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

It's very viable, to fully fund the doctors pay restoration demands they would require a 0.75%-1.25% increase in total expenditure on the NHS.

If the country is in such a state that it cannot afford a £2bn increase on one of our most vital services then we really are in dire straights and this would surely be an open admission of their failure to govern effectively?

In terms of actual funding they could find what they need, and more, by banning the use of agency workers in the NHS (saving over £3bn pa).

Obviously this would negatively impact all those tory mps and backers who have a finical intrest in agency providers but that's a price worth paying for better funded NHS.

Much more of these strikes and the public back lash will grow and grow. People have had more than enough. It’s completely unreasonable.

Its already started in some areas:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anger-at-strikers-as-patients-go-untreated-6r5vnb8x2

You are not paying attention. It wouldn’t just stop at Junior doctors!

You are the one not paying attention. To basically anyone or anything outside of your own brain. Which seems to be lacking in power.

Is that the best you can do? 🤪

I have evidence (in the form of your posts) to back it up.

Where's your evidence for anything you've said? You've ignored every request from every poster who's asked this of you and just continued your torrent of abuse against the doctors.

I imagine this is why older consultants like Paris support the strikes, even if ethically it feels dubious. They know once the percentage is cracked, they can demand the same across the whole of the NHS. At that level will certainly fast track the boat and second home in the south of France, quite possibly the whole retirement plan.

Sod the dying patients.

That's maybe what you've turned the thread into but the OP is very clearly speaking about the junior doctors.

But, according to the OBR the chancellor has around £15bn of headroom to make tax cuts going forward, that's enough to give every single person in the NHS a 22% pay rise.

The BMA has been infiltrated by militants
The fact that the law allows a vital service to strike for 6 days is scary
I think maybe in the long run it could be good for the profession as new applicants will know it’s a complicated long slog and not well remunerated until you are mid to late 30 s
Then u will be well rewarded and have great job security and a good pension

Its never been a big secret - it should be more postgraduate in training so we are not shoving clueless 18 year olds into signing up to something they clearly don’t understand

Your inability to look what happened in Scotland is astounding, all i can say you must be Victoria Atkins!

... and the anger, its not good for you, especially with AE as it is.

I will commiserate on working conditions, fees, work-life balance, lack of funding in the NHS, understaffing...
But no I don't think you are underpaid as a Junior Dr. As others have said it's better than in most careers, and similar to private industry salaries, so it's aligned with the market.

i disagree with those who say you should get paid more to endure stress, shitty working conditions and horrible workload. We need more (happy) doctors, not better paid (overworked) ones.

I don't agree that the public don't support a pay increase but even if they don't, will it necessarily matter to them? I think they have been operating on goodwill rather than a need for public support and the goodwill seems to have run out. Junior doctors aren't older people that can't get a job elsewhere. I'm sure they can get a job in another country that values their expertise or maybe move to a sector that is financially rewarding. Ultimately the public need their support rather than the other way around.

It's £14 an hour! That is less than I earned as a new graduate even before a masters degree thirty years ago. Are you living in a time warp?

About time people valued AHPs and JD's

This country deserves to have no publicly funded health service, then they really will have something to moan about.

We don’t need to be grateful for the doctors to go to work and do what they are paid to do.

I'm sure they can get a job in another country that values their expertise or maybe move to a sector that is financially rewarding. Ultimately the public need their support rather than the other way around

This goes over the heads of those who say "we can't afford it" once JDs and other AHPs leave the NHS, then what?

No health service.

Where did Hunt find £21 billion for tax cuts in the Autumn statement? was the price of these a wrecked NHS?

Conversely because the pay demands are just so high the NHS is likely to collapse faster than it would have done otherwise.

And those saying we have billions sloshing around, are failing to see the size of the debt we are in and the social care crisis that dwarves anything else.

They are asking for some sort of pay restoration, to bring them back to 2008 levels and over time, not immediately.

Are you saying the only way we can have a health service is by gradually under paying staff?

Debt is a fair point and concern, so why did Hunt hand out £21bn in tax cuts? and is still looking at further cuts in IHT thresholds.

This.

Over time makes zero difference!

It still has to be paid.

Because it’s led to a discussion about the strike. Even if the OP had just said, ‘what do you think of the doctors’ strike’, other than the first page or so, do you think the responses and ensuing discussion would have been that different?

What cuts I must have missed them!!

Lol no surprise, Autumn statement.