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

Really? Because I smell bullshit.

And what will Labour change in this situation? Absolutely nothing is the answer.

CBA reading the full thread so apologies if this has already been covered

The tories argue that the 35% pay increase / restoration doctors are asking for is unaffordable. On the face of it that sounds understandable, 35% is a big increase but, dig a little deeper and you'll find the monetary cost is relatively small in goverments expenditure terms.

According to the government's own figuers this would only cost c£2bn per year to extra to fund (BMA say it eould be closer to £1bn).

So we're in a situation where to fully meet the doctor's demands and to end the strikes the government just need to find £2bn a year.

Yet just last week the same government who can't afford £2bn a year announced they were consider a range of pre-election tax cuts (including eliminating inheritance tax) that would cost £8bn a year to fund.

To repeat, they cannot afford £2bn a year to fund doctors properly but they can afford £8bn a year to improve their chances at re-election.

Which bit of my post suggests I think Labour is the correct choice to fix the country?

So Junior Doctors are essential but Care Workers are not? Wow.

Hilariously out of touch. Care workers are literally irreplaceable, we can't even find enough of them, 60,000 vacancies! Good luck finding a Junior Doctor who'd do dare to do care work at £8 an hour after tax. Nah easier for them to skip work and let kids die.

Wow. Perhaps you need to perfect your comprehension and critical thinking skills buddy. People are dying on the back of your ‘support’ frothy or otherwise

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

Just to add to this surely for anyone on the thread posting we need 35% pay restoration and / or care workers need to be paid better has an idea whether it’s viable and how

Get patients through too fast, or not at all. I know which I'm experiencing most.

It's beyond sad when patients with life-limiting conditions can't see any health professionals, let alone an appropriate one!

How many years do carers spend at med school earning nothing and clocking up debt? Most people of that ability and who make that kind of investment earn significantly more than junior doctors. Fact.

So Junior Doctors are essential, but Care Workers are not? Wow.

Hilariously out of touch. Care workers are literally irreplaceable, we can't even find enough of them, 60,000 vacancies! Good luck finding a Junior Doctor who'd do dare to do care work at £8 an hour after tax. Nah easier for them to skip work and let kids die.

Yes you really should read the whole thread.

The issue is not JUST the couple of billion the JD will cost. It is the tens of billions required when the rest of the NHS quite rightly demand fairness and expect the same.

Are people really this dense!

How can you not understand that care workers are much more replaceable than highly qualified junior doctors who have trained for years? I have nothing against care workers and I am not a junior doctor. But surely it is obvious.

Are you joking the care industry is also short staffed and under immense pressure why do you think it's now on the home office shortage list.

I'm going to preface this with I think care workers are essential, valuable and I definitely wouldn't want to do some of the things they do, they're amazing and definitely deserve higher pay.

But I think the point being made is that given the difference in qualifications required, care workers (as it stands) could be replaced by junior doctors, but care workers couldn't just step into a junior doctor role at short notice.

I've worked in care providers, in admin roles when I was starting out, and have huge respect for the job they do. But it is a different role entirely.

That is not the same thing as anyone can train to do it in a very short time with little in the way of formal qualifications. It is the opposite with doctors. Common sense.

The unions only really represent the MC workers that bankroll them, they don’t do a thing for the carers or anyone that actually requires representation. It’s not worth their time as they don’t pay enough or have the savings and funds to strike.

The carers are ignored. Treated with disrespect and contempt.

The point remains that they are doing an essential service but are probably still struggling this isn't unique to junior doctors.

No-one's gross salary reflects what they come home with! It's called tax! We all pay it!

I rest my case.

Anyone who disagrees with you is ‘dense’ but you can’t back up any of your points with actual facts, and struggle to put together a coherent point

If you’re the case against the strike, I really am in favour

Unless this is a double agent poster being as deliberately awful as possible to drum up support for the strikes?
Stranger things have happened on MN!

I've asked them for facts previously and they ignore it. They are a conspiracy theorist who I think just want to keep the tories in power for some reason they can't be bothered to explain.

How can you be so mathematically challenged as to not understand the errors in your posts? You should be apologising. A 35% pay increase for the whole of the NHS will be far more than ‘a couple of billion’ 🤔

Didn't take long for the "care workers are important, but not really that important" strike snobbery to reveal itself in the end!!!

Don't worry, Junior Doctors! As always we'll carry on the actual work for 1/4 of your pay when your patients get discharged back into our care homes because no-one was available to see them, the Junior Doctors were too busy buying a £4 coffee while moaning about car park charges, standing outside on the lines and yelling.

I might also add the political element is null and void if none of the parties support this strike action and pay demand.

I've read beginning and end of this clearly planted thread so apologies if repeating others.
Starting salary is not £29k, it went up to £32k this year and most doctors then receive out of hours banding on top.
Everybody is struggling with bills but the vocal junior Bma cohort seem to expect doctors to be exempted from that as they are so special.

The BMA has historically shown v little fellow feeling or activism with other healthcare unions in their long running patient safety campaigns. So it's ironic that they are declaring the NHS to be critically unsafe now and yet mysteriously on strike days it's no more unsafe? One might ask what are doctors doing if their absence is unremarkable.
I am on the ground, I can tell you that hospitals are much more dangerous today than they would be without strikes in place. I can tell you junior doctors do an invaluable role and could/should be paid more but the same applies to the whole nhs. The Bma has cost these doctors so much in lost pay and in lost training time and endangered patient care in doing so. The Bma is not paying strike pay except to a minority and they are sitting on millions in assets. There are also some frankly nasty campaigns coming along to restrict development of non medical clinical roles and in opposition to internationally trained doctors working in the uk. The Bma junior committee is dominated by one politically motivated faction. Be under no illusion, the strike is not really about doctor welfare.

I would hazard a wild guess that Brexit is a big part of it but that has absolutely nothing to do with this thread.

Oooh awkward

I haven’t made any posts with any numbers, billions or otherwise.

What was that about having challenges..?

(I’m a CFA though, so would generally consider myself fairly numerically literate so happy to run the rule over any numbers you want to provide. I see you’ve been asked several times for them and have declined to provide any)