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?

sorry I don't see the issue...

Do you fancy your child's life being in the hands of an exhausted junior doctor that's been working 16 hours straight and is being kept awake soley by proplus and caffeine ?

I don't understand the thing with doctors. Every profession I know is very stressful. The ones I know best - teaching and lecturing - are enormously so and the work is literally never done. The pressure to publish, teach, do admin is astronomical and you have to be good. The pay is also generally crap. My friends who are doctors moan twice as much. Yet they are also never working in the middle/late evenings, have locums to do the unsociable hours and drive bigger cars and go on nicer holidays. They don't seem to have the same levels of accountability - no one is checking up to see if they made the right call whereas everything an academic publishes is scrutinised and you have to publish or go home. I don't pretend to the know the ins and outs of it but that's how it looks.

And I realise people's lives are in the hands of GPs but honestly, it doesn't seem to bother them. They just systemically rule things out and if they didn't guess correctly it's the patient's responsibility to return the following week with the unfixed problem.

How many teachers have their pupils' lives in their hands ? It may be pressured in a different way but there is no way that
"publish, teach, do admin"
can possible compare with the stress of
"We are bringing in a 6 year old child has been involved in an RTA, has a fractured skull, ruptured spleen, multiple fractures and is bleeding out. ETA 3 minutes" and you are the one who has to try to something

No way at all whatsoever that the two will ever be comparable

And one other thing while I'm thinking about it, slightly off-topic so apologies . In my doctor's waiting room there is a sign saying 'please do not take up the doctor's time with lists of symptoms.' It's absurd. How are you supposed to know which symptoms go with which illness?

career The GPs I know are not the people receiving those phone calls.

well most GPs are not junior doctors are they ?

And to bring this into a discussion about GPs is odd...like that's your only argument for why your job is the hardest ever. I would have a lot more sympathy with that viewpoint if the GPs I know actually treated patients as if every choice they made was as important as that.

My old GP is the accident doctor so yes, he was receiving those calls to go and attend RTCs

But why does that particular kind of stress trump every other kind of stress?

The GPs I know never work after 6pm

But your argument is specious. This is a discussion about the pay and conditions of junior doctors. To mither on about GPs complaining is totally irrelevant

And to suggest that doctors, in any field of work, aren't held to continuous account for their actions is quite frankly absurd

Well explain it to me then. I would like to understand. How are they accountable (other than the GMC complaints procedure).

I was lucky enough to be a junior dr 2000-2014 (with breaks for children). It is fair to say our terms and conditions rose sharply under the Blair government I remember going from 25K in my PRHO year (yes I am that old) to 48K by the end of SHO 2.It seemed like we got a pay rise every month. I also remember being up for 36 hours straight. I think there has been some natural correction over the last few years, I have had 1% pay rises for the last 3 years. But any return to the 100 hour weeks of the 90's is retrograde.

feather GPs do have to make life and death calls- I've got loads of examples of my friends who went to the GP and then were blue lighted to A&E.

And we aren't just talking about GPs.

It's a paycut for doctors when MPs have given themselves a pay rise. It's bullshit and unjustified.

I think most people would concur that having to make split second decisions that may result in life or death every working day is considerably more stressful than the stresses of academic life.

Just offering my support

I cannot bear to RTFT after the first 'well, serves those greedy docs right' comment.

featherandblack, I don't know how to answer the question 'Do you work full-time or part-time?' (as a GP). My contract states 'part-time' (2/3 to be exact) which is routinely 45-50hrs, many of which at night and on weekends.

Drs' stress does not 'trump' any other kind of stress, it just has quite dire consequences. But never mind, eh - at least we're getting a cool quarter mill! NOT.

Gawd, I should never have clicked not his thread.

careerist put it much better than me.

But most of the time it is just not like that! That's exactly what they're always complaining about - it is so mundane and an endless procession of colds, coughs, depressives, contraceptive issues and People Who Aren't Ill. But then you suggest their job isn't astronomically harder than everyone else's then and the story changes. Their are two narratives that go on.

I'm not convinced about the doctor's stress being worse overall, I'm really not.

Feathermeblack, to put it another way

What's the worst that could happen if you make a poor decision as a teacher ? A one off, poor decision, because you are stressed and exhausted ?
Do you think it is comparable to the consequences of what could happen to a patient if a doctor makes a poor decision ?

You will never find yourself in court for professional negligence as a lecturer. You can only be barred for grave professional impropriety (eg sexual relationship with a child, relevant criminal convictions).

I come from a family with lots of doctors.

All have now quit medicine because it is so very shit.

If my dc wanted to study medicine I would do my very best do discourage them.

I don't know one solitary doctor (in my family of doctors and friends who are doctors) who is ever still in the building after tea time. Perhaps they picked the right fields but there are no academic departments offering that.

I was a junior doctor for 15 years. I don't think there was one weekend when I didn't make a really critical (if not life and death ) judgement.

Pacific, lots of us here supporting you

I want to be treated by a junior doctor who has slept properly, eaten properly, preferably who has just come back from 2 weeks in the Bahamas, is paid properly in recognition for the years of study, complex training and dedication. I am also happy to pay more money to ensure that this happens.

Perhaps the likes of Darren Grayson could take a massive cut in their vastly overinflated salaries and payouts so that the people that matter could be paid properly for the critical work that they do.

I don't know one solitary doctor (in my family of doctors and friends who are doctors) who is ever still in the building after tea time

Obviously your local A&E shuts at teatime then does it ?