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.

@Peasand it's a fact that doctor university training is subsidised by the taxpayer!

We're having to poach more and more doctors from abroad, often developing countries who need their own staff, because the home trained doctors are either burning out or fleeing the country for somewhere with a better work life balance. If we can improve pay and conditions, so that we retain staff, that will actually mean better services for everyone, and won't actually cost as much more as touted, because with fewer gaps in rotas there will be less reliance on expensive locums.

I mean all tuition fees are funded to some degree or capped at £9250 but we don't control where the post graduate works. A UK graduate wants to work in the UK but Australia offers a fairly normal life and pay remuneration hence its popularity

No.we import a lot of junior doctors , so that tge UK doctors have a better chance of getting to consultant level.
The other thing to bear in mind is that AI is going to have a significant impact on the profession.

So what a model where no doctors are allowed to leave the UK without a huge penalty and no foreign doctors in the UK? Dream on.

No. I saw that, for instance, our GP training programme had more gaps than doctors (and thus gaps on the hospital rotas) until we started poaching doctors from Nigeria on an industrial scale. Which has nothing at all to do with saving consultant jobs for UK locals. In my department, half the consultants are FTGs. Because in years of fighting to recruit, that is what we could get. The locals are RLEing in forcs.

FTG - foreign trained graduares
RLE - retire, locum, emigrate

It really isn't, it's completely nonsensical.

I think that is a reasonable model to eventually achieve, yes.

Try thinking a bit harder. Two words “recruitment” and “retention”.

@loadypoady Forcing people to work for the NHS like that would be indentured servitude, AKA slavery.

People who do medicine already pay student debt. They also already pay for their training fees as junior doctors.

@ilovebreadsauce So if you choose to study medicine when you are 17, you become a prisoner of the UK government?

So the working for zero pay for years for the NHS whilst training doesn’t count.

There were changes to visa regulations relatively recently which has reduced the numbers of overseas doctors we have traditionally relied on for many years

And nurses are treated the same, the bursary has gone and they have to take out a student loan for the privilege to work without pay whilst training.

You do realise that we don't live in a totalitarian state of public servants with free will removed don't you? Or maybe you don't.

Any way it doesn’t matter what any of us think about the strikes an and pay. What matters is what the doctors think, and they are not happy with their pay and conditions. My dc is already eyeing up better paid and easier career,
they have the option of a better paid 9 to five research career , which don’t involve 12.5 night shifts in A and E, a closed canteen no lunch breaks.

Doctors are taxpayers!

Not slavery it's standard practice even in the NHS. I recently did a masters funded by my department (I'm a nurse) an had to sign a funding agreement saying I have to stay three yrs after I complete or I have to repay.

Why should medicine graduates be different!? Taxpayer money.

And we can't send the patients safely home until their care package is sorted out

Hasnt stopped some from trying it!

They need to pay and treat doctors properly to stop them leaving. This will then reduce the stress of not being able to deliver optimal care and encourage other people not to leave.

The masters a doctor does whilst training is self funded

I don't think doctors get any post grad studies funded, do they? They have to pay for all their post med school exams out of their own pockets.

No it isn''t it costs more than £9k the shortfall is made up by the taxpayer.

Why aren't you getting this?

Tuition fees are c.£9k a year but it costs more than this in reality so the shortfall is made up by the taxpayer. It's one of the reasons for the cap on places

@nhgty Medical post graduate studies are generally self funded at eye watering rates.

Medical undergraduate studies are subsidised, yes, but that's not unique to medicine. Are you saying no STEM graduates should be allowed to move overseas?

again it doesn’t matter what you think what matters is what doctors think, and they want past restoration and better conditions.
when today’s doctors started training they expected to be earning at least 35% more than they are today in real terms.