AIBU unreasonable to say everyone should know about the junior doctor's contract the government is trying to impose?

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The government is seeking to impose a new contract on junior doctors. By junior doctors I mean all those in training I.e. Not consultants and GPs. Starting salary for these doctors is £22636 plus a supplement for additional & antisocial hours worked.
The contract seeks to re-classify normal working hours so that 9am on a Tuesday will be the same as 9pm on a Saturday night (so normal hours Include up to 10pm 6 days a week). This will lead to a pay cut of 10-30% for all junior doctors depending on which specialty they work in. They also propose to remove certain safeguards over lack of breaks & working over contracted hours.
They also propose to entirely scrap a pay supplement for junior doctors training to be GPs. This was designed to make pay equivalent to that of a doctor in hospital training who receives the pay banding I mentioned above. There is already a recruitment crisis in general practice. One in ten posts in England are unfilled in a recent survey. Many training posts are unfilled too.
You might think this doesn't matter to you but we are all patients sometimes. I know people who won't be able to afford their mortgage if the contract is imposed and they plan to emigrate. What will happen to the NHS then?

Custard I meant to reply to your previous post. MTAS nearly wrecked my life! DH is non-EU so we really thought he would be out on his ear. He comes from a country where it would not be practicable for me to live. I was fuming over the whole mess and on behalf of the many excellent doctors who were facing an uncertain future. MTAS shafted an awful lot of people. DH only got to stay because he has a geeky fascination with an obscure specialism that nobody sane else was keen on.

Point is, I am not anti- doctors. I can see how they might feel as though they are being shat on from a great height. I know how DH felt during MTAS and I am sure he would cheerfully have strangled the health secretary at the time (can't recall her name...) I just don't think they are right, on this specific issue.

We are not in London, incidentally - private income not too bad (Cheshire). We have toyed with the idea of moving to Oxford but not until after I finish my current role. Private income is available everywhere in the right specialism, but London is probably the only place where the amounts Grazia mentions can be earned.

Exactly the same thing that's happening in other sectors.

If I were to get up in arms about these kind of contract changes I would be doing so for people like my mum who are carers earning minimum wage with no chance of career or salary progression, not for professionals whose starting wage is nearly double that of carers, who have very good pensions, opportunities to move into the lucrative private sector and whose salary progression is astronomical.

I don't give a fucking shit.

Younggirl, but the problem is by the suggestion your husband can retire at 50 on 50 K rather than on 70 at 50 K, which you now say was not accurate and suggested to the forum that the publlc are bank rolling consultants by about £100,0000 X how many in the UK.

That spin or sensationalism distracts from many serious issues facing the health service that should be debated.

I do not disagree that the whole system needs an overall; I hope this problem brings it to the fore; it won't if we continue to debate DH pension and contract, which I don't disagree is an issue.

I would like to direct you to the real debate of this contract as an imposition, because actual it shows what a mess 5 year cycles can get public services into, and highlights the need to not just have a politician try and paper over the obvious cracks in the system by quickly imposing their quick fix which has a good sound bite of raising pay overall, but doesn't help the cracks and indeed will make more appear.

Younggirl. Can you explain why junior Drs are not right on this particular issue. Taking away supplements for juniors in training that have existed for years? Taking away safety protocols which protect against such poor practice as in Stafford? Imposing a unilateral contract when the union left talks as they were unacceptable? Punishing Drs who work overtime for free yet have a rigid shift structure unlike other professional careers.. You may work at weekends sometimes lots of people do, but that is nowhere near the same as doing a week of 9 pm to 10 am night shifts where you are running to cardiac arrests and juggling time between several critically sick patients while admitting others and reviewing yet more. The only similar types of post are the army and the police because this is extremely high octane stuff and if you are tired, if you have a cold, if you couldn't sleep, doesn't matter, that shift still has to be done during those particular hours. Safety protocols and hours restriction are absolutely vital and it's irresponsible and dangerous to do otherwise.
We are subject to our employers impositions and these are not fair.
It's quite annoying for people to just not listen and go on about someone they know who earns a lot of money as if that is actually meaningful in this discussion as it just isn't.

NewbieCrazyCatLady carers are hugely undervalued, and this is why we need to have an open debate about the whole health sector and pay.

YoungGirl. The reason I have been in training for so long is also MTAS. I wasn't so lucky enough to have a crazy fascination with something that allowed me to survive in anything other than a stagnant role as I was unable to apply below me as I had passed and exam early and was considered too qualified and could apply above me but had not the experience or qualifications of others, and was embarrassed to try and do so; so I jumped down to the bottom. Another one of the issues with this contract but something I feel because of the above debacle quite strongly about, is if the next government do the same that people do not end up stuck in a stagnant job because they can't afford to go to the bottom and start again, because uniquely your experience in any speciality in medicine can be very useful in another. This contract means that people would have to go back to the bottom of the pay scale if we have another shake up.

You also bring to the debate a very important point about pay in the NHS and if a nationally negotiated contract and that if its right that we should pay more in areas were cost of living is higher.

I would like to add

I am not a student doctor or a trainee doctor or a junior doctor.

I am already doctor, whose skills and knowledge are in use.

I am a doctor who is in a training grade to be a consultant in a speciality.

What you pay me should reflect me now should reflect my skills, experience and contribution to the NHS now, and this should be the same fwhen I am a consultant.

