in thinking that most gp's, doctor's generally and nurses are hardworking proffessionals who deserve some respect?

[pukkapatch]

because they certainly dont seem to getany nowadays.
obvioulsy there arethe small minority of people in the profession who give it a bad name, but most of them train bloody hard and work even harder to help people. they certainly dont do it for money. not in this country anyways. and if they dont get respect, then why bother training for it?
aibu in thinking they deserve respect?

[pukkapatch]

kathy if you want to moan about the amount of money doctors make, or dont make, then please go do so on the other gp thread.
you dont need to agree with the op. either doctors and nurses deserve respect or they dont. to say that they do it for the money is to say they dont deserve any respect. and that is precisely the argument i am sick to death of hearing.
respect is never ever given in the pay packet. no one continues to do a job they absolutley hate purely because of the paycheck at the end of themonth. there are always qualifying provisos there.
yes jules, it may seem a bit ott. but i am sooo tired of hearing that same old argument.

[TinyTimLivesinVictorianSqualor]

Jeez, does it really matter how much someone is paid?????

A doctor gets paid the same amount whether he treats you with respect or not.

FWIW, I had my shopping delivered this morning, and as soon as I opened the door the driver noticed I was pregnant and asked me if I was ok with it or if I wanted her to take it inside for me. IMO, as with the other posters thatagreedwith sofiaames everyone doing a job deserves respect.

Once they start being twunts then they personally will lose my respect, I'm sure we've all had a snotty receptionist, a jumped up doctor, a till operative that can't even make eye contact piss us off.

Doesn't mean that everyone in the same job deserve any less respect.
Give it til there is a reason to tke it away.

[Kathyate6mincepies]

Oh read my post properly Pukkapatch.

[Lizzylou]

SIL is a nurse, married to a Consultant Surgeon, they have a fantastic lifestyle, lots of cash and lots of holidays. BUT BIL is on call a lot, works weekends, has extra stuff to do during the evenings (entertaining trainee doctors/running training courses etc) and they have a baby on the way, so I know SIL will miss her husband and probably wish he had a more 9-5 role.
MY BF is married to a Cardiologist with a very successful practice and he earns megabucks..they have 2 small children and I know she misses her DH a lot, despite being able to afford extra help.
They both deserve their wage as far as I'm concerned they cut people open for a living fgs! Doesn't make them better or any more important than the people who empty our bins/look after our children (and they don't think so either, to be fair), and I agree that so many people deserve more respect in this country

[SpikeandDru]

Without getting involved in the argument about what doctors do and do not earn......

I agree that most doctors and nurses do a fantastic (and sometimes under appreciated) job. I think if you have one doctor who isn't good then it's easy to have your opinion of them all clouded.

Likewise I know many here have had bad experiences with HVs but mine was just brilliant - I bf for 9 months because of her support (and I was close to giving up in the early weeks). Likewise she was fantastic when I had PND.

[chopchopbusybusy]

Pukka - you said "either doctors and nurses deserve respect or they don't". Well, some do and some don't as in every other job.

[tissy]

Compared with twenty years ago, hospital Consultants have no status at all, honestly. We are just technicians employed by the trust. Our opinions about how our wards and clinics should run are ignored. We are the ones that get the brunt of the bad feeling when clinics overrun, because the managers have over-ruled our decisions about how many patients you can see in a 4 hour slot. We are told to meet ever more unrealistic targets set by politicians who are just after votes, and who won't give us the money to fund improvements. Twenty per cent of the beds on my wards at the moment are full of boarders from another specialty- the "winter bed crisis" is now all year round, and yet we are expected to continue to treat every emergency that comes in, as well as hitting elective targets, AND avoiding our patients getting complications, such as infections. My pay progression is dependent on my job plan being agreed by a manager once a year. I have had several appointments with the manager in the last 6 months, all have been cancelled in favour of something more important. I need an operation on my foot, but I cannot take 6 weeks off to have it, as the management refuse to appoint another Consultant, even temporarily, to my sub-specialty, and there is NO-ONE, quite literally, to look after my patients whilst i am away. Every time I have some annual leave, I get called at home about something and end up going in to work, as no-one else can deal with the problem. The only way I can avoid this is to leave the country, and the last time I managed this was 2 years ago! There is nothing about this job I like at the moment, and guess what? I can't pack it in, I'm the main wage-earner; my dh is a nurse, and if I did, we couldn't afford to pay our modest mortgage.

