Doctors right to strike, should it be removed?

[DistinguishedSocialCommenator]

Hello
Several people within our families are doctors. Most started out wanting to care for people, but as time goes on, the reality of money, and spending comes into play for some.

PM Rishi Sunak in a tv interview partly balmed doctors strikes for failing to bring down hospital waiting lists. I rarely agree with a politician but in this case, I know he is right. EG, myself, my OH, one of our children and grandchildren have had their appointments cancelled because of strike impacts. Our children and grandchildren do have private healthcare but those do not cover pre-existing or you end up on the NHS with chorionic conditions.

Our police officers and armed forces personnel are not allowed to strike

AIBU to expect a no-strike agreement for doctors and possibly nurses. If agreed, give them 9 months' notice about no-strike agreements. I honestly believe hardly anyone would leave and those leaving would have possibly left the NHS anyway as some do and go to another country just like we get doctors from abroad. Their pay claims could be easily managed in the same way police/armed forces pay rises are managed as well of those MP's.

Failing to bring down hospital w/l lies with the present government and the growing of these waiting lists, the doctor's strikes have certainly made things a lot worse. We are regularly hearing on our news media about growing waiting lists and people waiting for urgent treatments and the waiting times in A&E departments etc

AIBU to feel that doctors should be made to sign a no-strike agreement with a few month's notice to have the no-strike agreement in place before next winter? Also, have a pay body set up like the ones our MP's enjoy.

Remember those 40 new hospitals that were promised?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/25/government-u-turn-on-plans-to-double-number-of-medical-students-in-england

But a leaked letter written jointly by health minister Andrew Stephenson and the minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education, Robert Halfon, to the independent regulator the Office for Students, says they will fund only 350 additional places for trainee doctors in 2025-26. This is less than a quarter of the annual number widely anticipated and there is no guarantee that even that level of resource will be repeated.

@DuncinToffee
yep the Government love to make big loud announcements about investing in the NHS - then completely fail to follow through!

5 days is a long strike. I just hope both sides can be reasonable as its the patients who are losing out, every time.

It's not just the patients who are losing out. You clearly have understood nothing of this thread despite countless posters patiently explaining time and again. Can you just try to see any other perspective aside from your own small-minded and self-serving one @DistinguishedSocialCommenator ? No I didn't think so.

@DistinguishedSocialCommenator v hard for the BMA to be reasonable when dear Vicky wi t talk to them. They can't negotiate alone.

Yes, hospital doctors should strike. The number of threads I see here alone made by baffled posters after a recent visit to A&E. They're shocked that they were made to wait 12 hours on a hard chair before getting any treatment or seeing a doctor. They are upset, bitter and flabbergasted at the situation.

Much of the general public have no idea how bad it is in the NHS. The people who truly understand are those working in the NHS and those with significant health issues who need to use it frequently.

Pay erosion only drives doctors overseas or into alternative careers. Medicine provides lots of opportunities to emigrate and diversify, and we will keep losing our best doctors if this keeps up.

On the flipside, take general practice. For a number of complicated reasons, GPs will never strike. GP practices are becoming more and more squeezed by funding cuts, and doctors are being replaced by those with a total of two years medical training (i.e physician's associates).

Again, out of the public eye, but primary care is falling apart and further falling in standards. There is nothing to bring this to the public's attention and I suspect that general practice will be such a crap show in the next decade, that anyone who can afford it will be going private. Leaving the poor to an underfunded and underqualified service.

GPs will likely be taking industrial action but in a different form

It will be a two tiered health system where despite paying NI all your working life, you will be in Tier 1, you can’t afford to go private so you get PAs, who are not medically qualified or the tier 2, where if you can afford it you go private, and you will then be able to see actual GPs and doctors!
Come on people wake up and take some control over what is happening don’t let ignorance be your excuse for what is happening in the NHS. You have a voice use it to protect our NHS or suffer the consequences!

This is what's happened already in mental health. And yes, it's where we're going. I can't believe people can't see it, and are ok with it.

yep I’ve been banging this drum for a few years now. It’s as if the public are asleep, wake up folks! Your right to healthcare has never been more at risk!

They'll accept it too, like they do with dentistry

Watch this space. I am pretty sure this Government will cough up £3.2 billions extra to bomb the far flung corners of the Earth https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/29/ministry-of-defence-costs-overrun-yemen-ukraine-grant-shapps