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

The BMA did not put the vote to its members. Resident doctors are certainly not lazy. Very long hours, snatched meal breaks, years of post grad study, and exams for which tbey pay, no guaranteed specialist training posts

What a very good, well informed and generally excellent post. Thank you.

i admire doctors. I wouldn’t - couldn’t - do what they do.

But doctors’ pay, pension and career progression is very good as a package. And the pay calculations the BMA makes are fanciful.

I fear this is yet another once-valued profession that, like teaching, is leading itself into contempt for being seen as more interested in political activism than doing its much appreciated and revered job.

pay is often the one thing that is highlighted for a strike but there are less published asks to such as their rotas. (Needing them more than just 4 weeks in advance)
in my opinion I see how EVERYONE works hard (I am in the profession care sector) a different kind of hard compared to those in public service roles. I don’t use the NHS myself but I do hope it gets resolved as I know people are waiting ages for general appointments and more importantly specialist treatment

The PA will be lucky to get 2% pa if she remains a PA, whereas doctors fly up the pay scale while they are training. No uplifts for unsociable hours either: PA’s in law firms often work the same shitty hours as the solicitors.

Doctors know this: the nonsense they peddle about baristas and the like is fundamentally disingenuous. It relies on the credulity of people who are generally less intelligent than them.

Your DH sounds like a lot of the consultants I know, who all manage to combine working "more than full time equivalent" nhs with a chunk of extremely lucrative private, all within working hours that would be considered standard for a comparably paid lawyer, accountant or IT professional

I sympathise with the training roles situation. NHS training roles should not be being advertised to international doctors until locally trained residents have been offered roles.

But its normal in many professional careers to earn quite crap pay in the first decade because the reward later on his high pay. Doctors have the highest average pay of all occupations.

Most salaries have not kept pace with inflation. The issue re student loan is separate and the answer isn't a higher uplift on wages, as not all doctors even have student loans! The answer is to reduce the inflation applied to student loans to cap it at the lowest public sector pay increases.

They have over twice the student debt (£80,000) after studying for 7 years. "Junior doctors" are up to 10 years called. Every other country pays them more. Do you think we shouldn't pay people more to save our lives and our families lives? How much would you pay on the spot to save a loved one from a heart attack/stroke/embolism? We should be paying them double!!!! £40,000 a year is NOT enough! The average pay for a tube driver is £71,000.

i don’t support the doctors strike and think their pay claim is unrealistic but don’t think th e government should have taken the training plan off the table. That doesn’t just benefit individual doctors but is a step toward making the currently wasteful and dysfunctional system more workable.

They have over twice the student debt (£80,000) after studying for 7 years. "Junior doctors" are up to 10 years called. Every other country pays them more. Do you think we shouldn't pay people more to save our lives and our families lives? How much would you pay on the spot to save a loved one from a heart attack/stroke/embolism? We should be paying them double!!!! £40,000 a year is NOT enough!

🙄

We are haemorrhaging doctors to countries which can offer better pay and working conditions. I’d rather pay them a bit more, hopefully improve conditions in hospitals and healthcare (this will benefit everyone) and keep our doctors here!

I think you are disgusting and ignorant.

You need to check your facts as I speak from experience.

Yeah but your personal assistant probably won't have the opportunity to earn up to £200k (or whatever the top consultant rate plus extras is) and enjoy a gold plated pension.

Now if they wanted to trade more pay today for less generous benefits longterm...

Some finance, tech, management consultancy, law roles. What about teachers? I said some, not all.

Not to mention the years of studying they have to pay for

Yes. I think Labour thought the BMA leadership would roll over with gratitude at how generous Labour had been to them.

Some hope!

Wow they are worked like dogs huge responsibilty esp when consultants and reg’s leave for the day. They hardly get a break and work way over contracted hours. Would you work unpaid with no breaks?

exactly, mouth almightyl work a month alongside them then come back to us with yr opinion….

Don’t think they are lazy, but self entitled, certainly. I appreciate their union is fighting for Drs pay and other unions should make their own cases for pay restoration, but they do come over as seeming to think they are more entitled than others. Streeting certainly didn’t come over as happy with the attitude they show, wonder if he regrets how quickly they pandered to them when they first got into power

You do realise their basic starting salary is under 40K. A Personal Assistant earns way more than that in a Corporate City environment. I think your concerns on salaries need to be focused more on what the Heads of the operations at the NHS earns rather than those that hold up the NHS at the bottom rung.

The thing is, they knew the salary scale and promotional opportunities when they commenced training.

@Monty36 - "... Money.
They are living in the past. Tony Blair gave Junior Drs as they were called a huge pay increase in 2008. And they keep referring to it. By saying that if they were paid the equivalent now their pay would be xxxx. Except that was then and this is now. Governments cannot give 2008 equivalent pay rises each year..."

Yes.

All doctors got an exceptional deal out of the new contract in 2008 so I suppose it's hardly surprising that they want to use that as a benchmark for pay.

But it was exceptional then (just before the banking crash too) and can't be afforded now.

🤣🤣

This is part of the problem.

Some specialties are far more popular than others for no particular reason

As I said in an earlier post i remember medical students at university looking down their noses at some specialties (like psychiatry) as not proper medicine

Ludicrous to strike. Entitled, deluded, tone deaf and displaying quite astonishing ignorance of simple economics.

When I met DH he was a junior doctor and I earned about 20% more than him basic, as an assistant solicitor in a large firm, after a similar training period. He received a lot of uplifts e.g. for unsociable hours, overtime etc whereas my deal was "you will work as long as it takes for no extra pay" which is standard in the white collar private sector. In fairness, he also had to fund exams.

Fast forward 15 years, and DH is at the top of the NHS payscale at £200k and brings in about half that again (variable) in his private practice, which (despite doing 12 PA's for the NHS) he has time to do in the "normal" M to F working week.

Yes, he works a bit in the evenings, but nobody earning those salaries can or should expect to finish at 5pm. I certainly don't, although my basic is now only about half of his NHS salary.

There are loads of benefits to NHS employment that are forgotten in these disputes. Most women (myself included) don't have the option to work part time at the same level post-children - in medicine, that's a given (as it should be). Most lawyers - and all of those with whom doctors wish to be compared when it comes to salary - who want to actually see their children have to make difficult choices about nannies, career progression and what it means for their salary and outgoings. With medics, it seems to be "we can afford for one of us to work 0.6FTE" and it's job done, while the waiting lists keep growing.

And the NHS pension, despite reform, remains absurdly generous. DH's is partly "old" and partly under the new system that everyone regards as crap, but is still streets ahead of anything in the private sector - mine is a drop in the ocean by comparison despite saving for most of my career. The UK cannot afford the massive liabilities created by public sector pension schemes, every actuary knows it, but every government kicks the can down the road.

I would support a deal for the doctors recognising that some would prefer "jam today" rather than a pension and allowed them to opt out in return for a pay increase. No actuary would advise this, of course, because there is simply no better deal out there. So we keep limping along pretending we can afford nice things....