[TinyTimLivesinVictorianSqualor]

tissy, my MIL is a phlebotomist and she gets fed up with the way people think everything is down to the medical staff when really it's the 'managers' just trying to balance figures that ends up being the reason things are done as they are.

[Kathyate6mincepies]

Tissy that sounds miserable.
Do you think the managers are a big part of the problem? The ones on the Gerry Robinson programme were not impressive, we thought.

[suzywong]

has anyone made the remark about Greengrocers' italics to pukkapatch?

May I be the first?

[mylittlepudding]

Junior nurses are paid the same PER HOUR as junior doctors. It's just that nurses work less hours. I, frequently, wish I'd done nursing.

[tissy]

don't really know Kathy. Our current surgical manager is lovely BUT she was until last year a surgical ward sister, and "knows", IYKWIM. Managers are required to implement the policies of the current government, and many do not have a background in healthcare, so don't have insight into how things run. What they (politicians and some managers) seem to forget, is that we are trying to provide a service; this is not a business, where there is a profit to be made. My impression is that everyone involved in the NHS (patients and staff)are more dissatisfied that they were 10 years ago- in those days we had 2 year waiting lists for joint replacements,but very few patients complained, they seemed to understand the limitations of the system. Now, the government tells people to expect treatment to be completed within 18 weeks of referral, and everyone is cheesed off when their appointment time is delayed because the Consultant has to single-handedly deal with 30 patients in a 4-hour clinic.

[TinyTimLivesinVictorianSqualor]

kathy, from what MIL has said, the managers, are like everyone else, people with a job to do, following 'procedure' making 'targets' meet etc, but also being paid a good deal out of the budget they are supposedly fixing!

MIL says some managers are unstanding and just trying to do their job, but are in an awkward position themselves, whereas others are not at all interested int he hospital and the way it is run excpet for financially.

[tissy]

mlp is right. Nurses tend to work 37.5 hours a week, junior doctors, between 48 and 56. Nothing like the 120 hour weeks that I used to work, but even so....and do you know what? Some nurses still think that when you've done a night on call, you get the time back!

[krang]

Anyone who does a job well has my respect. That includes my brilliant childminder, my fantastic handyman, my friendly hairdresser, my ex-GP who lent me a tenner to get a taxi to the hospital when I was pregnant and having palpitations, my old English teacher...

It does not include the anaesthetist who laughed at me while giving me an epidural, the nurse who told me to 'just shut up and feed my baby' when weeping in the postnatal ward after a traumatic birth, my totally incompetent ex-solicitor, and the idiot who fitted my kitchen wrong.

Good and bad, everywhere you look.

[OrmIrian]

I agree in principle. Anyone who does a good job and improves the lives of others deserves respect. The binman that reaches over my garden wall to pick up my dustbin when I forget (again) to actually 'put my bins out' deserves my thanks for not being a jobs worth and sticking to the letter of his job. I beleive in treating everyone I deal with with respect and gratitude regardless of whether they are just doing their job, regardless of the size of their pay packet. The fact that people are getting paid doesn't mean you don't have to be appreciative of what they do for you.

I have also been very fortunate with all the health professionals I have had to deal with - without exception. No complaints.
Yes people should be allowed to complain about poor medical treatment but often the whinges I hear are about snotty receptionists, people not being given antibs when they have a bad cold, not being able to get appointments when they want them, waiting too long because the GP has been held up etc. Annoying but not always the fault of the individual doctors and not really life-threatening.

Serious medical incompetence is obviously a different matter.

[Kathyate6mincepies]

It's just it sometimes seems like the people who have the least respect for the doctors are some of the people who are supposed to be managing them. To treat any employee as you have been treated - ie making it impossible for you to go on holiday or have an operation - is disgraceful and I'm sure no-one outside the hospital itself would think that doctors should be treated like that, would they?

I just wonder if you are thinking that no-one respects doctors because that is how it feels when your managers behave like that, (and the abuse from the public - which, again, your managers ought to be protecting you from) whereas actually there is a lot of respect and admiration out there for what you do?

