to wish doctors weren't going on strike

[MissTriggs]

After 5 months of misdiagnoses, being sent to the wrong person, explaining why suggestions weren't helpful, holding my GP's hand and fighting to get to the right person I'm now booked in to have the test I need on 2nd December, the day after the strike.

If my test was on 1st December I'd be pretty upset

I then read a post on here from a junior doctor claiming s/he could make more money "as a manager at Greggs" and that tipped me over the edge.

I saw lots of posts from doctors saying they already work weekends but it turns out they get paid extra for this at present.

I think doctors have no idea what it is to work in a job where you can be sacked easily, where you don't know whether work is coming in from day to day, where your employers have no interest in getting you back to work after a career break and where you either have no pension or the value of your pension can fall from year to year and be worth nothing.
I also think they don't realise that, whilst a generation ago doctors might have been unusual in working antisocial hours, nowadays all professionals are expected to be available all the time.

I might be wrong, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable here.

I also hope that you have noticed that, as we are all agonising over the doctors daring to go on strike when they are very well paid jobs, bla bla bla that the NHS is reduced to nothing, that the level of care is going down hill rapidly whilst more and more people are having to go private because they just can't be seen.

So doctors going on strike will be an inconvenience for a day. They'll still deal with all emergencies etc so a lot if not most of what they do anyway.
Yes it will affect people. That's the whole point of strike!
Because then hopefully they'll be noticed and heard.

I support the junior doctors' strike 100% and think they should have capped hours and protected, appropriate salaries for the difficult responsible jobs they do.

But. I also think it's important to recognise in threads like these that other people have it hard too. That's not a reason why drs should have shitty conditions. But it would be nice to see that acknowledged.

• Right now lots of people have to work 'anti social hours' for no extra. I have recently been told I will have to be available till 9pm for no extra. I have a serious professional job.

• The NHS doesn't necessarily work well for patients now. So saying 'ooh one day you'll wish' is a bit naive IMHO because right now, someone like me with long term kidney disease waits months and months for clinic appts and operations. Thank goodness I don't have cancer.

I am also sceptical about the 'drs leaving in droves' line. How many UK drs does Australia need? And would all drs really make a living privately if the NHS collapsed? Personally I doubt it. Setting up in business for yourself is not as easy as sticking up a sign and waiting for the patients to come to you.

My point is, we all need the NHS, drs included, and we need to be funded properly. Divisive rhetoric of any kind does not help. And more generally we need to look at the culture of working hours where this kind of suggestion is even possible, because it's really not limited to the NHS.

To me, hospitals are places run by doctors

Consultants no longer have any say in managing their own waiting-lists, clinics, even the types of operation they do - all boils down to managers' choices, driven by cost rather than what is actually best for patients. Managers are not doctors, often without any sort of healthcare background.

Driven by cost & hitting targets, I ought to have said

In terms of GP part time working - yes, they can, but to become a GP you need to work as a hospital junior doctor for a certain amount of time. Hospital consultants also work as juniors, in some cases over a decade (I was a junior doctor until I was 35, consultant at 36). This renegotiation is for hospital juniors (who can be very very senior in their training but not quite finished).

I had no autonomy in the NHS. I started at 7.30, finished at 6.30 most days. I was sent to a different hospital every 6 months for training and to provide service (out of hours cover), with no control or say over where I was sent. In one instance I was given 2 weeks notice of my next hospital placement - over a hundred miles away. 2 weeks to find a new place to rent, organise letting my house for the year, moving my family - while still working 10-11h days and a 6pm - 8am overnight once a week. One 6 month placement was a 2-3h commute each way on top of the 10h day. I barely saw my family - I was working, driving or sleeping. I had no choice in any of this.

To make the days longer, make the weeks longer, make you work more but be paid less? Doctors will leave and it will crumble from then onwards. You still don't see the need to fight for the NHS?

I'm right behind them. I have nothing to do with the NHS, except as a patient, but I totally see why they're striking and patient safety is absolutely my concern: good for them.

I understand youre message is about doctors specifically but let me say this in response to the following

where you can be sacked easily, where you don't know whether work is coming in from day to day, where your employers have no interest in getting you back to work after a career break and where you either have no pension or the value of your pension can fall from year to year and be worth nothing.
I also think they don't realise that, whilst a generation ago doctors might have been unusual in working antisocial hours, nowadays all professionals are expected to be available all the time.

Nurses and doctors are struck off everyday (worse than sacked as no return to same profession) due to understaffing and mistakes made when being forced into corners they aren't happy with due to lack of support and resources.

Doctors do not walk into jobs straight from uni, many doctors end up with no permanent posts and closure of essential services mean many doctors actually don't know where their next bit of paid work is coming from

Employers never want doctors back after career breaks - their is usually someone much cheaper who will do the "same job" however often not half as well as someone with a large amount of experience

Doctors and nurses pensions are being cut constantly, I pay 10% of my wages every month to have 4k a year of a pension, assuming that i work till i'm 65 and continue to pay the same amount every month. In the year 2065 when im 65 im pretty sure 4k a year wont even feed me!!

Professionals as a whole may have to work antisocial hours, but last time i checked most of them doing work 4 night dutys a week, save people from dying at 3am and be expected to be fit to come in and work day duty the next day.

