Junior Doctors strike

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?