[Ozymandius]

Unfortunately, I do believe that starting a thread does not entitle you to decide exactly what gets posted on it. Pointing out that GPs are not on the breadline as claimed is not the same as saying 'they don't deserve any respect' and it is complete rubbish to claim it is.
I also don't believe that doctors get no respect. Older relatives regard them as Gods and treat them like Gods.
Society as a whole is less deferential than it used to be, for good and ill. We 'respect' - ie think people are wonderful just because of their job - everyone less and trust those in authority (eg politicians) less. Sometimes that means people are rude, sometimes it means they are justifiably sceptical or feel able to complain about their treatment when our grandparents wouldn't have dared.

[TinyTimLivesinVictorianSqualor]

A bad doctor/other professional can taint your idea of all of them, but it doesn't always have to be like that.
I took an overdose when suffering with PND and was rushed into hospital, was sent home a day or so later, only to end up with really awful pains in my back.

Went to my doctor, told him what I'd taken etc, he told me it was constipation and I would be fine.

Two days later still in agony so I called NHS direct who said to have a urine sample sone incase of a kidney infection.

Went to my doctors, the receptionist was fine about it, was just going to send off my sample without me even seeing the doctor, but he came out and said not to bother, I was fine.

In the end a friend took me to the emergency docs who asked where my pain was and sent me straight to hospital, my kidneys had failed. I was very ill and I still think that doctor was negligent in the extreme. But I do try to meet every doctor I deal with with the mind that that doctor was just a bad doctor, and that not all ofthem are.

Thankfully I've not been proven wrong.

[deenymcqueenygoreandguts]

AnnemaysR has answered that question for me nicely thanks.
I cant even start to tell you of all the decisions left to me on my night shift last night...which yes the consequences of which could mean the difference of some ones survival or death.
Lets just say it was a night shift comprised of hell on earth and i was GLAD to get out of that place when i had finished 12 hours with half a cup of coffee in me all night...

I do not demand respect, i dont ask any one for respect but i think that i do a fantastic job and have to do it regardless of Registrars availability....BTW he too was up all night busy with sick patients else where and so was not available to me for about 60% of the time....What should i do then.

Agree or disagree with me, but i strongly feel that i am in the same boat as the Drs about further study and life and death decisions within my practice.
I also feel that you are too quick to dismiss this opinion when you know nothing of my work, even if you do "know a nurse" Our jobs are very different depending on where we work, cannot all be lumped into one.
Too tired to argue and explain any further and to have to justify to any one why i am worth as much as a Dr even if i am "just a nurse"

[deenymcqueenygoreandguts]

sorry handlemecarefully, btw that "erm" was a thinking erm, not a challenging erm...hard to get across on line, sorry if it sounded offensive,only realised after i read it after.

[TinyTimLivesinVictorianSqualor]

deeny, I think you do a great job!
On the spot decisions, no matter who they are made by are life and death situations.

I think the only real difference between the life and death decisions docs and nurses make are that the nurses decisions are often thinking on their feet, whereas the doctors are often longterm (ie to operate or not, how to treat something etc).

Just as the ambulance crews on a balance probably immediately save more peoples lives than doctors in that split second time they make their decision.

[deenymcqueenygoreandguts]

agree but where i work the Docs dont make them decisions as individuals, it is a decision made by the team and the families eg withdrawl of treatment or capping treatment or interventions.
No longer are Docs put up there as Gods...not where i work...unless coated in chocolate looking like Davis Beckham...then yes...Godly status will be bestowed upon them....till then, if they are sat redundant then they get the kettle on and brew up, just like the rest of us.

[tissy]

no-one has claimed that GPs are on the breadline, but journalists who want to write sensationalist stories about how greedy doctors are (usually in the same piece as how we are usually to be found on the golf course or down the private hospital neglecting our NHS patients)just look at a pay scale and see the top figure. They print that some doctors can get £250K, and Joe Public that as, "Doctors get paid £250K". The only doctor in our hospital who earns over 120K from the NHS alone, is the Medical Director. He is a senior manager, who, by the way has not worked at the coalface for 10 yrs. Before that he was in a lab-based discipline, and NEVER had to meet patients face to face.

[Kathyate6mincepies]

There was a description on this thread of doctors driving around in almost burnt-out cars. That's what the breadline comments here are responding to.