To think the BMA have misjudged with another doctor's strike?

[Locutus2000]

Last year they got more than anyone else in the NHS along with an improved deal. Nurses and other AHPs received lower rises.

BMA have just announced another 'resident' doctor strike continuing to chase pay restoration to 2008 levels.

Having just had the major win with changes to IMG prioritisation and the clamp-down on PAs it feels a bit tone-deaf and I can't see Streeting going for it.

@Gghhhd but that’s the problem. They don’t just progress to the next stage, for many this year the next stage in unemployment.

There was always a lot of pleading with F1s & F2s to take on bank shifts. Despite an old contract, so up to 60 hours a week, some took on quite a lot. For example her friend needed a car for her second year rotations. However rates aren't great unless it is something like Christmas.

Not private work though. Just extra NHS shifts.

I've seen you produce that 78 hr figure quite often now. But that leaves 90 hrs per week unaccounted for, when they can do what they like, including sleep. Before the shift system was introduced, if house officers/SHOs were doing a weekend (which they would 1:3 or 1:4) they worked 72 hrs continuously, bookended by 40 hr weeks with at least two more nights on call. The SHOs also managed to fit in professional examinations and often one or two simple publications.

v likely the only doctor you will see if you are in hospital. I don't know where you got this idea, if you have been admitted to a hospital you won't be discharged without seeing a consultant.

Doctors can apply for many types of jobs and always have done; law graduates trained to be lawyers, that doesn't mean their wishes should be accommodated.

@sendsummer provided the helpful link below on another thread which shows that of appointable applications to CT1/ST1 from UK graduates, 85% received offers. But then UK applicants did not accept about a third of their offers.

https://medical.hee.nhs.uk/medical-training-recruitment/medical-specialty-training/equality-and-diversity/equality-and-diversity-2024-recruitment-data

For no other degree course is there this level of opportunity.

It has been pointed out to you many times that current juniors do not earn 20% less than they did in 2008/9, when, as I have also pointed out to you they were also working longer hours.

Unbelievable. Half their intake are facing unemployment in three weeks time. Who knows how my DD will pay her mortgage. Her only option may be to find a job on the other side of the world.

Yet the privileged few, with training and a career path that will deliver the quickly to £100,000 a year see this as scabbing. Them getting their latest pay rise is the priority. Not patients, not the doctors who don't have the same opportunities as they do.

Where is that famed empathy?

It would be lovely for all of us to earn £60000 plus, or at least, the equivalent of acquisition power, so real terms. But UK State just does not have the money. It is a reality we all need to face. NHS workers were hard done by pay freeze for years. They had a settlement. It may not be to everyone's full approval, but it was quite a bit in %. Deserved.
Now, more increases make zero sense to me. If we do increase for a bunch, we have to for the rest. Situations like the possible one you mention have happened in a private sector I know well. That did not end up well, at all.
We need to keep a balance.

@Needmoresleep I have disagreed with you a fair few times on this thread, but can I say that I think the way that @mumsneedwine is talking about your daughter is absolutely disgusting. Accusations and slurs on a young person doing her job are completely unacceptable.

I'm afraid that you are now on the receiving end of some of the unpleasantness that the rest of us have been subjected to.

Did your daughter apply for jobs in the end? I see from the post above that those who did apply had a good chance of getting one. It almost looks as though militant troublemakers with a problem with foreigners were trying to discourage people from applying.

Oh come on, my taxes pay for my job too (public sector) and we're not striking. You are really scraping the barrel here.

God help us if consultants vote to strike
The public will have no sympathy with that at all and nor should they. Consultants are paid enough money. I am paid enough money.
I will not be balloted as no longer a BMA member so at least I won’t be bombarded with texts and calls asking me to strike.

Dont I know that consultants will cover! I did a tonne of cover the last time and it was exhausting.

I am old but not old enough to have been around for the 1975 strike! I think I do dimly recall the 2016 strike. I was a consultant by then so my involvement was only to cover. I guess what I meant was that when I was a junior Dr it was considered not the done thing for medics to strike. It was not something I ever considered doing and that is my position to this day.

The last set of strikes were prolonged and crippling. It really did do so much damage to patient care. Waiting lists getting longer and longer and so much money wasted on paying for cover. No ability to actually improve anything as there is no money and managers are all tied up firefighting the strike.

Just as it felt like we are making progress in recovering from the backlog and things might have some hope of getting better to strike again right now just seems like a death wish to me.

Inevitably the stats that Sendsummer is using need a bit more drilling down.

1. What does appointable mean? Having ticked all the CV boxes, having hit the right pass rate, having got the right SJT? I don't know.
2. Sendsummer confirms that the figures are mainly for applicants 2-4 years after graduation with a bit of a tail beyond that. So the odds are less good than they woukd be if just for a single year.
3. She also says that the lack of take up may be because of duplicates. Doctors applying for more than one speciality. So again if individuals are considered the numbers may be less good.

