To wonder why we treat our Junior Doctors so badly?

[alfredomuretto]

These people have likely been the very brightest in their school, got very high grades, struggled through 5 years of university (£9k fees). Then they get to enjoy two years of being a junior doctor. They have to work very long hours, in appalling stressful conditions, direly understaffed, with nurses treated just as badly. Then they get a starting salary of £27k.

Why aren't we valuing them better?

MarieG10
Totally agree the pension scam is a nightmare. Nothing is transparent and a lot of good experienced people will go early

@policeandthieves - £100k is unusual in the NHS (common for specialities where private work is possible) and those who get £100k are working 60hr weeks in a&e, being physically and verbally abused on a regular basis - it's almost danger money!

The 100% supplement was for people working illegal Band 3 rotas, and hadn’t existed in practice for many years. Most people were on 50% bands, which equates to working between 1:2 and 1:4 weekends and nights. And of course the banding system was abolished two years ago (hence the strikes), so no actually JDs are all on basic salaries now. The promised supplements for higher degrees/seniority etc have, as expected, not yet materialised “because there is no money to fund it”. Posts now pay approximately 20-25% less than they did two years ago, for exactly the same job.

That may be the case in England. But not elsewhere in the UK.

it is a vocation, a dream, an ambition

So they shouldn’t be paid properly or treated well?

The other real challenge is about not being able to choose where you live and which hospital you work in. Foundation jobs are handed out on a ranking system. You aren’t even guaranteed to get your choice of deanery. Even if you do get your choice you might end up somewhere you don’t want to be and far, far away from partners. Makes relationships and family life hard.
You could request to work in St George’s or Kings College together and one end up in Margate with the other in Worthing.

The consultant salary on the NHS - with no on-call, weighting or excellence awards (a bone of contention in themselves) is around £102 K so not unusual in the NHS although it takes a few years

Most junior Drs I am in contact with are Band 1B which is a 40% supplement for covering a one in 12 on call rota so most definitely not living on just the basic salaries

Part of the problem is a lot people don't understand what junior doctor means. They hear junior and assume that means it's just the younger ones fresh out of uni with no experience that have to contend with these shitty new contracts that force them to work an unsafe number of hours. They don't realise that a junior doctor is every single doctor who isn't yet a specialised consultant. So the registrar who is independently running the entire department on the night shift, who all the other doctors on the ward are reporting into, is saving lives and making solo high pressure decisions about patients, and quite possibly been working as a doctor for 7 years or more, is still classed as a junior doctor.

These people have likely been the very brightest in their school, got very high grades,

Hahaha😂😂 No.

Actually just looked this up the consultant basic salary scale is approx 78K to 105K depending on years worked

I have met some amazing junior doctors
I treat everyone in a hospital with respect
Some are also very arrogant and entitled
I hate it when they are the same age as me and treat me like a cretin
(It does happen)

fakefake what a snobby thing to say.

I am not considering a junior doctor to be pre consultant personally, I am considering the junior doctor to be the fresh out of medical school doctor, I cant believe that someone who has worked for 17 years and is not a consultant would consider themselves a junior doctor tbh.

It would be very unusual to have worked 17 years post qualification and not be a consultant (if in hospital medicine)

Of course there will be exceptions but generally with a backstory

In my honest opinion, as a GP, it's flogging the willing horses. Government know that healthcare staff, and probably staff in other public sector roles as well, will give a lot of themselves for other people because it's the nature of the job.

This! See also teachers, social worker, legal aid lawyers ... These systems run on the basis of a very cynical calculation by successive governments that the type of person attracted to that work won't be able to live with themselves if they see people suffering because they can't or won't do several hours of unpaid work every week.

We treat our junior doctors like shit but I can’t see it improving .

I’m not a doctor but am a HCP and work with a lot of doctors of all grades. One huge problem, as Cherry points out it that through your entire career until consultancy, it is hard to plan where you will work. This has an absolutely massive impact on quality of life.

Morale is also low because in many specialities now the hours (certainly the unsocial ones) of consultants have got worse so you cannot even look forward to things getting much easier.

I’m not sure you can fix public perception easily as people love to hate doctors.

I do think there are two problems which could be solved:-

One is that we need to change the name. Only truly junior doctors should be junior. It is ludicrous that you are officially a junior doctor right up to consultant level. Of course it suits the government to keep them junior as it feeds into public perception of young, inexperienced staff who can be treated like shit.

The other is consultants and other HCPs could actually have a bit of support for their juniors rather than saying ‘it was harder in my day’. This I think is changing but it is a slow process.

Rant over!

I am a junior doctor. I won't dwell on pay, as it seems a race to the bottom, other than to say it is very low for other roles with comparable expertise and responsibility involved. It is especially low for London, with a miniscule London weighting.

