for living costs.

If they did not have to fork out huge chunks of money to pay back their student loans they would be considerably better off.

Magenta8. That info is incorrect. I have just looked at latest pay rates for Junior Doctors but am literally on way out to take son for chemo. Will post later if somebody doesn’t beat me to it.

I think the junior/resident doctors have not 'read the room'. They are not the only people who feel they've lost out on pay and, indeed, have had handsome percentage rises. It's daft that there are shortages of jobs for doctors but maybe if they weren't so expensive there might be more? Heresy to say that though.
It seems to me that medics live in a bubble of specialness and are unaware of the pressures facing others.

Oh my goodness Primrose, I am extremely sorry to hear about your son, and very angry at the added stress you all had to endure. My granddaughter is a blue light Ambulance driver and so we do hear snippets of how difficult things are even on a good day, the strike making it even more so. I'm sure these doctors do have a lot of debt, but surely they knew all that before going into medicine? If it's that bad, then finish your training and look elsewhere for employment, but don't take it out on patients, and other members of staff. My granddaughter was assured when she first joined the A.S, that after a period of time she would, all being well, be able to apply to do a degree course in order to become a Paramedic. She has reached that stage, only to be told that funding has been withdrawn!! Will she and others go on strike? Absolutely NOT!

You make a good point, Magenta. The IFS paper on resident doctors and student loans.

ifs.org.uk/articles/merits-student-loan-forgiveness-and-pension-changes-resident-doctors

I was blue-lighted to hospital during the last strike in November 2025 as I was having great difficulty breathing.

Considering there was a flu epidemic at the time, the strike didn’t seem to affect processing time or quality of care. I was attended to quickly by the Rapid Assessment Team, sent for a chest scan within the hour and diagnosed with a massive pulmonary embolism blocking both lungs. The critical care lead came in to to see me and said I might have died with the next few days if I hadn’t called 999 so I was left in no doubt how poorly I was.

The only long delay I experienced was waiting for a bed in the Acute Medical Unit to become free. For the first 24 hours after diagnosis, I was treated in a room in A&E. At any time of year, shortage of ward beds could be what’s causing hold ups in the system, especially during flu season, nothing to do with the strike. I have to be admitted to hospital fairly frequently for treatment for the auto-immune condition which has lead to the P.E. I have experienced delays much longer than I did last November, always because of the shortage of beds.

I was in the AMU for a week and treated very well. Not one member of in-hospital staff (or the three paramedics who attended me) said anything about the strike or about their colleagues. It would have been unprofessional to do so.

I am posting about my experience just to say that the strike doesn’t necessarily affect the timeliness or quality of care.

Primrose First of all I am so sorry to hear about everything your son is going through.

I don't know where you looked up your information about rates of pay but my information is that junior doctors are not paid overtime or by the hour and they frequently have to work in excess of 70 hours a week, often more. A breakdown of their hourly rate can be as little as £14.00 per hour.

I am only going on what I read online so I might well be wrong.

Apparently junior doctors do get overtime as of course they should. They used not to, but overtime was one of the grievances that was addressed satisfactorily back in September 2025.

I understand it is very hard to qualify for medical school, there is a large debt to be paid back, and it can take a long time for resident doctors to reach consultant level. However, once they reach consultant level and rise up the pay scale, they are very well paid with a job for life and a very good pension at 60.
I certainly expect someone like a psychiatrist to earn far more than someone like a porter as they have taken so long to qualify. What I don't expect is someone who is early on in their career demanding a huge pay rise after they've received 22% and been offerd over 5% this year.

Can I point out that in Scotland we haven,t had any doctors strike when English doctors were,
No nurses strikes either

This is a fault of government ,if they sat down and discussed .the problem they just might find a solution .
Instead the ongoing issue just causes division…it’s not the long since you were all out clapping on a Thursday evening…these are still the same people under the same stress .

After 6.5 hrs at hospital and 2 hrs driving this will have to do.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/pay-offer-to-resident-doctors/offer-to-bma-uk-resident-doctors-committee-accessible-version

Can I just point out to paddyann54 that the Scottish government have unfortunately not worked out how they can pay the rises that they've promised the doctors. In the doomsday scenario that SNP get re elected this will be a massive headache for them or, more likely, the beleaguered tax payers who already pay more than they do in England.

Cumbrianmale56

I understand it is very hard to qualify for medical school, there is a large debt to be paid back, and it can take a long time for resident doctors to reach consultant level. However, once they reach consultant level and rise up the pay scale, they are very well paid with a job for life and a very good pension at 60.
I certainly expect someone like a psychiatrist to earn far more than someone like a porter as they have taken so long to qualify. What I don't expect is someone who is early on in their career demanding a huge pay rise after they've received 22% and been offerd over 5% this year.

They are not all "early on in their career".
Senior registrars may be 5 years post medical school,so 10 years post A levels,and do the bulk of the surgery in their specialty, as even when they've done the junior houseman, senior houseman, junior registrar, senior registrar progression, & passed their CCT exams, they have to wait for a consultant position to become available, apply & successfully interview for it, before they become a consultant & cease to be a resident doctor.

But I do agree with Cumbrianmale that, despite their pay not really reflecting their skill / responsibility level and the investment / time it would take to train someone to do their job if they left, they should compromise on pay in the short-term & accept the fair offer on the table. In the long-term I think they merit a higher relative payrate.

Paddyann, with great respect, the resident doctors strike in England, has little or nothing to do with Scotland, making your comment totally irrelevant.

How awful for you and your son, empathy as my DF and also also bestie’s husband both had this and I know how awfully painful it can be.

I’m angry with the junior doctors because they were given a good deal.

Though I’m not convinced the strike is solely responsible for the delays in treatments in hospitals. My poor DM had to be admitted several times in the year prior to her death in 2022, she was kept in an ambulance outside the hospital on several occasions, once for 9 hours, then “treated” in a corridor for another 6 hours.

There are simply not enough beds, not enough staff and not enough resources. I seem to remember Boris promising much needed hospitals, were they built? I also remember being promised the extra 44,000 staff required across the country.

I would also point out, and know someone whose son was in this very situation, during training it’s really hard to get the contracts required in hospitals to continue and there don’t appear to be enough posts either for newly qualified doctors. Also the term “junior” doctors is most misleading.

Jaberwok

Paddyann, with great respect, the resident doctors strike in England, has little or nothing to do with Scotland, making your comment totally irrelevant.

I don’t think it’s irrelevant. paddyanne is pointing out that in Scotland medical staff are better treated than in England. Perhaps we should learn from them?

Regardless of the doctors' case and whether the BMA is politically motivated the root problem is the failure of successive governments - Tory, Labour and Coalition - to plan for the health of the population. One only has to look at Europe to see provision could be better.

Cossy

I would also point out, and know someone whose son was in this very situation, during training it’s really hard to get the contracts required in hospitals to continue and there don’t appear to be enough posts either for newly qualified doctors. Also the term “junior” doctors is most misleading.

Agree Cossy, but making more training places being available was part of the deal the doctors have turned down.

I too have doctors in the family but cannot see that this strike has any merit.