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Original poster

doctor strike

158 replies

JudyWilliams · 09/03/2016 15:17

Bit of a rant. Has anyone else been moved three times because of the doctors
Strike? I'm booked in for ELCS originally today, then tomorrow, then Friday. Now Monday!

Slowly loosing hope! That and I'm now sofa/bed bound due to hip/back complications. I'm just wondering if anyone is in a similar situation.

OP posts:
TheSinkingFeeling · 14/03/2016 19:48

Well, show some fucking solidarity them!

Peaceandloveeveryone · 14/03/2016 19:49

grasping cunt ? Jesus, I am out of here, you are clueless about how most people are selling their souls to try and survive.

Peaceandloveeveryone · 14/03/2016 19:50

Don't be such a twat, you think bitching about other people trying to earn a living is 'showing solidarity' ?

TheSinkingFeeling · 14/03/2016 19:53

Hey, I'm not someone who's come into this thread knocking junior doctors who are trying to defend the NHS.

Peaceandloveeveryone · 14/03/2016 19:56

Hey, neither have I. I came on to say that deriding other professions isn't the way to go and has been done. It's exactly what you have done.
People are allowed to discuss this without you volleying abuse at them you know?

TheSinkingFeeling · 14/03/2016 20:01

The junior do tors seem to be the only people standing up to Hunt, and this bloody awful government. The Royal Colleges have failed; the RCN is a joke.
I'm fed up of people trying to make this about money, and to try and equate it with other 'professions'. It's a question of safety, of stretching the current NHS service until it breaks, so that it can be reconstructed with private companies instead. I'm sick of people from the private sector deriding the efforts of junior doctors, just because they haven't the gumption to defend themselves.

Peaceandloveeveryone · 14/03/2016 20:01

This happens all the time, it's not a competition and it doesn't help the cause.

doctor strike
TheSinkingFeeling · 14/03/2016 20:04

I can say what I like; I'm not a junior doctor, I'm not involved in their fight. I can just offer my deepest support from the sidelines.
You know what? Teaching is not equitable to medicine. Not in the slightest.

Peaceandloveeveryone · 14/03/2016 20:07

Yeah, nice support there to call teachers lazy. Don't knock how other people earn a living to boost your own case, especially not if you want public support. That is my point.

AyeAmarok · 14/03/2016 20:07

Sinking, if you're trying to muster up additional support for doctors, then I can tell you that you are doing the exact opposite.

And showing just how out of touch you are with what is happening in the private sector.

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:08

ThatSinkingFeeling,

we are all just responding to comparisons that the Drs themselves and their suporters are making.

The comparisons are often outlandish and factually wrong as well as revealing extreme naivety.

I'm sure many Drs are very smart but not if they opine about things they know nothing about!

TheSinkingFeeling · 14/03/2016 20:09

I don't give a fuck if you support the doctors or not. If you don't, then you're an idiot. It's quite simple.

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:11

I used to feel like that about people who wanted to do nothing about climate change.
And guess what - they won.

AyeAmarok · 14/03/2016 20:12

Lawyers are ten a penny, so are 'finance professionals' (whoever the fuck they are).

Are you on a wind-up, or are you actually this uninformed? Hmm

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:12

Is ThatSinkingFeeling a troll? Am I being naïve?

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:15

Anyway back to the thread.

It would be great if the "fines" could be administered by an independent patient body and given to social workers to spend on their charges - or something like that. One problem the public has is that the "pay" the docs will lose is the "fine" they should never have been paid IYSWIM.

I know it's complicated but it does affect the support I think (I do wonder if the Government did this deliberately)

Runningwithacheesegrater · 14/03/2016 20:37

I don't get what you are trying to say MissTriggs. Are you conflating out of hours pay with financial penalties for breaching maximum working hours?

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:40

I might be!

back in a mo...

Runningwithacheesegrater · 14/03/2016 20:44

And there is a lot of speculation on this thread about what the BMA is telling us - don't make the mistake that Hunt did presuming that doctors actually listen to the BMA. The profession has never been so united and it was this horrendous contract that brought us together, most JDs have never been a fan of the BMA and have only joined so they could have a voice.

parallax80 · 14/03/2016 20:45

I think there are two different elements that you are describing.

The pay that would be lost is banding - currently basic salary is calculated based on a theoretical job of 40 hours a week and 9-5 only. Some people actually work these hours (on paper at least) so get an "unbanded" salary. The banding supplement is a reflection of the actual number of hours worked, and what proportion of them are classed as antisocial. So my current rota is actually (on paper) 48 hours a week and over 33% of my hours are late evenings, nights or weekends do I get a 1A banding ie my actual pay is basic salary x 1.5. This is what I would lose under the new contract. (I would get pay protection til 2019 but then a cut - in my specialty the increase in basic pay would not compensate for the loss of banding - and indeed the fact that my pay is being "protected" illustrates that if this temporary measure were not there it would be an outright pay cut).

