Struggling to make ends meet as a junior doctor. AIBU?

[HK3444]

Struggling to make ends meet. Rent has gone up, food bills are going up and struggling to support my kids.

I’m someone worked really hard through medical school, it felt like endless exams and accumulated student debt with the hope that I’d be able to support my family comfortably at the end of the degree and but also feel job satisfaction bettering the health of others.

Not sure what this was all for… can’t believe I’m in this situation as a doctor

You comment. Give us your views based on your numerous facts and figures.

I hate the fact that Mumsnet is happy to host fake threads like this one.

And by answering that you have also exposed yourself.

So this strike is indeed just a political game to you, nothing really to do with under paid juniors or dying patients. It’s just another way to harm the ‘Tories’

There is no endgame. You are being misled.

Misled into what?

You ask these questions because you know I cannot possibly have the answers, not being in charge of this country's finances. Do you think the Conservatives' handling of finances for the past 14 years or so has been good and could not have been done any better?

So I ask you in return: what would your suggestion be? That junior doctors and carers just shut up and put up, and that doctors have their right to strike removed?

It’ll be interesting to see a party face increasing ageing population, increase in number of staff, no PFI, no excessive borrowing and apparently tax cuts in the offing

They won’t have any extra funding it’s just ‘we’ll talk’ ok not really much of a solution

Atm it’s a political whitewash as they know ‘we’ll talk’ is enough for some voters beyond actually facing funding issues

Yes I believe that we may have to remove strike action for medics after this, we can’t have people dying needlessly because of a few militant union leaders think it’s okay to hold the country to ransom.

Yes and yet I’ve been drawn in. I’m fully expecting to see ‘we’ve deleted this thread as we believe the OP isn’t genuine’ later this afternoon.

"a few militant union leaders think it’s okay to hold the country to ransom"

Wow!

What's your stake in all this anyway?

Completing a publicity stunt for the unions whilst ensuring the pay demand is so high as to ensure nothing can be settled.

Who does that benefit?
Not the doctors.
Nor the dead and dying patients

Umm. I live here, maybe.

What the actual....

You have nothing to back up what you're saying and yet believe we're being misled and that if you choose to be a doctor you are not allowed to take action you see as appropriate to protect yourself? You want to remove the rights of the people you would also want to save your life if you needed it?

I couldn't hope that you are not in charge of anything more right now.

If nothing is resolved then it doesn't benefit the unions either. So it's a pretty rubbish publicity stunt.

The army can’t strike, nor the police - I wonder how it is even possible we allow doctors to strike knowing the harm it will cause is utterly beyond me.

Ah but it does benefit someone

And that would be?

You ask these questions because you know I cannot possibly have the answers

Well you might have answers, but you’re right usually people don’t because the issue is more difficult that party politics

Labour won’t have the answers either and that’s usually who people will quote for what to do, and that’s a blank too

Increasing aging population, comparatively unhealthy population, high care needs and old NHS model is problematic no matter who is in.

I don’t think we can pay what pp say for healthcare staff and care workers, the numbers don’t add up. What will save us from imploding completely may well increased AI for healthcare in a few years

I'm finding it hard to muster any sympathy for doctors, junior or otherwise. You earn substantially more than the average wage with massive potential to be on six figure salaries and million pound pension pots.

But why does it matter? We are here discussing the pros and cons of the strike. Does it matter if the OP is genuinely poor or not? We can’t know for sure anything we read on here. Most of the comments here are not discussing the OP anyway.

I think I am missing the gene that gets annoyed by fake threads. It doesn’t make a difference to me here.

You see the unions coordinated all of the strikes, not just this one - all of them - to undermine the country, to weaken and to harm. To give the impression the country was ‘going to the dogs’ this all miraculously happened together- don’t you think that is strange.

Doctors, nurses, teachers, train drivers, postal workers, I could go on.

I wonder who is benefitting from this endless supply of bad news, strikes and closures?

Because I don’t believe in coincidence of this magnitude you see.

The doctors and patients are all fodder in the end. The 35% will never happen. The lives lost will be in vain.

Why did anyone think this would work?

To be honest, I was on the fence over the strike

But seeing the frothing madness of posters like @Newchapterbeckons makes me quite inclined to support it.

When the best argument against it is what is being spouted on here, I think I support them

Certainly those in favour of the strikes/payrise are making much more rational arguments than the ‘tough shit, they should suck it up’ which is all the other side seems to be able to say

Maybe your issue could be taken up with your NHS employers instead and ask them why they are happier to use their budget to pay an EDI manager £58-£65k (currently being advertised) rather than increasing your wages? The mismanagement of NHS funding is a scandal.

Oh I see, you're actually insane.

Its not coincidence, you're right there. It's consequences. The consequences of really bad leadership and decision making for too many years. This was always coming. The country was always falling apart at some point. Because the people in charge make really bad decisions.

It is disingenuous to start a thread to try and rustle up support for a strike that is killing patients daily, and to claim destitution on a made up JD salary and bleat to parents that may actually be living in real life destitution.

For someone of sound reasoning and with ethical principles I am surprised you had to ask.