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

I think this is true. Due to the shit show of online booking and crappy telephone appointments it’s getting close to self diagnosing over the internet being more useful than gp appointments. It’s quicker and you can start treating before a gp lowers himself to see you. Then you can just deal with pharmacists if you need meds that AI directs you to.

Teachers spend 4 years training for a whole lot less salary.

Once ai has advanced enough to be truly intelligent, as opposed to the internet hoover it currently is, doctors won't be needed. There'll still have to be skilled practitioners to perform the physical tasks like surgery, chest drains, endoscopies, anaesthetics etc., but the bog standard GP and resident doctor will become obsolete. Paramedics and ANPs can carry out what's recommended. Perhaps Consultants to oversee particularly complex cases. Most doctors are poor at diagnosis now anyway, instead relying on diagnostic imaging, blood tests etc. to reveal what the problem is rather than properly examining patients.

If your DS borrowed 60K for a three-year degree, they must have qualified for a full maintenance loan due to parental income level. The equivalent for a medic in the same position would be 100k debt for a five year course. Further, medics have increased restrictions on their ability to do part-time jobs while they are studying due to longer terms and placements etc. So yes, it is different.

That's no different to many others student debt though. My DS has at least£60k over a 3year course

Of course they will earn more than most of their patients, it is unlikely that most of their patients will have spent 5 years studying and taken up loans of potentially £80k to earn their wage. The job isn’t of less value just because our government are not particularly good at making appropriate use of the money we give them.

This is something that that needs fixing but demanding even more money after a pay rise isn’t going to sort that, it will make it worse!

Over 50% of those who will finish their F2 this summer, won’t have a role to go into for their speciality training due to poor NHS workforce planning. They will be unemployed as doctors in the UK. At that stage their average student debt is £70k.

Like people in whom the British taxpayer have invested a minimum of £200,000 EACH to educate and train them. The student medics don’t pay that, their loan repayments don’t even begin to slightly touch the sides! Tying in is a fair enough deal. It would help focus on those with a true vocation.

The NHS provides a guaranteed job pretty much, the training and experience for early skill development is unparalleled and earning opportunities extraordinarily good, as is career development.

Of those other nine non-selected med school candidates, how many do we think would easily find it in their interests to do the job? They would all swap places with these strikers. And be better doctors, who place patients first.

I hope everyone with loved ones needing care during this strike period are ok, safe and unharmed, and get the care they need ❤️

Oh the consultants are planning to strike for even more later in the year. All were given a pay rise this month and junior doctors were offered a good deal.

Their requests aren't unreasonable and they are certainly not lazy.

However I'm not sure that the strike is a good idea- there is a real sense in the country that everything is broken, no services are adequate, almost nobody is fairly paid. For junior doctors to deliberately make things worse for the rest of us in order to better their own position is inevitably going to harm how lots of the public see them. That's not to say that their requests are wrong nor even that striking is wrong, but it is tone deaf.

They remind me a bit of the Labour backbenchers refusing to countenance any reduction in benefits- a failure to update their position in the face of the current economic situation, which will almost certainly mean that the outcome is worse in the long run. We are a poor country now, still trying to act like a rich one.

A Foundation Year 1 (F1) doctors earn a basic salary of £36,616, while Foundation Year 2 (F2) doctors earn £42,008. For an F1 that’s just over £17 an hour and after 5 years at medical school. They may well leave as you suggest but to get medical roles in other countries.
The £100k+ salaries are consultants who are not a part of this strike action.

I think that quoting % are misleading. I believe the figures are more like a current £18 per hour and the ask is to be moved to £23 per hour. This seems fair for the level of responsibility and training/expertise required. It’s an emotive subject however.

Before their morning break (which they probably wont get), these people have had to make more life impacting decisions under pressure than most of us will have to make in a lifetime. Yes, they deserve at least fair pay.

I fully agree with you 100%.

There have been at least 15 strikes since March 2023!

I agree they should be paid properly and are doing a very hard and important job, but it's like they're saying ''we are the only ones who have degrees/PhDs and work hard and put ourselves at risk, so we want more''

Their egos and never-ending whining demands are ridiculous and boring, and if they don't like the wages and hours, they should leave and find jobs more to their liking!

Full-time hospital porters and cleaners earn an average of £25,000-£27,000 per year, which is roughly £12.50 an hour. And they work their arses off for it. I used to work as a cleaner in non-medical places for about £8.00 per hour, full-time. Multiple shifts, day and night, but not once did I ever strike; I just got on with it.

Full-time hospital doctors, depending on seniority etc., can earn over £145,000 a year and they STILL want MORE!

They should try scrubbing toilets for a living on £8.00 an hour and see how they cope on that!

The other thing that pisses me off is NHS trained consultants doing just a few days a week in the NHS thus making wait lists longer and leaving the path free for exorbitant private work. It’s a racket that needs to be curtailed.

Well going by the bun fight for uni places for doctors and nurses that clearly isn’t true. The NHS isn’t providing enough jobs after.

Continuously upping good salaries above and beyond everybody else for fewer staff is not the way to go.

Nurses and doctors are paid properly!

What an odd thing to say. You sound angry with your own life so projecting onto an over worked underpaid group of people

We don't have the money to pay public sector workers properly but do have the money to subsidise energy giants, retail conglomerates and millionaire pensioners.

Last year the oil and gas industry alone received £17.5bn worth of subsidies, enough to give every single resident doctor AND every single nurse in the NHS £20k

But then the NHS doesn't tend to provide quite as lucrative employment opportunities to our illustrious politicians. So... priorities I guess 🤷‍♀️

@C8H10N4O2These striking doctors would get nowhere in the private sector. They have no idea how hard others work or what talents they have. I agree, private sector is far more competitive to get into and remain in. Big salaries are not offered to everyone - you compete very hard to get up the ladder. There’s significantly more competition. There are good working conditions in the main but long hours are normal snd those doctors pensions are not matched. The tax payer puts 25% into doctors pensions and many retire before 60. Private sector doesn’t do this. If it was that easy, the nhs would have no doctors. It’s not easy and many doctors are not going to cut it in the big world outside the NHS and earn double.

It’s like looking at the big law firms. Great training and salaries if you are retained, but 25% are not. Doctors have far more certainty of employment.

So why does no one want to do it any more? The thrill of keeping 86 yr olds alive for another 2 years while being punched and bitten by them, or even the 20 year old druggies who also punch and bite and hurl verbal abuse constantly? Running around for 12 hrs solid after these people who talk to you like shit, talking about lazy idle youngsters constantly, while earning less than you can get in supermarkets and rather less than that generation got paid in real terms? None of which pays enough to earn you a house of your own and the right to put up pictures even?

Cant think why it’s so hard to recruit.

I know! The mental health sector level of care and what they get away with is frankly appalling.

Job security is so rarely mentioned in relation to doctors. That and surviving constant rudeness to patients, poor communication and the lack of career impact relating to huge mistakes.

Nurses are paid plenty.

Newly qualified Band 5 nurses starting at £31,049–£33,488 in 2025/26, depending on experience. Experienced nurses (Band 6-7) generally earn £38,000–£53,000+, while senior roles (Band 8+) can exceed £77,000

I’m getting a little tired of NHS workers being portrayed as harder working and less paid than everybody else. They’re not.

I don’t agree with how uk trained doctors and nurses are punted out by lesser trained foreign workers though. Uk gold standard trained staff at all levels should always be the priority