Resident doctors synicsl strike again

You have no idea.

In answe to your question with unpleasant undertones. My son always had a job as you well know.

I am a patient and a taxpayer. I do not sit in judgement of anyone, but I am keen on the truth. I don't think that you are a doctor either, but that doesn't stop you from having an opinion, does it?

Did your offspring ever manage to get a job?

If I remember correctly you are not a doctor but sit in judgement of resident doctors.

Happily I am completely indifferent to what you find appropriate.

Widening participation should be based on social measures, absolutely never academic ones.

And Streeting will be gone in two or three years.

Let's stick to the facts, shall we?

1 in 4 A-level candidates achieve the academic requirement for entry to medicine, there is nothing "high calibre" about medical students per se.

Nearly all standard-entry medical degrees are 5 years. "Our resident doctors" don't in general spend 6 years at university.

Graduate-entry medical courses are 4 years - and these attract people who typically have very sketchy A levels, who are then taught little of the medical sciences by people with sketchy academic backgrounds.

On graduation a job is guaranteed with strictly limited responsibility for which, in 2024-2025, the actual average remuneration was £45754. This exceeds the salaries of law trainees, who had a less than one in a hundred chance of securing their posts.

There is no other career that is as unselective, well paid, and well supported. However, if you go into medicine with a history of weak academic attainment, and then skip the basic medical sciences, you will struggle regardless of what anyone (or the system) can do to help. Striking over it will only make everyone else's life more difficult.

I find your elitist posts inappropriate. My impression is you are not a supporter of widening participation. Thank goodness the UK is moving in the right direction on that. Streeting is keen on it too so you will have to put up with it.

I am accurate in what I reported and my impression of you and a few others that all had the same outlook.

Consultants of today have no student debt and lived in the hospital as resident doctors. They also had the support of the firm system and had more training opportunities.

@PurpleFairyLights if you are going to refer to previous threads (not encouraged by mumsnet) at least try to be accurate.

The so called inappropriate remarks about medical graduates were not about any that were not Oxbridge, but some from new medical schools opened since the expansion of medical school places.

Students from medical schools using PBL instead of traditional teaching are more likely to be sanctioned by the GMC, and less likely to be able to pass their Royal College membership exams. (essential for becoming a consultant) This should be a worry to everyone, and you can't brush it off as snobbery (although I know you will try).

The fact is that previous academic attainment is a predictor of outcome. The medical students who enter university with three A star A levels in traditional science subjects statistically will do better than those with 3 A's. Some medical schools don't require chemistry, others will take them with a PE A level. Draw your own conclusions, but 25% of A level students get 3 A's. In the past no one would have thought that 25% of 18 year olds were cut out to be doctors.

As for your remarks about "loss of decent working conitions" don't make me laugh. A large percentage of the consultants who will be picking up the juniors work while they have a holiday over Easter will have had considerably worse working conditions when they were juniors. When was this happy time when they had decent working conditions?

It 100% happens. You can get toil if you get your consultants permission to stay late in advance (which isn't always practical if you're in a cardiac arrest etc as I'm an anaesthetist), then complete a huge great form to explain that you stayed late and why you couldn't have averted it and what you did to get home sooner, then have a meeting with the dept lead (where you're often made to feel lazy or inefficient for not getting the work done in the shift in the instances of medicine and surgery), and then they do paperwork, then HR hopefully sign their paperwork.... and then you have toil.... ie they make it so damn difficult to claim it, that we dont

Doctors don’t want to strike . It means losing pay for one thing.
It’s clear that people feel very strongly to risk annoying senior colleagues , missing training time, losing money , not to mention the impact on patient care and delays in appointments and operations.
Surely that shows how unhappy people are !
I can’t work out whether the OP is a hospital manager, allied HCP
perhaps physicians associate , medically retired / ex - doctor with an axe to grind, politician or lives under a bridge.

How would you suggest the problem be solved then?

Particularly interested in how you would solve the problem of decades of pay erosion and loss of decent working conditions.

Striking is not the way to solve these problems.

Excellent post.

Unfortunately on these threads there are some very unpleasant attitudes to our young doctors.

There was also a lot of inappropriate remarks regarding the standard of UK medical education (if not Oxbridge) and the calibre of UK medical graduates. All very elitist which thankfully the UK is moving away from with widening participation.

There was also a lot of kickback about UK planning to re-introduce UK medical graduate prioritisation (like 195 other countries).

The House of Lords debates on the bill were interesting as it raised the topic of how long international medical graduates remained in the UK after finishing their UK funded specialty training.

If you are a doctor , you are out of touch with current hospital medicine. I can’t believe a doctor would be so vitriolic about our resident doctors .
This is not just about money it’s about conditions and training numbers. Our foundation doctors have a crap time. They come out of 6 years of university with 100K debt in many cases, travel away from family mid 20s to take a job for 2 years with no social support. The first 2 years are hard, often with low staffing , moved from pillar to post to cover other teams. They have huge responsibility even with senior colleagues elsewhere busy to call on when really stuck.

At the end of this there is a bottle neck with not enough training numbers or even local jobs. So it’s another move if you are lucky, maybe no consistency or support if you can get locums or being jobless for many.
I personally know a number of excellent UK trained doctors in this position. Our best trainee last year quit and went to work in Tesco as the registrations and indemnity payments and training g paperwork did not justify the money earned from sporadic locums.

The problem is that they compete against more experienced doctors wishi g to move to the UK and it is cheaper to hire ACPs and physicians associates to do part of their role at a lower price.

personally I support the strike .

And the mothers of doctors who are doctors know that juniors are not solely responsible for their patients. Any junior doctor with any sense gets help when they are out of their depth.

That doesn't refute my point you know.

Credulous mothers oh dear. Newsflash mothers of doctors can be doctors themselves.

Precisely. Essentially, junior doctors are moaning that they're going to have to work very long hours in a demanding job that carries a lot of responsibility. Er yes? It makes them no different to many other newly qualified professionals.

But, like other professions, their hard work and long hours will lead to fewer hours and a salary + pension beyond the reach of just about everyone.

It's just greed. If they wanted to make serious money then they should gave gone to work in the City or finance, although the hours there are back breaking too. That way, at least they wouldn't be risking people's lives to get the money they crave.

I'm responding to a PP.

Doctors strikes are run by a particularly belligerent left wing organisation in the current make up of the BMA. They make unreasonable demands and use the potential death of patients during strikes as a threat. That's what gives them power. Unlike other professions. It's hideous. Which is why I think these strikes are losing the support of many.

Yes, this is true - which is why I haven’t come across doctors commenting on other professions or saying that they shouldn’t strike/lobby for better pay and conditions (in and outside of healthcare).

Probably just doesnt like the doctors who use the threat of people dying to get more cash (having had a huge pay increase already in 2024). Those doctors don't appear to have much of a vocation and should be working somewhere they get paid more like Goldman Sachs (if they could get in).

I see the BMA staff are also striking. Lovely people. Finger on the pulse of the nation's current economic plight.

Depends which firm and which specialism you do.

That's the same for many other vital professions into which doctors will always be on the outside looking in. Doctors will have no idea of the responsibility the engineer of a large bridge will carry for example.

Its not a competition. And doing medicine does not make you a better person than anyone else.