To think the junior / resident doctors are greedy, selfish, entitled & lazy?

Maybe then you could avoid such poor communication: stating your husband earns 200k and, wink-wink, still does private practice during the working week implies strongly that he is doing the private practice during his working week.

Perhaps you should stop misrepresenting him here. There's a thought.

Not lazy,but wrong to be striking AGAIN.
Their chosen career has lots of opportunity for development and ultimately earning top wages. They know the pay scales when they go into medicine. Nobody is forced to become a doctor. No sympathy here.

Unusual, obviously. Senior consultants who manage others are self-evidently required in smaller numbers than the people reporting to them, as with any other workplace.

It’s absolutely unhinged that your first reaction to “private work within M to F” was to clutch your pearls and start shrieking about fraud, dishonesty and how you’d regrettably be compelled to report DH to his regulator. Those are extremely serious allegations and when entirely unfounded, a curt response is entirely to be expected.

DH’s first (or second, actually) language isn’t English either, but luckily he’s not daft. And I will reply to who I like - MN is enough of an echo chamber without the thread gestapo.

@Vinvertebrate I see! Ludicrous! As the BMA is.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner

Because apparently they get paid more e.g.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/junior-doctors-strike-pret-coffee-b2299026.html

Never mind the fact that the coffee guy will never earn more than his current salary, gets no uplifts, or pension, etc.

Excuse me, English is my second language.
I find you quite nasty in response so I won't read your posts further and do not reply to mine.

You then implied that he was doing private work during his working week. What you meant was during the normal working week so Monday - Friday. Until you later clarified that his normal working week allows a non working day during mon- Fri.

Most posters would find the manner in which you communicated the above quite lacking and yes, misleading.

I also think his job plan and situation highly unusual but there you go.

@Vinvertebrate Barista? Why?

Because they lnoe the lived reality ogf their working conditions, and finances

I absolutely agree, so thank fuck he’s not doing it eh?

He's still paid £200k pa (and then some, thanks to BUPA and the like) though, which is a huge chunk of money, but I appreciate you don’t like them apples.

It’s unfortunate that you do not know what “infer” means, when the only person doing any inference is you. I wrote - entirely clearly - that DH’s 12 PA’s allowed time M to F to carry out private work, from which you breathlessly inferred - rather laughably - that he was a dishonest fraudster who needed reporting to the BMA, which is quite the leap.

Perhaps a bit less time making placards about baristas’ pay and a bit more focus on reading comprehension might help?

And yes, and doctor doing private work during their NHS contracted hours would be reportable to employers and there would be huge consequences, and rightly so

You inferred dishonesty from your post. You stated that he did private work during the working week. If he is doing this on a non- working day for the NHS, that's completely different. He can do what he likes then.

Perhaps you'd like to communicate clearly instead of trying to inferior that your husband and therefore others too fraudulently do private work during NHS contracted hours. Anyone reading your post would assume that.

If you stated that he has a non working day and does whatever then ( private medicine, surfing, who cares) it wouldn't have been quite so much fun though, would it?

Oh do pipe down, dear. Of course there is no bloody breach of his job plan of 12 PA’s. That still (most weeks, not all) allows him almost a full day off from the NHS in the working week to see PP’s. Typically one evening clinic and an occasional weekend. He’s got management responsibilities - as one would expect at £200k pa - and writes the bloody job plans for the other consultants, most of whom seem to do 10 PA’s or fewer. It would take some chutzpah to moonlight during his own…

I get that wealthy doctors with fucking amazing pensions doesn’t suit your narrative, and so my post makes you jolly cross, but alleging dishonesty and fraud straight off the bat seems a little de trop.

If your husband is doing ANY private work during his NHS contracted hours, this is entirely reportable to the Trust and if he were my colleague I would not only report him, I would be obliged to, or I too would be complicit in his fraudulent behaviour.