Seriously think about this, If one of your family members is dying and needs a doctor or nurse urgently, its usually a JR Dr you come across first who then alerts the seniors that theres a really unwell patient. If you where waiting to see a consultant your relative would be dead long before any intervention would have happened. If you want to live in a society where there are huge numbers of unecessary deaths due to lack of doctors then yes continue what youre believing however I think youll find that the Junior doctors are the corner stone of the NHS!!

blueteapot,

thank you for your detailed reply. It is complicated!

under the current system, would an ambitious pre-own-family doctor not be incentivised to work far too many long anti-social hours because those pay better? So wouldn't it be better not to have that system?

'Better hours' means services that aren't open 7/7 for example, one of the thing the current government wants to do because, as we all know, doctors in general are all lazy and just dont want to work weekends...

Besides, if you work in a TA Tory for example, if you work nights or weekends, you will be pay more (1/3 more in all the factories I've worked in, shop floor level too)
So should it not be the case for doctors too?

I've spent the last 16 weeks in hospitals and have constantly been impressed by the skills and professionalism of the staff (including both nurses and doctors). Many many of them work additional hours for no extra pay.

If it were up to me these people would be getting a huge pay rise. The unsociable hours (which can screw up your sleep patterns and increase potential for illness) are not something that should be taken for granted and should be incentivised to keep people in the NHS. I was discussing this with a doctor the other day and she believes that first they will be targeted, then the nursing staff, then the consultants, then the Tories will say the NHS is no longer working and will sell it off.

I completely support the strike.

Arf chippednailvarnish thats certainly how it reads

hospitals are places run by doctors, just as law firms are run by lawyers.... Who is running these hospitals?

hospitals are run by layers of very expensive administrators, helped out by management consultants and if you slashed these, there would be plenty of cash for the NHS.

Jeremy Hunt has all along said that he wants to move the NHS from a 5 day routine service to a 7 day routine service with no increase in the overall pay envelope i.e. overall doctor pay. He has continued to insist on this even whilst saying that there are no preconditions to negotiation!

So either he wants to spread the existing doctors more thinly, making it more dangerous during the week, or he wants doctors to work on average 40% more hours for the same money.

As I said earlier I have been an inpatient in hospitals quite frequently. The problem at weekends is often not lack of doctors but things like scans and labs not being open and available.

Australia is offering locum places for $2000 a day. They're short of trained medical staff. Canada is offering amazing relocation packages. NZ will need more juniors than it has trained - they'll get them from the UK.

Also, doctors and their families are also patients of the NHS too. My dh is a junior doctor, I have just had a complicated birth, his mum has MS, his aunt has just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and my grandma is probably going to die in hospital in the next few days. A strike is the last resort which no one wants because it will impact on them and the people they love too. But if this contract is pushed on them then the longer term (beyond the next election..) Prospects for us all are far worse.

Hic The conditions you describe are outrageous and should not be allowed.

I'll say it again, we need a serious look at the overall working culture in this country as it is not just the NHS. A public health service which works that way or doesn't isn't born from nowhere.

You're both wrong and unreasonable.

OP hospitals have never been run by doctors, hospitals are complex organisations run by management where junior doctors are a cog in a huge machinery. They are just some of the frontline staff that you get to interact with, behind the scenes there are hundreds of other staff you don't really see.
No doctor wants to strike but they have been forced into this position by Jeremy Hunt & NHS Employers. If the junior drs roll over and accept this contract you are more than likely to find it even harder to get the treatment you need as the problems with Dr shortages (that already exist) will be compounded by those that leave. This means those that are left will be even more overstretched and overworked than they already are and hospitals will no longer be punished from overworking them and having greatly reduced budgets will do the obvious thing and make their staff do even more rather than try to employ more staff (not that they are currently able to attract staff in some specialties as the pay and conditions are already crap)
As a chronic patient who is currently expecting I am more worried about the long term implications of the contract than I am with the short term implications of strike.
I hate to think we are heading towards a privatised health service who can afford it and a bare bones service for the rest of the country but I feel the attitude of the government to this dispute says that's exactly where we are heading.

Those doctors who moved to NZ and Aus? Isn't their system partly private??

To me, hospitals are places run by doctors

Consultants no longer have any say in managing their own waiting-lists, clinics, even the types of operation they do - all boils down to managers' choices, driven by cost rather than what is actually best for patients. Managers are not doctors, often without any sort of healthcare background.

But that's self-evidently silly (isn't it?).
Easy on the abuse by the way folks. None of this is obvious to outsiders.

And presumably the claim upthread that docs will no longer be paid for anti social hours means they will no longer be paid "extra".

iwant there is private healthcare in NZ as there is in the UK. Hospital care is free. GP services are subsidised - there is a payment for some things (appointments, smears, repeat prescriptions etc) but other services are free including all children up to 13. There is help for low income and benefits recipients so they can still access healthcare. Prescriptions are subsidised as in the uk.

You're being very unreasonable. Sorry.

Doctors have trained for a long time, put up with all sorts of shit, have to move hospital every 12 months, training, exams, more exams.

But it boils down to the fact the new contract will work out at a significant pay cut for them. People have taken on commitments such as mortgages, etc and then to have their pay cut by nearly a third? That's not fair at all!

HicDraconis I presume you are happy for people to pay to see a doctor like in NZ then?

Also they have far far tighter immigration controls.

Seems people want everything!

Personally I would move to a system like in Aus or NZ but then people would be marching on the streets.

Yes, it's self evidently silly. But it's how the NHS is run.

Agree it needs a complete overhaul. Millions were spent on a computer infrastructure that never worked. There are complex layers of management most of which could probably go. That would fund a lot of doctors, nurses and surrounding front line staff to provide a fully working 24/7 7/7 service.