Would you support a junior doctor strike?

[NC3435]

NC for this. To be clear, during the last strike, non training grade doctors were in hospitals etc as were consultants. Emergency work continued and A+E was functioning. The background to the dispute is that JDs want pay restoration to the levels in 2008/09 and the BMA has been attempting to engage with the government for a while without any acknowledgement. There is a staffing and retention crisis with more and more doctors leaving the country every year. Those of us still around are pretty burnt out from the last 2 years and things are getting worse - this includes patient care.

Yes I would

This outlines Junior Doctors pay.
www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/pay/junior-doctors-pay-scales/pay-scales-for-junior-doctors-in-england

To have Spr's on £80k is very rare.

An example. My nephew is FY2 on £28k a year. He works around 70-80 hours a week. Does around 15-20 hours studying on top of that. He has to pay for some of his own studying, his own BMA membership. And has university debts that make me want to cry.

Because of the speciality he wants to go into (a much needed specialty), in five years he will still only be on around £42k. After 10 years he will be on about £70k.

I'm pleased it wasn't only me getting pissed off with it.

Such ghastly attitudes from those 'in charge' is why I left the NHS and would never return.

Totally behind the strikes. My husband was a junior doctor for years and it’s gutty, horribly stressful work that not many people could pull off. They should be valued far more.

I agree. How patronising can you get?
I very much doubt they think of themselves as 'your' juniors or 'your' consultants. Particularly when you have such a disdainful attitude.

If any of what you post @fissty is actually true, it is unusual. In most trusts, registrars seem to be striking too.

They don't expect to get the shit they get either! £27k a year for a 50 hour week and loans to pay back! They deserve more. Not to mention the pressure at the moment means more mistakes could be made.

more and more people with this attitude is the reason many are leaving!

“My registrars” as if they work for you. I think people just need to stop rising to the bait with your ridiculous, bitter posts. I haven’t met a registrar in training who isn’t striking and I work in a central London teaching hospital. My husband is now a Consutlant in a different large teaching hospital and is 100% ready to step down and cover as are his more senior colleagues. As for IMGs telling you that juniors need to “check their privilege” - laughable. And of course as someone pointed out, staff grades and long term locums are paid an hourly rate and definitely charge for any extra time they work so ofc their pay is different. I’m sure you’ll be bad mouthing us to the patients who you’re apparently going to be contacting tomorrow but hopefully they’ll see through your ignorance.

@NC3435 will you be calling patients to tell them why they’re being cancelled?

I really hate this comment. I had my first med school interview at 16 almost 40 years ago.
I can assure you that at 16 I

1. had not a scooby do what I was getting into
2. what a shit storm the NHS would become
3. how doctor pay would be eroded
4. how patient demand and doctor respect would be completely destroyed If I could go back to my 16yr old self I would tell her to run away as fast as she could and do her first uni acceptance. A far different respected and well paid field. I have actively encouraged my children to do anything but medicine. I dread the future of health care but won't sacrifice myself or my family on it

Nothing I have read here does anything to discourage me from supporting the strikes. I still see why I try very hard not to get me or mine sick because the conditions and the care - not the fault of doctors, or nurses, but the conditions they are working under -discourage me from seeking care for all but the worst of issues.

Agree - most of our STRs, and all of our clinical fellows are IMGs, and are all striking. Our SAS grades (again, all IMGs) have refused to provide cross-cover ;in order to support their colleagues, which I fully support). There is no divide here that I can see.

Find another way to negotiate. Quit doing locums and extras. Walk out of the hospital bang on leaving time. Work to rule. Campaign

If my SpRs stopped doing locums and unpaid overtime, my department would collapse tomorrow. I currently have 2 SpRs manning a seven-person rota. Unsurprisingly they are burnt out and getting very little in the way of training opportunities as they are mostly firefighting. I have two more starting in April, but that is six weeks away - we have been running like this since January.

We recruited two overseas doctors in December, one may hopefully be able to start in June, the other accepted the post but then decided in January that she didn’t want to work in the UK after all, would prefer to try for the US. And who can blame her?

@fissty apologies for the language....

but you don't sound like you have fucking clue, like most of the very senior managers I've had the displeasure of working with.

Standard. Gaslighting. Gobshite.

Juniors in the main are F1/F2? Really?

You sound like you live in either some unrecognisable utopia full of cash and doctors - and that might be the case - one of the prestige hospitals with almost entirely tertiary services and a massive charitable income to fund it, but the overwhelming majority of juniors have voted to strike, and that includes senior registrars... and most of my consultant colleagues are not just going to step in, they're doing it for enhanced time-off in lieu or if they're daft the rates on the BMA rate card to support their colleagues.

It'll be interesting to see what all of 'your' consultants that you think you have under your thumb decide to do during their ballots and strike action in the coming months.....

No. No support.

Yup consultants doing extra work as a result are all going via BMA rate card

This is going to cost.

Shame on the government

Actually, consultants in my department are crapping it that even if we cancel all elective work (which of course we shall) we won't be able to provide a safe level of cover, because we are a small department with a small rota but unavoidable acute work. If I had a first born child I'd be offering their soul to the couple of NPs we do have, to work some of it, as it might just be enough to take cover from impossible to dangerously fragile. And damn right I'll be charging through the nose, I'm meant to be on fucking holiday. Would I tell patients why we're cancelling? Given that every time a parent complains about a delay/problem I point out that they need to blame whoever kept voting Tory, damn right I would. And, for the record, my cancer surgery was delayed by a surgical directorate safety away day looking at how to balance training needs with service needs. My sense of irony is strong enough to find that amusing.

And yet still I support the "junior" doctors. This strike isn't really about pay, it's about stemming the haemorrhage of medical staff abroad, which is already endangering the NHS.

Our Trust refuse to sign up to BMA rates, so the Consultants are very loath to ever do extra. But then the Trust contract out procedures to private companies that cost a lot more! Doh! 🤦‍♀️

Missy81

Did you see in news recently such agencies trace back to some big Tory party members and donors

Sadly nothing would surprise me with this Government, so much corruption 😡

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Exactly! That's what I said. Fully support them

After my own thirty years of working with junior doctors, your experience of their attitude is alien to me. There are always one or two workshy/entitled types but the majority are amazing. And have jumped through so many hoops and worked so hard to even get into medical school.

You need to remove that chip off your shoulder; perhaps ask a junior doctor to do so for you.

‘My’ consultants and ‘my’ registrars. Yuk.

This poster sounds like every junior doctor’s worst nightmare. There is often one difficult staff member like this in a department. A rite of passage for doctors. We have one like this in our security dept. Like her job role is to terrorise new starters. That’s where some people like @fissty get their kicks.

Jobs are so much more rewarding if you treat colleagues with respect. @fissty you should try not making junior doctors the enemy. It might help your blood pressure.

‘I’m going to ask it again because you’re all nearly skipping over it - are you, personally, happy to have your appointment or surgery cancelled to support these strikes? What about your family members surgery? A radical mastectomy? (Booked). Bladder cancers? (Booked). You happy to wait another week for your cancer results?“

of course not.
I think doctors need better unions who understand that the public won’t be happy. Their messaging is terrible. It hands the government an excuse for the working conditions which sound very very tough.

And as I previously posted my cancer surgery was delayed due to a surgical directorate away day looking at the balance between training and service requirements. Which I absolutely understood because junior doctors need to be treated properly. So, yes, I would be okay.