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

The hours in management consultancy and the high paying ends of pharma are easily competitive with medicine (but without the paid overtime). There are plenty of studies on big consulting (which is where the money is) showing that in the early years you could earn more in McDonalds if you pro-rata’d the actual hours.
You can also kiss goodbye to the gold plated pension scheme (which I note the BMA declined to use to improve pay in the early years - too valuable) and many of the other public sector benefits. You would also join a competitive appraisal process (ie however good everyone is the bottom rated X% are transitioned out each year - nobody gets to sit on their laurels when the move up the ladder). Then of course there are the wholesale redundancies every time there is a downturn (at least five in the last 20 years).

I hear this a lot from the public sector “I could get double in the private sector”, I note how few actually make the move and of those who do - many return to the public sector within a few years.

Medicine is a challenging and hard working profession for most and as such is accorded high social status and deserves to be well rewarded. There is no shortage of people wanting to benefit from medical school. However all professions demand long hours and continuing qualifications/training to progress to the big salaries, most people never make it to those big salaries in the longer term - this is not something unusual or special to medicine.

I would say the BMA are deluded but their leadership know exactly what they are doing - they are disproportionately political nepo babies serving their own interests and demonstrably unable to understand data.

I know doctors who have left the BMA in sheer frustration with the hackery rather than negotiating on areas such as loan costs and the challenges in job mobility in the early years, both of which would still retain public sympathy whilst improving conditions for junior doctors.

I support them.

I can absolutely see why trusts want fewer doctors - they keep going on strike. We have not collapsed the NHS by using other people to step in. We, the public, need to ensure value for money and having the NHs working for us! The strikes have cost £3 billion. This matters! Look at what others get paid. Nurses could have done with this!

It’s a shame the BMA have stuck to the pay as being the main grievance because I think there are so many other things they could push for that would significantly improve the junior doctor years, that would get more public support and would be harder for the government to refuse.

Absolutely, it's a tactical error and has lost them huge public support.

Your point on annual leave is a good one. In the first two years they rotate around six different departments which may be spread over several hospitals, not of their choosing. They're not allowed to apply for leave in advance of each rotation, so can't apply for leave more than 3 months ahead, so holidays can't be booked in line with partners. It's only a little thing but all adds towards perception of poor conditions.

I qualified in 2008 and the expectation was that you stayed until all your work was done so we worked a lot of unpaid hours over and above the 56 we were paid for. These days junior doctors mostly finish on time, get protected teaching time etc.

That said, they graduate with a hell of a lot more debt than we did and the job situation is not great right now.

I don’t support striking on pay again - yes, the pay is lower at the start but the majority of your career is spent on a much higher salary than most people will earn plus a very good pension.

However I absolutely support them striking for better job security, more control over working location, more advanced notice of rotas and being able to book annual leave further in advance, less replacement of medical roles with non-medics, writing off student loans after a fixed period of NHS service, reducing exam fees etc.

It’s a shame the BMA have stuck to the pay as being the main grievance because I think there are so many other things they could push for that would significantly improve the junior doctor years, that would get more public support and would be harder for the government to refuse.

I’m just gobsmacked by the levels of entitlement in Britain now @HugoElephant. And stupidity. No one seems to grasp that Britain is not a society now, not a team enterprise. It is literally about money and power. Thats the consequence of undermining the whole concept of public sector, of a res publica, and replacing everything with a - globalised no less - market economy. What does anybody owe anything or anyone?

Least of all the highly qualified and incredibly hardworking youngsters, best of the bunch in schools, who have been screwed over on every front. Life was bad enough for my generation. Britain is now collapsing. You were warned.

They obviously aren’t lazy. They work FT, nights, on call and endless exams on top of it all.
They are possibly being a bit greedy though.

This. I am always talking to my doctor DC about switching over to big Pharma or management consultancy. So far deaf ears but I am still hopeful. They could easily earn double and not have too deal with the kind of bitterness exemplified on this thread. They would work hard but with less stress and more life balance. I work in a senior level in one of these sectors. Not without stress but never of the life or death variety.

Those who think it should be illegal for doctors to strike, what would you do if they all just walked away from an increasingly unvalued job? The way nurses and teachers already have?