Separate to that, my employing Trust has to pay a fine if they rota me for an average of more than 48 hours a week (56 if opted out of EWTD). As the average is calculated over 26 weeks and uses annual leave to depress the averages this still gives scope for rota'd weeks of 70-90 hours and doesn't include any of the staying late to deal with emergencies / workload / exam revision / audit / teaching etc. (My current heaviest week is 8-6 mon, 8-6 tues, 8-9 weds, nights 8pm-9am thurs, fri, sat, sun). Nevertheless, the financial penalty is an incentive for trusts to play fair(ish) with rotas. The new contract removes that fine from trusts and replaces it with a "guardian" (as yet not clearly defined) to oversee working patterns etc together with forcing the trust to pay enhanced rates to the individual doctor if they are found to be working above the contracted (working time directive) hours. This will be far smaller than the current fines. But is separate to the actual contractural terms of the job itself (ie the banding)

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 20:47

"most JDs have never been a fan of the BMA and have only joined so they could have a voice."

Huh!
It is interesting learning about this stuff.

still figuring out the fine thing - sorry - back in a mo

Cheby · 14/03/2016 20:55

ThatSinkingFeeling I'm a finance professional. In the NHS no less. You wouldn't get paid without what me and my colleagues do. Wind your flipping neck in and stop posting such horrible things.

I'm in support of the JD strike. I don't think anyone's pay and conditions should be eroded.

The one thing that has bugged me throughout though is what's been discussed here; it's this idea that JDs are almost the only people this has happened to or are somehow different to the rest of us. Certainly lots of sound bites talking about this being the first step in the destruction of the NHS. Erm no. Very much not the first step. That was some time ago. Everyone else's pension conditions have been decimated over the last 5 years. We have had increment freezes and below inflationary pay rises for half a decade (big fat zero for a good while). Nursing ratios have been impacted, everyone downgraded, estates and facilities services contracted out. Admin staff cut by 30% or more (and before anyone says that's a good thing ask yourself who you really want to be doing paper work; is it the highly trained medical professional? Because that's what happens when you get rid of your back office support).

So I support the strike (it's taken me a bit of soul searching but I really do support it). But I think a tad more self awareness from the JDs wouldn't go amiss.

AyeAmarok · 14/03/2016 20:58

MrsT I think you mean when the junior doctors' hours get one of those audit reviews done and if the hospital are making the doctors work even more hours than they claim they do, they all get their banding bumped up. So rather than getting 1.5 of salary, they get 1.8 or 2 (hence the hospital gets penalised financially as the doctors get significantly extra pay - is that what you mean?

I think in reality that very rarely happens as the doctors get chased out of the building by the mangers so they don't have to pay the extra!

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 21:01

OK, some of this might be wrong and please believe when I talk about lying I don't mean you personally.

I think I get the banding. It means that when JDs are rotating, their salary could go up then down then up ie be lower in podiatry but higher in AandE?

So my gripe about the BMA story on banding is that they say "starting salary is £22,000" but that's only true if you are in podiatry or dermatology where you can work a 40 hour week. If you are in, say, paediatrics it's more likely to be, say £32,000 (which is fine by me but they should say so because I'm not stupid and I don't like being lied to).

Leaving aside your pay protection, I believe you'll now only get your "banding" now for Sundays, but Saturdays will be ordinary days? And "ordinary" working hours will be longer I think? Thus the potential pay cut/loss of expectation for new recruits. Is that right? I can see that that is upsetting - my sympathy is diluted by the annoyance about the "we are on "£22000" thing above....

The "fine" was where I got cross (assuming I got this right). Someone said there was a "fine" for breach of the working time directive and I naturally assumed this meant a payment to the state, or to charity, or whatnot. I was staggered to discover this was a bonus. Now, I have no problem with "danger money" for ridiculous hours (well, I do, the same as everyone does - no one should be working such long hours). But I really really object to having a bonus described as a fine. That's just lying.

Hope I haven't got this wrong, but if right, can you see my astonishment about the "fine" language? So then when drs say "my pay is being cut", how can I know what to believe?

MissTriggs · 14/03/2016 21:06

sorry, have to go now but will check in tomorrow.

message from me is that when good people allow lies to happen, ("fine", £22000") etc, the bad people win (assuming it's true that privatisation is the end agenda here).

Again - would you allow the newest graduate to give such misleading information/language to a patient as the BMA feeds me? No, you wouldn't.