( PS you probably don't and shouldn't be training so many Consultants, but you do, do need doctors )

I am afraid moral right never comes into things the Government decides (or rarely - although I was glad they voted against legalising murder recently). It is always about money. Even women getting rights has often been about needing them in the work force to earn money and pay tax. Economics drives us even in China (although not perhaps yet North Korea).

So when they just cannot get sufficient good doctors because of pay changes then pay will go up or people will be charged - we have a massive national debt plus a massive deficit (the difference between what we get in and spend) and sadly the July self employed and corporation tax receipts were much much less than the Chancellor was expecting latest figures show so things are pretty dire. We might have to think the unthinkable like abolish state pension for all but the very very badly off and stuff like that.

This has been a very interesting thread - lots of food for thought. I am not unsympathetic to the issues raised by leave and I don't have the answers. My concern is a financial one for the same reasons that grazia explains above.

xander point taken about accurately describing training posts. It's difficult because I am not aware of any equivalent in other careers and DH's next registrar (still in "training" - parentheses added!) will be older than me (and I am already an old fart).

All of the very valid points made by leave remind me of an interview I read with the author of the report into Stafford. He had taken pages of evidence which concluded that the staff were under enormous pressure and felt things were unsafe as a consequence. His response was "if you can't deliver it safely, then why on earth are you doing it at all?" If we can't deliver better OOH service without either shafting doctors or printing money, then maybe it calls for a wider debate into how we pay for healthcare in future.

for everyone - in all jobs! - working crappy hours this weekend

Yes, I hope we lawyers on it have not led it off into irrelevances but it is certainly useful in explaining to people what is happening. Good luck with the contract issues.

China in the cultural revolution tried to pay doctors the same as dustmen men. It didn't work very well. However it can be hard to get the balance right of pay between people. Ultimately the market always decides. If doctors or potential doctors feel conditions are not worth it they will do something else and then the state will have to pay more to recruit them.

As someone who is in support of junior doctors what can the public do to help? I'd love to protest someway and I've written to my mp but can some doctors or others in the know tell me what the general public can do please?

Have a look at NHS "survival"
Lobby MPs with letters etc, wrote to chair of health select committee.
Discuss at ground roots level what jr Dr are, people don't know, why this is important to the whole NHS .., it's the health debate at #cpc15 today. You will be able to tweet questions to the government. It's more about getting us to a situation to have an open discussion on the NHS and being realistic about plans for it than it is about an opinion. This is a democracy and we should be speaking about the issues. We have a of 22 billion £ gap in the NHS budget for the next 5 years, what we are doing to sort it out, do we want to ?

What a weird post to revive a months-old thread with

So you are going to take the money (about £300,000 to train you) and run?

The £300k (-ish) inclues their salary over 10 or so years. mummyrunnerbean has paid her own medical school fees and is free to do whatever she wants after she graduates, even if it's just to get away from verbally abusive people like you.

I am surprised the Administrator deleted my post made today at 10:12
I was pointing out that mummyrunnerbean in her post on 24th September said that when she finishes medical school she is going to leave the UK because she would be too sad to spend a career working as a doctor for the NHS.
I said that she was behaving like a USER.
That was because she has used the system for her own benefit but has no intention of repaying the country by treating any patients here.
I feel that was FAIR COMMENT and that the Administrator has been unduly influenced by weeblet claiming my comment was "abusive".
Perhaps weeblet should not use talk forums if she is so prone to take offence.
Students in universities may feel that they have a right not to be offended, but come on - we are supposed to be adults here surely?
I notice that on 24th September at 11:05 another contributor to this post did NOT have her post deleted when she ends it with the robustly worded phrase - and I am quoting : " I don't give a fucking shit ! " I am not offended by that, and I am certainly not offended by the word "USER".
Political correctness and oversensitivity can be destructive to proper discussion.

Lanchester Just to be clear, I did not report your post and I am not offended.

That was because she has used the system for her own benefit but has no intention of repaying the country by treating any patients here.

God, you're entitled. Here's a or two and off you go to a primary school and tell the students there that they are users if they do not repay the country in some way.

Ok thanks for pointing that out weeblet

I was referring to the first sentence of your last post I mean - not the rest of it !

Well I think that everyone is entitled to primary and secondary education without incurring any obligation to the country to work here thereafter.
BUT only a small minority of the population are subsidised further by the country on the kind of tertiary courses that will give them life time high earning capacity, so I think that they DO have an obligation to the country in that regard.
Maybe there should be an agreement beforehand that they have to work in the country for a certain number of years in the occupation they are being trained for.
Possibly those tertiary courses could be 100% subsidised if there was an agreement for say 15 years work thereafter etc - with a sliding scale to being 0% subsidised if there was no agreement to work for any years.
Probably that would require some international agreement to be workable though.

I feel that was FAIR COMMENT and that the Administrator has been unduly influenced by weeblet claiming my comment was "abusive".

Wow are you new to MN? It could have been anyone who reported you - MNHQ don't immediately delete someone's comment because another poster has replied saying it's abusive...

It would be more palatable if the government were to pay for tertiary courses and its associated costs in return for a certain length of service. But the government have shown no sign of moving towards that as they are now removing bursaries for student nurses.

And where would it end? What about apprenticeships? What about the parent who did a degree and then becomes a SAHP? What about the universities who rely on heavily fees from international students? Are they then indebted to China/the Middle East/a mix of the two?