Junior doctors offered 22% pay rise

[PONZOL]

How and where will the government get the money from I wonder?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjqe82lk5g5o

Yes, a lot of duplication and failure demand in the NHS. We need to look at that before we chuck yet more money at it.

They actually don't get paid enough to send their kids private. Not unless they do a shed load of private work and live outside London or have 1 child. The payscales are very low compared to US/Canada etx

Gosh, I wish I could get a 22% raise. That would be nice.

Daughter has just graduated in medicine. So many of her peers have plans to go to Australia where the pay and conditions are better. Hopefully this will make some of them stay. It’s about time their pay caught up a little.

So the over 80s don't matter?? The older people get, the more important it is to be able to keep their homes warm. And just because you can manage without the payment-doesn't mean everyone can. I'd defy anyone to live comfortably -including adequate heating-whilst living on or close to the Pension Credit level. And remember-those existing with that tiny income generally don't have access to savings either. Pensioner poverty is a REAL thing-and dismissing it because you think most pensioners are lucky enough to be like you is arrogant, patronising and cruel.

I was merely correcting your “facts”. I thought personal attacks were frowned on here.

Totally this. The qualifying level for Pension Credit (and hence Winter fuel payment) is MISERLY-I would defy most of the people posting on here to even ATTEMPT to live on it. Pensioner poverty is a real thing, and Reeves/Starmer have just signalled they care very little about truly vulnerable elderly citizens. Not all pensioners are even remotely well off despite the nonsense spouted by ageist media & SM. It makes me ashamed that as a country we treat our less well off elderly folk with such disregard.

Totally agree with you. Labour have betrayed a very vulnerable group.

And I was correcting YOUR massive assumption that most pensioners won't miss the WFP-simply because YOU won't.

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I've learned from this thread that PAs are initially paid more than doctors and that there is unemployment amongst doctors as funding is only available for PA posts. Is there anything stopping someone with a medical degree applying for a PA role? Or do they have to have done the specific PA masters? Obviously not a long term solution, but to keep working until a training post comes up. I'm assuming it's not that easy as otherwise more people would be doing it.

Good. Well done to the government - we need to retain our doctors and God knows they deserve a good wage.

Last I saw about this doctors were specifically excluded from being able to apply to work as a PA - not sure how this was done and may have since changed

Ive not rtff however, just to add to the conversation, our junior drs, which isnt just fresh out of med school drs, ST drs who have worked within the ED for many many years, do a shift pattern of 7 days on, 2 off, 4 nights on, 2 off. Shifts being 8 hours not 12. Meaning, as well as as the pay being terrible, the hours are terrible. The fresh from med school drs have very little say over where they are placed, moving miles away from support systems, unable to build outside of work support networks easily because of the hours. Then after all that training, theres a massive shortage of speciality trained positions, meaning they have to stay junior for far longer than anticipated. Being a junior dr within the NHS is not great. (Saying that progression for most clinical roles is basically at a standstill with even newly qualified nurses, midwives, PT/OT, radiographers and pharmacists all struggling to secure positions straight out of uni as there recruitment freezes across all trusts). 22% across the 2 years, with some back paid for previous years had to happen. They earn it, these are the drs who see most patients within a hospital setting, who review tests results, every ecg i do needs looking at and comparing to old ones on the slow computer system, who write up prescriptions, do the treatment plan and come tell me what needs doing and when, review that treatment plan, protocol diagnostics, they liaise with other services, who will attend a crash call, who will have multiple patients to see all at the same time, who i as an ED nurse harass constantly for my patients when i know they have 10 others, come and do the ultrasound guided cannulas when i cant do them, they have to write up history diagnostics and plans for every patient, they never leave on time, ever, they are in the dept hours after their shift ended daily to write everything up and handover their case load. They arrive exhausted and leave exhausted.

Yes the NHS is on its knees, waiting times for outpatient are insane, waiting times for inpatients are just as bad, waiting times and the sheer volumes of patients presenting at ED is downright unacceptable. But these junior Drs work hard, day and night, with very little down time, for what was £15 an hour initially. They deserve this increase, and then some.

Apart from the sheer ridiculousness of someone who is typically the most academically able of their cohort, who has trained for 6 years in one of the most competitive courses in the country taking up a job as an assistant to their role (PAs have no independent function and everything they do is supervised and signed off by a doctor) - a doctor would be over-qualified to be a PA and would simply do the tasks.

The PA masters is less than a tenth of a medical degree.

I have strongly urged junior medics I mentor to take up opportunities abroad - they are young and typically single or with young families - it is an adventure.

Yes, I am sure they would, too - it was a 9% pay rise this year.

However, I do think it is poor form to means test the winter fuel allowance in this way and definitely to have it come into force this winter - only really 2-3 months away so no time for pensioners (especially those with no support) to try to mitigate for this in some way.

Plenty of money for subsided lunches in Westminster from tax payers money and it won’t be a dry cheese and ham sandwich either.

To add insult to injury, they are not even allowed to apply for PA roles. I've heard of someone doing a PA course with a degree in food science and the pass rate is 100%. The PA situation is total madness.

Shame it doesn’t apply to the rest of us nhs frontline workers (we are getting 5.5%) who work just as hard.

Oh, okay. You're talking principally about primary care. Thanks for explaining, and yes, it's appalling.

Doctors think they are special. They're not. They're people doing a job. A highly skilled job, but a job nonetheless. If they don't like their job, find another job. That's how it works in the real world.

So what about nurses, teachers, bin men, social workers, carers etc etc. all doing vital jobs and offered 3-5%? EVERYONE has had a real terms pay cut, if we can't afford to give EVERYONE a rise to bring them in line then why should junior doctors be given special treatment?

That is what they are doing!

They do deserve a higher pay rise.
The government accepted the pay rises recommended by the PRB for both the junior doctors and those on agenda for change. If they are not happy then they need to take it to the unions.
In previous years refuse collectors have gone on strike in Scotland. Not in England, not are about rest of UK.

There are several ways the NHS could be restructured without affecting patient care to help afford this. A grassroots review of whether both the Department of Health AND NHS England are required,say, or at the very least look at how overstuffed some of the higher pen pusher grades are.

Not to mention the 8as and above - permanent, not fixed term that were introduced during COVID and have never gone away. Where I've worked the last three years you could sack most of them and employ oh, I don't know, a few dozen 5s and 6s who would actually do the work instead of swanning about from pointless meeting to pointless meeting to justify their existence.

Regionalised back office functions for payroll, accounting, procurement, some library services would also help, even shared CEOs.

And stop employing people from the private sector with no understanding of the NHS at the top of the band when there are very capable people internally if only the terms and conditions for existing staff hadn't been eroded by both 14 years of monsters in Westminster and complicity from the unions.

Junior doctors deserve every penny of those pay awards and more, though so do the nurses. If they don't introduce a separate pay scale for nurses and soon they will be facing down nursing strikes which will make the doctors' situation look like a walk in the park.

Almost any NHS employee at an ordinary level could offer insights and practical suggestions about how to improve things without compromising patient care. In fact it would improve things.

Oh and those of you blaming PAs, there aren't any jobs for them either, at least not in the north west of England. The NHS has always been rubbish at succession planning and workforce planning. Tue current shortages were forecast twenty years ago, though COVID, the wars, and the cost of living weren't factored in. Nobody ever looks beyond five years at most, the people in most of those well paid forecasting jobs don't stay in them long and have almost certainly never done an actual ward job in their lives.

Totally agree, people I've seen walking round hospitals or at training sessions that are admin is ridiculous, and there is an awful lot of wastage in the NHS that needs to be addressed,