Doctor strikes - how can a resolution be reached

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/06/settle-nhs-dispute-or-thousands-with-cancer-could-die-early-say-health-chiefs

It appears that there a real tangible reductions in cancer care due to industrial action. If introspection is now critically affecting patients how do we remove the crisis. Are juniou r doctors pay demands realistic and if they can't be met do we accept that we will have future disrupted service.?

I feel of the juniou r doctors get a significant pay rise nurses will soon start striking again so this is a real headache for government with ultimately patients losing out.

So because you have had poor pay over the last few years, everyone should suffer the same?

In a free country, you really cannot tie people to an employer, they haven't joined the Army.

But the point is, without junior Docs of today, we wont have the consultants of tomo, then what?

Perhaps remind ourselves that Richi Sunak could pay the Doctors 10% more from his own families wealth and still be left with millions in the bank.

As an NHS consultant I'm getting to the point where I say he's, let's do this.
Maybe then I'll get a pay rise and also funding for some more staff instead of running a unit on less than half of the staff needed to make it safe for patients.
While we're at it, I'd like to have access to more diagnostics and treatments.
Oh and not forgetting my partner who is a senior manager in an ICB. He would quite like to have a full team to actually deliver the programmes of work that will have a huge benefit to patient care, if only he had the staff to do it and the govt funded his employer properly and stopped raiding the pot to punish NHS staff for striking.

Bring it on.
So what if poor people die because they can't afford care?
That last line was sarcasm btw.

@mids2019 all other healthcare systems are hybrids or private. There is no other NHS-like system in the world.

@Southwest12 absolutely there has been more money spent on covering the strikes than it would have cost to give them a good pay rise.
I arrange strike cover and payments, what the Consultants are being paid they are laughing all the way to the bank and who can blame them.
The BMA invented their rate card and informed their members what they should be paid for additional work. It has not been negotiated or agreed through any pay review body, it is an outrageous situation.

Thats not true, plenty of Europe countries and NZ operate primarily tax payer funded free at the point of use systems.

Though any one wanting eye or dental care has to pay a fortune here in the UK.

You may as well state no one copies the french or German models (both very different) why not!

Yes, let's kill off all the old people. After all, what did they ever do to benefit society? And they are all sat around in their mansions that they bought for tuppence in 1980 and now worth millions. Those could go to their hard working children who of course never benefited from their parents hard work at all. And it's not like they ever contributed any taxes or anything like that.

A civilised society can be judged on how it treats the most vulnerable.

I suggest, OP, you take a long hard look at yourself. One day you will be old. Do you want mandated euthanasia when some faceless person decides you have outlived your usefulness.

Fucks sake.

@daliesque actually I think OP was picking up on my point and paraphrasing without mentioning terminal illness...
Personally I have had a close family member in agony while I whetted their tongue and they cried like a baby for days after months of pain, confusion and inability to function. Before they got too bad they begged me to kill them. I've lived with the pain I feel I caused them by denying them a dignified ending ever since and I am angry that I couldn't legally help them.
I wouldn't do that to my dog.

Okay sorry I've heard the £250k framed in various ways, presumably to fit different narratives. Even so, though is it really a bad thing if the degree is heavily subsidised? At least it is a useful vocational public service centric degree and if the pay and conditions can be reset I don't think that many would want to leave the NHS. I know NHS consultants who haven't even ever been interested in private work nevermind going to the other side of the world for more money. In any case, the government subsidises so many degrees that are pretty useless and can't be leveraged financially so the DC are never in a position to pay them back. I would much rather my tax went to training doctors even if there is the risk of them going overseas at some point.

@daliesque

I certainly wasn't saying kill off the elderly I was talking of cost. We have a situation where the elderly have to seek assets to receive social care in their final years but all medical costs are free. I think you either bite the bullet and increase taxation for everyone to pay for free social care and health care (including staffing costs) or there is some means of payment from the individual if assets are large enough.

I think the training costs to be made re playable are a good thing, but you can't stop people striking, you could limit it though - which is what they should do with the train/tube drivers who are overpaid and have ridiculous conditions on their contracts.

They are really underpaid. The government just needs to increase salaries to a decent level or we won't have any doctors.

Because it has?

Where do you see these people?

There are plenty of bright young people wanting to be doctors.I think even if you introduced the payback clause, and nade striking illegal you would still get enough capable med school applicants.

Or better still, just give them decent pay and conditions and then there's no need to ban them from striking or stopping them from leaving the country?!

Why is that better fir the country?

Being a doctor takes a very special person. It’s extremely stressful and yet they have to present as caring and confident no material how they are feeling.
They absolutely deserve a massive pay rise and better conditions. We all need doctors.
Take some of the money given to MPs as expenses or mates contracts and give it to the doctors (who actually do some proper work that benefits society) instead.

@mids2019 "I don't quite see how increasing pay improves safety or reduces stress." It improves safety because as things currently stand nhs workers are working overtime until they are exhausted. If they were paid properly they wouldn't have to do this and then we wouldn't have so many exhausted doctors having to make life and death decisions which is undeniably a stress and safety issue.

Good graphic

Because we should value and properly remunerate people who undertake years of training which enables them to look after people and save lives? Because we ALL deserve better?

Why do you even have to ask that?

Maybe because then you have a very highly trained workforce who are motivated to stay rather than a downtrodden slave bank whose only choice is to shut up and put up with it or leave medicine altogether. It's surely not hard to work out what is best. In the current mess more and more are leaving medicine altogether. Not everyone can or wants to go to Australia. In such cases the government truly has p**d the cost the cost of their training against the wall as they are then not practicing nor helping patients anywhere in the world.

Also if your concern is so high about not wanting UK doctors to use their UK training elsewhere, do you have the same level of revulsion regarding the UK for a long time deploying and benefiting from foreign doctors who have undertaken their training in another, often poorer country?

Thats not true, plenty of Europe countries and NZ operate primarily tax payer funded free at the point of use systems

Hospital care in NZ is free at the point of use, but you pay to see a GP and you pay for prescriptions.

Why aren't doctors made to work in the NHS for a certain period after they leave university? The taxpayer funds a significant part of their training. In any other organisation if training is paid for you must stay after 🤷‍♀️

The solution is to pay them A LOT MORE and improve working conditions. This is a feminist issue, initially the govt offered nothing. This is because the profession is majority female and we know that women get paid less than men and female are valued less than men . The govt is leveraging the thought that this is a vocational and caring profession. And the doctors won’t strike.It isn’t it’s an academic scientific problem solving profession.
Drs are striking for the long term good. Short term pain for a better healthier NHS. If you don’t pay Drs an excellent salary and treat them well, they will walk out permanently.

My DD has over £75 student debt which is getting bigger, we had to go without to top up her loan as the 6 years she spent training were too intense to work part time. She had to pay an additional £3k bench fee for her intercollation year.
she worked for free on the wards from year two of her degree. Doing a medical degree is like working a full time job and doing a demanding degree at the same time.
Don’t tell me the government funded her.

Yes I do.The Uk should be training enough professionals in all fields to meet her own needs.