She also conceded that things are uneven. Some of DDs F1/F2 peers, especially in England, were quite lightly loaded. Not so where DD was in notoriously busy hospitals under the 2005 contract. Unfortunately training places for many specialities are decided nationally so her deanery peers were competing with one hand behind their back, and some very good applicants from the year above failed for the second time. To rub salt in the wound training places in her deanery remain unfilled as English and International training number holders are not applying or leaving as soon as they can get a job in England with consultants and others having to carry the load.

DD had always planned a demanding F1/F2 and then to take an F3. Not a bad plan in that over the past year she has completely changed her mind about speciality. The problem she and others face is that F3 type roles, following Boris' immigration rules changes, are extremely competitive, and there is a backlog from the previous year. So one of the two Fellow posts in her area is going on merit to someone who was temping in the department for a year.

So DD is unemployed in three weeks time along with a lot of her peers. She did hope to get a maternity leave cover in a department she had previously worked in but there is no budget and existing staff will just have to stretch further. Consultants are doing their bit. She got lovely unsolicited notes from three consultants in her previous department telling her she was a strong clinician and should stick with it. Whilst last week a consultant from another notoriously busy department, on hearing she might have to go overseas declared that she could not go. I think he is helping her identify possible temp opportunities.

Its not just her. They were the last year when rotations were based on merit points, which means her immediate peers are both good and mainly local. It is genuinely sad that the NHS does not have room for them. Not least because the system is under huge strain, from the bottom to the top with waitlists at unacceptable levels. (I don't know figures but it can be assumed that her Deanery is towards the bottom on a number of measures. They have less money.)

Interestingly the Australian application she completed was very focussed on her actual skills and experience. Indeed there was no space to say that she had spent her two months elective working with a major University research team. Doctors from her Deanery have a strong reputation in Australia for coming over with good experience, getting their heads down and doing the job. A couple of consultants she knows are using contacts to help her find something.

We shall see. It will be a huge pity if she has to leave. It will be a huge pity if her friends have to leave. The BMA inaction is staggering.

You can’t do that anyway. It’s not legal to cover striking junior Drs with locums at the same level. That’s why Trusts have had to pay consultants mega bucks rates to do cover shifts (but maybe don’t feel so bad as the taxman got 60% of it back from me due to my marginal tax rate). If you are a junior Dr who is not in a Union or just doesn’t want to strike you can come into work but you cannot take extra locum shifts to cover others who are striking. Those are the rules.

Makes sense but a pity. All those soon to be unemployed doctors could do with the work.

(Actually I think I already knew it was the case, but wanted to highlight the BMA greed when a significant proportion of their members dont have jobs.)

That was the situation when I was an SHO
-When you worked a weekend you worked Sat &Sun 8-8 and you worked the usual 8-6 every day the week before and the week after ie 12 days straight
-A week of nights was Weds to Weds so that you could have Thurs, Fri and the weekend off to recover afterwards and then go back the next week
a few hours unpaid overtime a day was the norm
This was all considered wholly normal.

When junior Drs started to be entitled to a whole week off after night shifts and a whole day off after just a long day/ evening shift I thought it extremely generous.
Then there was ‘exception reporting’ where they got time off in lieu for staying even 30 mins late

It is good in some ways as the conditions were too hard but all these days off reduce your clinical experience and your ability to benefit from time with your consultant to the point where I started to find it necessary to have a PA or specialist nurse to get some continuity of care for my patients as the juniors were never there. It made it less satisfying to train them I’m afraid

I’m not trying to be a dinosaur and saying that the way I was trained was good (‘This is going to hurt’ gave me flashbacks) but it had some good things and we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Medicine is a vocation not a money making exercise. It has always been a hard path and it always will be and we need people who are willing to sacrifice a bit in my view and to our others before their own self interest.

That’s the problem:people aren’t.

Striking doctors is a shameful act My goodness, when did doctors start thinking that money became more important than preserving life? It's not as if they don't have enough to live on. It's a vocation with a duty to serve the public Who the h* do they think they are? So greedy . Just disgusting. If it's not paying enough for your desires, then leave. Plenty more capable and more caring individuals will happily fill your place

£38k is fine even in London

@oddandelsewhere I have never denegrated anyone. Especially @Needmoresleep DD who I happen to think is an awesome young lady. Libel is real so either show me where I have said anything horrible or apologise. Why can’t people just debate and not become vile.

I had first-hand experience of both systems. I wasn't certain what I wanted to do after house jobs, so I got an A/E job and as you know they always ran on shift systems.

I couldn't believe how lucky I was. I still fondly recall sunny days off during the week and lunch in a local wine bar.

It was tough going back to a 1 in 3, and only occasionally emerging at night.

While I have sympathy now for juniors from a job satisfaction perspective, it is impossible to think of them as overworked, under pressure, or underpaid.

I feel the 4 Yorkshire Men have entered the conversation.

This

I'd love to see a libel action against an anonymous forum name by an anonymous forum name.

You really didn't think that through.

😂

@Willyoujustbequiet oh I did. MN are very helpful with any legal action. Still waiting for for the quote or an apology.

OK I can see my point has gone over your head and I have no wish to ridicule.

Libel is a false written statement that damages a person's reputation. This is an anonymous forum and you aren't identified. Your reputation cannot be damaged when nobody knows who you are.

I hope that makes it a bit clearer for you