Are you worried about the doctors strike

[Fiona7656]

AINBU - if you are also worried
AIBU - not worried at all, all will be fine

I'm feeling really worried as my sister is due to have an operation on the strike date.

Why can’t the government just give them a pay rise. They all worked above and beyond for us in covid. I totally get it. Claps don’t pay bills but ultimately we are all suffering their ignorance

I'm a bit late to this thread but I work in a hospital and I'm worried about the escalation of the strikes. They will ultimately impact patient safety.
I'm less convinced that doctors need to be paid more. The £14 per hour everyone is talking about is the base rate for a brand new, just out of school FY1. They don't do anything unsupervised because they're basically still students. They can barely take bloods at that stage. Which other students get paid £14 plus enhanced unsocial hours to learn?

I'm worried about my dad and father in law who are both undergoing hospital care.

It is bad enough already and they have had to wait far too long for treatment. The strikes will make it worse for them. They are distressed enough as it is.

I don't know what the answer is though. There is not enough money for everything that is needed in this country.

Pahahahaha! What rude, demeaning utter tosh!

Tell that to the F1s on medical and and surgical ward cover on calls, looking after 12 wards by themselves 😂

@Helena7319 you’ve clearly never been a junior doctor. They are way more than students as I’m sure you know fine well if you are clinical in any way, and have full medicolegal responsibility for their actions. Utter nonsense. It’s an incredibly hard job. Yes they are learning but it is post grad learning after 5-6 years at medical school not earning. And there is no longer free accommodation, food, parking etc as there used to be back in the day to make up for the dismal rates of pay.

Can anyone explain exactly how much doctors are paid as there seems to be all kinds of figures bandied around.
Some people suggest that they are paid minimum wage with 20 years experience, others that they will be on £100k plus private work.
Anyone know the truth?

well, your choice of votes is a little ambiguous. Are you worried your sister will not be safe? In that case, YABU, as I voted. She will be fine - I have had multiple treatments and operations on strike days in the last year and was never unsafe. Many ops will be cancelled, ops will only go ahead if the are safe.

I fully support the strike and voted YABU - because the doctors should be striking.

But that might not be what your voting means?

I'm more concerned about the Consultants strike as DF is awaiting an operation. He has a date but it has already changed once.

According to health careers NHS website Consultants get a 'basic' salary of £93,666 to £126,281 per year. Presumably if that is described as basic there is scope to make a lot more.

very misleading, as most consultants are not on this salary scale

I have two children who have just finished their first year and wonder where you work.

They cover many wards at night with no supervision. They deal with dying patients discussing resuscitation and providing care as patients die. My daughter is in a and e at the moment and treated a patient with hope fracture who had been waiting 7 hours in pain.

They attend resus calls and in patients bleeding to death of the doctor does not intervene. They work a 48 hour week.

Everyone using or with a loved one using the health service should sadly be worried. Some of the locum staff are not great. The pressures are immense the lists of jobs never completed.

It isn’t just the U.K. suffering with a shortage of medical staff, doctors and nurses. It is a hard job and for the amount of study and pressure, it is underpaid. Much easier for clever people to become lawyers or bankers or go into tech.

30 years ago being a doctor was a well regarded profession that was well paid. Then it deteriorated. And people are sicker and older on the whole.

So to attract enough doctors to enter the profession both pay, working conditions and status needs to increase again.
I don’t want a privatised NHS but equally I don’t think people respect and value the free at point of delivery service we do have enough. And there are a lot of inefficiencies in the system as well due to poor communication and how the system actually works. Like the transfers between hospitals and trusts are a nightmare.

Even if a doctor gets a decent wage by national standard, that is not the point.

The question that needs to be asked is what jobs do the cleverest graduates go into and how much are they paid for similar pressures and work life balance? I call it the working from home effect. If you can go into a better paid job with better conditions, then medicine is no longer attractive, given the student debt. And their mental health is absolutely vital as well and probably not looked after properly. Law firms, banks, tech companies all look after their graduates properly these days. That is the competition for the best graduates now.

I am concerned about the impact of the strikes whilst simultaneously supporting the strikers. I think the government has miscalculated their approach. I'm sure they thought that by now the public would be on their side so they could refuse to negotiate and I don't believe that is the case.

Helena

Where do you work. My kids experience as F1 doctors is very different. They have both been left in charge of several wards at night. They get very little supervision and have to Google procedures they have never done before then get on with it. They are now in f2 both in different areas but if it is better in your area they could move for F3. If not my son is thinking of Australia.