You think they ought to be your slaves. What do you think they owe you? They pay for their own training now.

My neice is a first year resident doctor. Her hourly rate was higher in the part time job she did while at uni.
This weekend she has worked 5 consecutive 12 hour shifts on an admissions ward. I thought there were rules about how many hours a week they could work but she has no say in the matter. Just as she had no say in where she was posted for her first and second year and will have no job at the end of the second year.

It's true they knew the pay when they started training 6 years ago. In fact the road to medicine starts much sooner than uni, it's so difficult to get in that they have to be thinking about it years before. What has changed for the worse is the training that follows on from the first couple of years.
Older consultants will have moved seamlessly from being second years into specialist training. That doesn't happen now and has become dramatically worse since 2020. This is one of the big reasons so many leave to go abroad, not just the pay and conditions. I know four young people who became doctors in 2022. Two have gone abroad, one gave it up and went into med tech and the fourth is still striving to get a training post.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner Are you suggesting that there are junior doctors who were doing that job in 2008 that are still doing it 18 years later?

As pp say, they study a heck of a long time and work hard. So yes they deserve a payrise. I couldn’t do their job.

What happens if the doctors just ignore the BMA and go to work?

@ActuallyADoctor I am not sure if you're saying F1 and F2 doctors don't do night shifts or that the pay examples are only drawn from psychiatry and GP?

I don't agree with the strikes but neither do most of the resident doctors. The strike wasn't put to a ballot before it went ahead.

Plenty of doctors buying lunch in every hospital I've been to...
People quoting the hourly pay - suggest to the doctors they work in a warehouse for £14 an hour instead. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance.... That's right, they KNOW they are privileged to be able to study hard to have an interesting and rewarding job and most can't imagine being interested in anything else. Or they'd have become corporate lawyers instead.

They've lost all my support.

Sick of the striking doctors. They get paid more than enough when qualified and have incentives like golden handshakes and relocation packages. Good pensions too. They are bloody greedy and selfish. Everyone has to tough it out when they are studying / training. That’s life! They’re in a better position than most but it’s still not enough.
They conveniently strike when the weather improves and there’s a bank holiday. Ahh well they can enjoy their ‘strike a day off’ from the work calendar. Never mind the fact that there’s sick, dying people in the hospitals. Never mind the fact that there’s UNPAID carers out there looking after poorly people. Shame on the junior/resident doctors! Their ‘poor me’ attitude and demands for more money is wearing thin. They either need to get on and do their job or find a different career.

I have a relative who is a GP with a speciality in Acute medicine. He works days & often does 10 hour shifts out of hours as an extra while also visiting patients at home many who after consideration require an ambulance. Incidentally he carries life saving equipment too.His job is to save lives & he does.

They'll settle abroad and who pays off their £120k student loan? The taxpayer. Who has to pay for the locum shifts at 4X pay? The taxpayer.

Don't give them a real terms pay rise so they pay less of said loan in the UK? Taxpayer funds the additional write off at 30 years.

Just pay people what they deserve, it's always the cheapest route.

We shouldn't be bringing people down, only campaigning for better pay for everyone.

A "doctor in training" covers anyone in a training programme right up until they become a consultant, it's not just FY years, so you are incorrect to describe just FY years as the only training salaries

Well done you....

No student debt, a few years at least of final salary pension , probably got on the housing ladder before it all went to shit after living in free hospital accomodation for the first year...

Different world to now. I think it was easier back in our bday. I got at least 4-6 hours sleep on a night shift - so those 90 hour weeks, I spent 30-40 hours sleeping.or in the mess playing pool or on the playstation.

Yes, agree, not a doctor but remember the conditions in the 90’s. As a manager now I see lots of great people at the start of their careers but they are more fragile, more grabby and less respectful of experience. It can be difficult, no one in my team is under 30. Not through my choice, they don’t want the tougher side of healthcare.

Well said @Dexternight

No I don’t think that and you’re an absolute idiot if you think they are. Maybe if you think like that OP you should go private and reduce the waiting list for other people, you won’t be missed.

If they’ve got it so good, go be a doctor yourself. No? Thought not!