You could be looking at suspension for this dishonesty, breach of job plan and contract etc
And GMC

It was ever thus. DH was that pupil when we met. He had newspapers stuffed in his shoes, no family backing and I think would have given up if he hadn't met me when he did.

He left the house before 7 and got home after 9 for decades, often six days a week. If he'd been rude to clients, colleagues or solicitors he'd have been lucky to scrape a living. If he'd been moderately competent we might not have lived as well as a consultant's family.

Oh, and he was self employed: no sick pay, no holiday pay, no occupational pension, no innate job security.

The resident doctors are deluded.

I’m married to a consultant with a resident doctor cousin in London (not striking).

DH thinks the BMA is off their rocker and so do most of his consultant colleagues.

We have a great lifestyle: the pay is fair and the pension is stonkingly generous. I worked many more hours than DH when he was a junior doc, as a trainee solicitor in corporate law - no paid overtime, WTD or unsociable hours for us. Never mind Starbucks - I paid my own cleaner double my gross hourly pay. It’s a training role at the end of the day.

The only people earning megabucks in city law are working 24/7 typically over a small portion of their career, because it’s unsustainable. The only person I know who took the cash for more than a decade recently had a stroke at his desk.

The BMA needs to grow up.

Anyone who thinks that the most junior resident doctors are really badly paid should speak to some trainee and newly qualified barristers.

My personal position is I just about support them, but much less this time round

but hilarious comments on this thread….

commenting on their wages and laziness etc….ok you go do that job then if the debt, wages and hours are so perfect. Problem solved

looking at their pay rise over 3 years and saying no one else had that? So completely ignoring the low wage rises since 2008

the usual comments re public v private sector. I have worked in both. I’ve seen minimal wage rises in the public sector when the private sector was booming with pay rises and bonuses. There are swings and roundabouts. Again if it’s so easy then move jobs yourself

Usual I know best views

You're welcome.

I should clarify that although I was involved in workforce planning in the NHS I wasn't involved in medical staff planning so it's not my particular area of expertise.

But i think what i've told you is reasonably accurate.

(Medical workforce planning is a specialist area but I'm not sure it's particulalry well executed in the NHS)

Thank you.

Who needs to check what facts and what is your experience?

If you are a doctor in the NHS but you aren't a consultant or a GP then you are basically still "in training" and you are a resident doctor (formerly known as junior doctors).

There used to be another type of doctor called staff grade but I think that has disappeared now. It was basically for those doctors who had completed their training but who, for various reasons, were not going to become consultants.

The problem with the term resident or junior doctor is that it covers a wide range of people, knowledge, skills and experiemce, going from newly entered graduates at the bottom of the range to doctors just below consultant level at the top. And the salary range reflects this.

When you hear figures bandied about like £18 per hour or £36 - 40,000 pa they are not representative of junior doctors as a whole. Those salaries only really apply to the first two years of foundation training. After that salaries progress relatively quickly and it is possible for a junior doctor to become a consultant after ten or so years of training.

See the sections headed Modernising Medical Careers and Pay and conditions here: Resident doctor (United Kingdom) - Wikipedia

The doctor in training payscales with effect from April 2024 are at Table 1 below. I think they were increased by 4% from April 2025.

The Complete Guide To NHS Pay For Doctors

Even as juniors they are paid more than Starbucks baristas. And over their career, a hell of a lot more.

Totally support them. Our life in their hands. Why would you pay someone who had that responsibility the same as someone who makes a coffee in Starbucks.

And that is because they know what the real lived experience of resident doctors is like.

People coming on here saying they have rooms for their breaks, they are paid overtime, they are paid for breaks etc... i am like where???????

People come on here and just rattle off stuff as if that is the life of every resident... okay let me not say 'every'... like that is the life of majority of the residents... okay, let me not say 'majority'... like that is the life of 50% of the residents.. okay let me not....
Not even 25%!
Where are people getting this tosh from?!