What is so difficult is the working conditions. We get generally very poor quality training, long hours (usually way in excess of the rotad hours), rife bullying and unsafe working conditions (due to rota gaps due to above). If we make a mistake due to unsafe working conditions we can be charged with manslaughter.

It is a job that takes everything out of you (emotionally, physically, time wise), but gives little back. I've been treated appallingly when I had the temerity to be sick myself (I have been severely ill more than once, I think in part due to the pressures of the job) or become pregnant. My bosses have made no secret of the fact that they hate pregnant women, and treated me in a way which was illegal, but they know the organisation will not pull them up on. Our union is utterly useless.

When I went off on maternity leave I didn't get so much as an email wishing me well, or any kind words on my last day. I have had a lot of negative words though.

Colleagues have been denied leave to attend their own weddings with months of notice, attend funerals of immediate family members. One colleague was even treated appallingly while she was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. The inhumanity is shocking.

They also get taxed to absolute high heaven. Which Is what people forget when they demand that "rich people" should just be taxed more. Our doctors are in that bracket - I used to work in recruitment for them, and their pay and time slips were just awful - years and years of medical school, hours and hours of work, only to have a massive chunk of it all taken away for tax. And this was back when labour was in power, so it's not like anything will change for them, unless of course whoever gets in next makes tax allowances for our NHS staff.

Also: to correct some misinformation on this thread. All doctors are junior doctors until they are consultants, and consider themselves so.

The bandings that are being talked about here are on the old contract, which doesn't exist anymore. Some doctors (a minority) are pay protected, and may still receive this, but the majority don't. I don't certainly, nor do the vast majority of my colleagues.

I didn't mention moving around, but it is part of the problem. It means it is difficult to start a family (due to not working in the same place as partner, moving frequently, so difficult for childcare and school), and that junior doctors are often (usually) denied shared parental leave, and have difficulty accessing maternity pay.

Horace you might not consider the just pre consultant doctor a “junior” but that is officially what they are. They are paid as a “junior” (in new contact top junior payscale is reached about 5 yrs after graduation (st3) and dosent go up again even when you are the doctor responsible for the whole acute hospital at night - there was supposed to be extra pay for this but it never got set up) Pay then jumps a lot when you become a consultant.

Full time it will take you 10 years to become a Paediatrics consultant. So part time with a few mat leaves would take 20years so some of us are not very junior in age or experience juniors!

For me it’s not the pay. That’s acceptable. It’s everything else. Turn up to your shift to find that you are on your own as they is a gap in the rota. Work hard but unable to do it all and someone dies - prison for manslaughter. Call the hospital boss and say it’s unsafe - kicked out as there isn’t proper whistleblowing protection and anyway if I walk away then the patients will definitely die!!!!

I’d like to leave on time but due to some interesting “quirks” in the day design juniors are often not given admin time so letter are written in our own time (my paid for working day only includes contact hours with patients) and in my last hospital but one they decided that one computer was sufficient for all 22 juniors in my department to do their letters etc so I used to come in at weekends I wasn’t at work to try and get it when it was free. You have to change jobs every 6 months and they could be 100s if miles between them, and you get no say in this or where you go. Really fun when you find new job is an hour and a half away and it starts at 8 but nursery doesn’t open till 7.30 and so you need to find a nurse nursery nearer new work with 4weeks notice, and repeat 6 months later. The other issue with changing jobs so frequently is the inability to book leave in advance, it’s often fixed so you never can take holiday with your family and it’s impossible to arrange time off for weddings (including your own). And then there are the mandatory courses - you would think the update training in how to resuscitate a new born baby would be provided by the employer right, no you have to pay for it and do it your own time, ditto exams and indemnity insurance......

..although their tax will be no higher than anyone else on that salary level....

I think people have no idea about the real risk of a manslaughter charge. There is a total lack of understanding of how dangerous the system, the lack of support and also how systems errors (and in fact all errors) happen. I would never advise anyone to become a doctor unless things change fundamentally.

Taxing of all public sector workers (including doctors) but particularly the higher paid is so unfair when compared to the loopholes of those with businesses or in private sector.
I don’t mind paying higher rate tax. I think I should support good public services.
I don’t mind paying tax on a car I use almost exclusively for work.
I do mind when friends such as farmers (who no longer farm) can use taxpayers money to convert their farm buildings to very expensive holiday lets, can afford to put their five children and multiple grandchildren through public school and have the most incredible holidays but are proud to announce that they have never paid a penny income tax.

I know a colleague who fell asleep at the wheel and crashed her car on the way home as she was so tired. It happens frequently.

There is also a very high suicide and divorce rate amongst doctors.

Taxing of all public sector workers (including doctors) but particularly the higher paid is so unfair when compared to the loopholes of those with businesses or in private sector.

ODFOD